potlatch
/ˈpɒtlatʃ
/noun
(Among North American Indian peoples of the north-west coast) an opulent ceremonial feast at which possessions are given away or destroyed to display wealth or enhance prestige.In the society of survival, where the agonistic and vertiginous play of the potlatch is displaced by accumulation, an awareness of this has a deleterious effect on humanity....
- In the potlatches of the Chinook, Nootka, and other Pacific Northwest peoples, for example, chiefs vied to give the most blankets and other valuables.
- The Inuit who held the potlatch would often give away his most valuable possessions at the ceremony.
verb [no object]
Hold a potlatch.As I showed previously, this was possible due to their strong system of private property rights enforced through sophisticated reciprocity relations known as potlatching.
Origin
Chinook Jargon, from Nootka p'ačitł 'make a gift at a potlatch'.
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