Potlatch

They are brightly colored masks of red cedar wood, paint, and string made in the late 19th century C.E. These masks were worn during a potlatch, which is an extravagant ceremonial feast where belongings are given away or destroyed to represent social status. Only certain people were allowed to wear the masks. These people performed a ceremony in front of hundreds of other members of their…

It’s no secret that many people get memorial tattoos to honor the deceased. For many, it is a way of carrying that special person(s) around with them. These are not normal tattoos since they usually have much thought placed into creating them. I have heard many stories of people that get tattoos commemorating their marriage but then they get an unforeseen divorce. Some people also get tattoos that they regret when they reach a certain age. Memorial tattoos tell stories and preserve important…

According to King et al. (2009), Indigenous social inequalities resulted from a combination of classic socioeconomic and alienation as well as Indigenous-specific factors related to colonization, globalization, migration, loss of language and culture, and disconnection from the land leading to the health inequalities of Indigenous peoples. Language serves not only as a means of communicating but for preserving cultural identity thus chronicling all that happened in the past, present and the…

Indigenous Tribe Report: Haida People The Haida people are an indigenous tribe that spans the international boundary between British Columbia, Canada, and Alaska, United States. They also live on two large and many smaller islands, known as Haida Gwaii (which means island of the people). They also live in southeast Alaska. They conduct regular trade with Russia, Spain, Britain, and the U.S., as well as fur and whale traders. On the islands they have many fortifications to defend themselves if…

salmon berry, salal, and the oval-leaved blueberry shrub. These berries were often harvested and mixed together and would serve as natural sweeteners, or prepped and used in other dishes. For example, Tollas, shared that to prepare for the upcoming potlatch she was canning berries to bring as a present. However, not all berries found on shrubs are edible, for instance berries found on devil’s club are not edible, however it was a valuable shrub to the Haida due to it’s medicinal properties.…

Reading 1 – Introduction to Part Five (Theory), Week 3 In this reading, the social logic of consumption by Mauss has provides a platform for other scholars to argued, inspired and challenged. As stated by the author of this reading, in reference to Mauss’s work on ‘gift economy’ that in certain societies, gift exchange is seen as a primary means for fostering social ties and obligation but it didn’t form the full fledge of commercial exchange. But when monetary involves, the gifts connotes…

Is 'culture ' and 'personality ' a false dichotomy as Melford Spiro maintained? How does a person become a member of their culture? Psychological anthropology, emerging in the 1930s, questioned the relationship between the individual and society. This question became a key theme of research of so-called 'culture and personality ' theorists – a question still present within the subdiscipline today (LeVine, 2010). In positioning anthropological analysis along the two theoretical points –…

I am European And I grieve Though my direct lineage does not include colonizing Canada, I am guilty The tears come My heart breaks and tells me that this is all wrong and I grieve some more. I grieve for my brothers and sisters of the First Nations Their history is a culture that uses a rolling tongue that remembers everything and unites a community by the careful telling of the journeys of the First Nations since the birth of the world. Every word Every moment Every feeling…

Recently a research, reported by UN, announced that only 57% people in the US are "pretty happy" in 2010. It is unexpected that 43% people in America, with abundant resources and comfortable lives, are unhappy. If these material conditions are not able to make people feel happy, how can we become happy again? Transcendentalism provides us a direction. Transcendentalism was a popular belief back to eightieth century, supporting simplicity is the path to spiritual greatness. Many…

Marcel Mauss’s essay titled “The Gift” published in 1925, focused on the way exchange of objects between groups, builds relationships between them. He argued that giving an object creates an inherent obligation on the receiver to reciprocate the gift, thus resulting in a series of exchanges between groups, therefore providing us with one of the earliest forms of social solidarity used by humans. Mauss describes Melanesian and Polynesian peoples, gift economy as one of material and moral life, it…