28.02.19
Potlatch Appropriation Strategies:
- photo: Cowichan Valley Museum
Thursday 28 February 2019
Wednesday 27 February 2019
27.02.19
Potlatch Appropriation Strategies: Indian Agent William Halliday
"This potlatch custom has tended very materially to retard progress among the Indians. It has set up false ideas amongst them, and has been a great waste of time, a great waste of energy, and a great waste of substance. However, apparently it will take some time before the idea of the potlatch will be entirely eliminated, and when that is done progress will be extremely rapid, as the Indian of to-day, apart from these ideas, is inclined to be progressive."
- Potlatch and totem, and the recollections of an Indian agent : Halliday, William May, 1866-1957
Potlatch Appropriation Strategies: Indian Agent William Halliday
"This potlatch custom has tended very materially to retard progress among the Indians. It has set up false ideas amongst them, and has been a great waste of time, a great waste of energy, and a great waste of substance. However, apparently it will take some time before the idea of the potlatch will be entirely eliminated, and when that is done progress will be extremely rapid, as the Indian of to-day, apart from these ideas, is inclined to be progressive."
- Potlatch and totem, and the recollections of an Indian agent : Halliday, William May, 1866-1957
Tuesday 26 February 2019
26.02.19
Potlatch Appropriation Strategies: Indian Agent William Halliday
“I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.”
George Bataille
- Photo: A display of goods to be given away at a potlatch at Yalis (Alert Bay), ca. 1900. Photograph by William Halliday. BC Archives H-03976.
Potlatch Appropriation Strategies: Indian Agent William Halliday
“I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.”
George Bataille
- Photo: A display of goods to be given away at a potlatch at Yalis (Alert Bay), ca. 1900. Photograph by William Halliday. BC Archives H-03976.
Monday 25 February 2019
25.02.19
Potlatch Appropriation Strategies:
Surrendered regalia, Alert Bay Parish Hall, 1922
"The confiscated masks and other goods were transported out in the open by boat and then were put on exhibition on benches in the Parish Hall of the Anglican Church at Alert Bay. It was particularly difficult for the Kwakwaka'wakw to endure the display of the materials openly in the boat because these items were sacred and were considered to be treasures. Strict tradition required that they be stored away in cedar boxes out of sight when not in use."
- photo: Vivien Lord, Royal BC Museum, PN 12209
Potlatch Appropriation Strategies:
Surrendered regalia, Alert Bay Parish Hall, 1922
"The confiscated masks and other goods were transported out in the open by boat and then were put on exhibition on benches in the Parish Hall of the Anglican Church at Alert Bay. It was particularly difficult for the Kwakwaka'wakw to endure the display of the materials openly in the boat because these items were sacred and were considered to be treasures. Strict tradition required that they be stored away in cedar boxes out of sight when not in use."
- photo: Vivien Lord, Royal BC Museum, PN 12209
Sunday 24 February 2019
24.02.19
Potlatch Appropriation Strategies: Indian Agent William Halliday
"Indian Agent Halliday's official responsibility was for the welfare of the Kwakwaka'wakw. He also functioned as the regional magistrate so, ironically, he was involved in prosecuting the people whose rights he was supposed to be protecting. Over 600 potlatch-related pieces were given up and in his own statement, Halliday said that he had accumulated over 300 cubic feet of potlatch material. Their owners estimated the coppers in 1921 to have had a total value of over $35,000. However, the Canadian Department of Indian Affairs paid only a token amount of $1,485 for the masks and other materials, and no compensation was ever paid for the coppers."
-U'MISTA Cultural Society, 2019
Kwaxala'nukwame', Chief Amos Dawson and his wife, Di'dala, Alice Dawson, Alert Bay. One of the many chiefs who surrendered their regalia under duress after 1921 Cranmer potlatch.
Regalia surrendered under duress in Alert Bay Parish Hall, 1922.
- top photo: Royal Museum BC; middle photo: source unknown; bottom photo: William Halliday, Royal Museum BC, AA 176
Potlatch Appropriation Strategies: Indian Agent William Halliday
"Indian Agent Halliday's official responsibility was for the welfare of the Kwakwaka'wakw. He also functioned as the regional magistrate so, ironically, he was involved in prosecuting the people whose rights he was supposed to be protecting. Over 600 potlatch-related pieces were given up and in his own statement, Halliday said that he had accumulated over 300 cubic feet of potlatch material. Their owners estimated the coppers in 1921 to have had a total value of over $35,000. However, the Canadian Department of Indian Affairs paid only a token amount of $1,485 for the masks and other materials, and no compensation was ever paid for the coppers."
-U'MISTA Cultural Society, 2019
Kwaxala'nukwame', Chief Amos Dawson and his wife, Di'dala, Alice Dawson, Alert Bay. One of the many chiefs who surrendered their regalia under duress after 1921 Cranmer potlatch.
Regalia surrendered under duress in Alert Bay Parish Hall, 1922.
- top photo: Royal Museum BC; middle photo: source unknown; bottom photo: William Halliday, Royal Museum BC, AA 176
Thursday 21 February 2019
Wednesday 20 February 2019
20.02.19
Potlatch Appropriation Strategies: Seattle's Potlatch Bug (1912)
The origins of the festival are described as follows: Organizers explained that they had borrowed the term “potlatch” from the “quaint jargon of the Chinook,” meaning a “carnival of sports, music, dancing and feasting, and the distributing of gifts by hosts to all the guests.” [They] developed an extended Indian fantasy to suggest the exotic and mysterious character of the Potlatch. The Tillikums of Elttaes formed a local “secret order”.... The narrative that shaped the Potlatch festival was that the Hyas Tyee, the “chief of the North,” paddled to Seattle to visit “his white brethren of the South.” He was attended by leaders of five Alaskan tribes, each represented by a contrived totem.... The Hyas Tyee shared his knowledge of the “picturesque and romantic Indian North” with Potlatch visitors, and, in return, the city of Seattle offered him access to “the ways of modernity.” (McConaghy, Seattle's Potlatch Bug, 1912.")
- Candice Hopkins - The Golden Potlatch: Study in Mimesis and Capitalist Desire, Fillip 13, Spring 2011
Potlatch Appropriation Strategies: Seattle's Potlatch Bug (1912)
The origins of the festival are described as follows: Organizers explained that they had borrowed the term “potlatch” from the “quaint jargon of the Chinook,” meaning a “carnival of sports, music, dancing and feasting, and the distributing of gifts by hosts to all the guests.” [They] developed an extended Indian fantasy to suggest the exotic and mysterious character of the Potlatch. The Tillikums of Elttaes formed a local “secret order”.... The narrative that shaped the Potlatch festival was that the Hyas Tyee, the “chief of the North,” paddled to Seattle to visit “his white brethren of the South.” He was attended by leaders of five Alaskan tribes, each represented by a contrived totem.... The Hyas Tyee shared his knowledge of the “picturesque and romantic Indian North” with Potlatch visitors, and, in return, the city of Seattle offered him access to “the ways of modernity.” (McConaghy, Seattle's Potlatch Bug, 1912.")
- Candice Hopkins - The Golden Potlatch: Study in Mimesis and Capitalist Desire, Fillip 13, Spring 2011
Tuesday 19 February 2019
19.02.19
Potlatch Appropriation Strategies: Seattle’s Potlatch Bug (1912)
"In the Seattle Potlatch myth, the five Alaskan tribal groups -- all, of course, Seattle businessmen in costume -- were responsible for constructing floats to lead the Great Potlatch Parade. So the tribe of Ikht, of the bear totem, built an electrically lit float describing life on the lake, while the Moxttribe depicted life in the air, with the raven as its totem, and the Klone tribe, of the whale totem, built a float describing life on the water. While the Hyas Tyee and his attendants remained in town, Seattle was decorated with 250 plaster totem poles which bore the same exaggerated features as the Potlatch Bug."
- Lorraine McConaghy, 2007
Potlatch Appropriation Strategies: Seattle’s Potlatch Bug (1912)
"In the Seattle Potlatch myth, the five Alaskan tribal groups -- all, of course, Seattle businessmen in costume -- were responsible for constructing floats to lead the Great Potlatch Parade. So the tribe of Ikht, of the bear totem, built an electrically lit float describing life on the lake, while the Moxttribe depicted life in the air, with the raven as its totem, and the Klone tribe, of the whale totem, built a float describing life on the water. While the Hyas Tyee and his attendants remained in town, Seattle was decorated with 250 plaster totem poles which bore the same exaggerated features as the Potlatch Bug."
- Lorraine McConaghy, 2007
Monday 18 February 2019
Sunday 17 February 2019
17.02.19
Is it ever acceptable for potlatch to situate as metaphor? Is the field of poetics immune from appropriation tactics? Were the lettrists late model colonizers as they harvested academia for ethnographic material to fold into their spontaneous research and acts of non-territorialization. A view of the cache before unpacking.
Saturday 16 February 2019
16.02.19
Potlatch: Exercise in Psychogeography
Piranesi is psychogeographical in the stairway.
Claude Lorrain is psychogeographical in the juxtaposition of a palace neighborhood and the sea.
The postman Cheval is psychogeographical in architecture.
Arthur Cravan is psychogeographical in hurried drifting.
Jacques Vaché is psychogeographical in dress.
Louis II of Bavaria is psychogeographical in royalty.
Jack the Ripper is probably psychogeographical in love.
Saint-Just is a bit psychogeographical in politics. (Terror is disorienting.)
André Breton is naively psycho-geographical in encounters.
Madeleine Reineri is psycho-geographical in suicide. (See Howlings in Favor of Sade.)
Along with Pierre Mabille in gathering together marvels, Évariste Gaullois in mathematics, Edgar Allan Poe in landscape, and Villiers de l'Isle Adam in agony.
- lettrist international
Friday 15 February 2019
15.02.19
We're not interested in a fond place in your memories. But concrete powers are at stake. A few hundred people haphazardly determine the thought of an era. Whether they know it or not, they are at our disposal. By sending Potlatch to effectively positioned people, we can interrupt the circuit when and where we please. Some readers have been chosen arbitrarily. You have a chance to be one of them.
- lettrist internationale, 29.06.54
Thursday 14 February 2019
Monday 11 February 2019
Sunday 10 February 2019
Friday 8 February 2019
Thursday 7 February 2019
Wednesday 6 February 2019
Tuesday 5 February 2019
Monday 4 February 2019
Sunday 3 February 2019
Saturday 2 February 2019
02.02.19
How unusual it seemed that a sheep, an aging ram in fact, would lie in solitary ease like a cat in the sun on a front porch rocker. Our approach was taken at face value until he dragged himself to standing and pushed those tired old bones, that raggedy-assed fleece up the bluff to another final rest stop with a view.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)