Anthropology

Digital Document

This article examines the social and political implications of the geographically widespread and cross-cultural oral narratives related to the releases of salmon into the rivers of the Pacific Northwest through the destruction of weir-dams. Key themes in these narratives provide insights into indigenous concepts of reciprocity and authority. These narratives explicitly foreground the inevitable tensions between communities that relied on salmon and also sought to prioritize their own interests, seeking exclusive use of weirs, occasionally to the detriment of other groups. This study illustrates how these narratives convey episodes of contradictory interests, exploitation, social struggle, reconciliation, and a moral charter for communities over a broad area. The analysis also highlights how the messages of these narratives are just as pertinent today as they were in the past.

"Flatten the enemy", "Fighting with Property, "Interest-Bearing Investments": A consideration of Potlatch interpretations with Indigenous views of the gifting ceremony

Digital Document

Presented at the <a href="https://cas-sca.ca/en/conferences/">Canadian Anthropological Society/La Societe,</a/> Santiago de Cuba, Cuba (May, 2018). The potlatch is a multifaceted institution of Northwest Coast lifeways. Angelbeck, presents how the weight of interpretations and discussions about this renowned ceremony often can favour those of the lavish gift-giving demonstrations of ‘conspicuous consumption’, or warfare through gifting. Many have emphasized these as “interest-bearing investments” to produce greater future returns. Such interpretations concentrate on the role of self-interest. He highlights, how such accounts are often in contrast to how Northwest Coast peoples speak of potlatches, whereby these are considered positive ceremonies of celebration, public accounting and witnessing, and community building. The narrow and limited historical context for many initial evaluations of the potlatch as affected by colonial influences, including fur trade wealth, mercantilism, and capitalism will be highlighted. The intent is to allow us to better convey and contextualize potlatch dynamics and alliances between groups both now, as well as, in the past.

Anarchism and the archaeology of anarchic societies: Resistance to centralization in the Coast Salish Region of the Pacific Northwest Coast

Digital Document

Throughout human history, people have lived in societies without formalized government. We argue that the theory of anarchism presents a productive framework for analyzing decentralized societies. Anarchism encompasses a broad array of interrelated principles for organizing societies without the centralization of authority. Moreover, its theory of history emphasizes an ongoing and active resistance to concentrations of power. We present an anarchist analysis of the development of social power, authority, and status within the Coast Salish region of the Northwest Coast. <p>Coast Salish peoples exhibited complex displays of chiefly authority and class stratification but without centralized political organization. Ethnographically, their sociopolitical formation is unique in allowing a majority of "high- class" people and a minority of commoners and slaves, or what Wayne Suttles described as an "inverted-pear" society. We present the development of this sociopolitical structure through an analysis of cranial deformation from burial data and assess it in relation to periods of warfare. We determine that many aspects of Coast Salish culture include practices that resist concentrations of power. Our central point is that anarchism is useful for understanding decentralized (or anarchic) networks-those that allow for complex intergroup relations while staving off the establishment of centralized political authority.<p>

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