you have to wonder if the constant insistence that potlatches were primarily about destroying property is just a holdover from the Canadian ban on potlatches. the anthropology texts from the 60s mention it, but i can't detect an excess of destruction even in their exceedingly polite prose about native practices
a 19th century chief admonished an anthropologist and the Canadian government for interfering in their feasting, dancing, and giveaways, not the destruction of property
the actual Indian Act law doesn't even mention destruction, it says "giving away or paying or giving back of money"
okay, and now that i'm on this research kick, can we all just appreciate the names of the copper plates they were giving away and hoarding and bragging about. you can hear it in the names they gave them: "[this one] takes everything out of the house", "longest copper in the world", "this copper makes copper", "all other coppers are ashamed to look at it"
and can we appreciate the related Hollywood brainrot that has convinced so many people that indian naming convention is some kind of pseudo-mystical/spiritual BS? and how wrong that is? like undeniably unfactual bullshit, but because it makes the new agers feel good it keeps getting a pass?
like the completely unsourced, but widely held belief that "Tillamoook" means "Land of Many Waters", but just, no. it's a chinookan exonym, like how we say Spaniard or Korean. it's a foreign name for the people that lived arond Nehalem. and it's not clear it ever meant anything other than "the people that live around Nehalem"
but like, if you were going to translate Tillamook to mean "Land of Many Waters", you've completely failed to capture the actual spirit of the place name. we have mountains named The Big White Thing, and Ours is Bigger, and That One's a Smoker. if you wanna "translate" Tillamook, you gotta get the feel of it right, Tillamook: Where Even the Fish Are Too Wet
(the atomic rockets to freefall to Canadian gov't PDFs pipeline is real)
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/power.php
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff3900/fc03858.htm
https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2017/aanc-inac/R5-158-2-1978-eng.pdf
https://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/courses/lawdemo/projects/potlatch/copper.htm