Word: potlatches
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Hammer Blows. To call attention to its antipollution efforts, Armco Steel ran an ad showing its Ashland, Ky., plant under sootless blue skies. The headline: "Imagine a steel company giving up smoking. Imagine Armco." Potlatch Forests, Inc., a lumber company, has ads with scenes of forests and wildlife. One shows a sparkling, pine-flanked waterway over the headline: "It cost us a bundle, but the Clearwater River still runs clear." The message: Potlatch installed a filter plant to remove wood and bark deposited in the river by its Idaho logging operations...
...that ever-widening circle of giving outside the family, Christmas sometimes takes on an aspect of the potlatch, a ceremony of the Kwakiutl Indians of the Pacific Northwest, during which the chiefs showered gifts on each other. Their object was to surpass a rival in generosity, and to crush him under future obligations. To avoid this nowadays, ground rules must be observed. Within an office, the first move must come from the superior-and if the subordinate responds with a gift, it should be clearly less valuable...
...lifelessly suspended in time like the Pyramid of Cheops." Says Hoving: " 'Parks are for people' is the most leaden statement, but it's true." And people need recreation. "Recreational facilities should have a flair," Hoving believes. "They should be spontaneous, offbeat, with a slight tinge of potlatch-letting everything go." Under Hoving, the Parks Department sponsored a Happening in which everyone painted anything on yards and yards of white canvas. When he found that a hill left during construction was the favorite area for boys in one park, he ordered it left there; the boys dubbed...
...point in the dispute, Village Chief Albert S. Kaloa dispatched a telegram informing Interior Secretary Stewart Udall: "We are not savages but civilized human beings in need. If we were savages, we would have your bloody scalp in the potlatch immediately." Added Kaloa: "We suggest you come down off Kilimanjaro and attend to the needs of the people of Alaska as we pay you to do." Such badgering had its effect: declaring in 1964 that the Indians were the rightful owners of any mineral deposits, the Interior Department provided federal help in working out an economic-development program...
...white man's demand for the sea otter had all but exterminated the Indian's main trading staple. Gone with the sea otter were prosperity and the passion for the potlatch. The gradual loss of ritual meaning stultified Northwest Indian art, turned its craftsmen into little more than manufacturers of tourist curios...