ANTH 205 Lecture 11
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Exam next Friday! Need big gray scantron
Tlingit Foodways
Alaska has abundant resources, but a fairly harsh and long winter (not a lot to eat)
Preservable food is primarily dried or smoked fish.
Salmon is biggest staple food.
- King
- Silver
- Humpback
- Dog
- Sockey
Tlingit are conscious of overfishing (even historically)
Method of fishing is traditionally a weir, a large fence in the water
- cleaned
- dried (for days on racks; constantly monitored so no animals take the fish) [1]
- roasted, frozen, or smoked
- sealed in seal oil
Seasonal Diet Variation
- Spring
- Halibut
- shellfish
- seaweed
- seals
- Summer
- berries
- plants
- Fall
- salmon
- herring
- sea otters
- year-round
- deer
- bear
- moose
- mountain goats
- small mammals
Killing any whale is thought to be killing a spirital member of the family (used as a clan symbol)
- Beached whales are another story; seen as a gift
Nutritional Wisdom
When the tide goes out, the table is set
Eating only seafood is a sign of poverty (difficult to obtain some nutrients from the sea)
Nearly all parts of the animal are used
Animal protein is rarely eaten raw
Modern Foodways
Imported Food
Commercialized fishing
Deep-sea fishing for salmon
Potlatch
"Politicoreligious" (both political and relegious purposes) ceremony
Huge party for any number of ceremonial reason
Several days of singing, storytelling, feasting,
(Cultural anthropologists jump all over this... probably just because they want to party)
Usually hosted by a clan, and everyone is invited
- Seating/arrangement divided into moiety/clan
Host gives away lots of gifts in return for prestige; show off wealth and power
Underlying cause:
- reciprocity/redistribution of wealth to help clans get through winter
- debt/insurance: repayment, creation, social ensurance of survival
Aggressive Feasting
Kwakiutl and Kwakwaka'wakw clans
Invite enemies to potlatch: kill them with kindness
Feed them until they can't eat any more, throw extra food on fire until house burned down
Ban on Potlatch
- CA and US tried to assimilate culture
- Very difficult to enforce
- ban lifted in 1951
- Size remained small-ish
Footnotes
- ↑ There are a lot of carnivorous beasts in Alaska