Indigenous American Culture Zones: The Pacific Northwest Coast
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 มิ.ย. 2024
- This is the fully edited version of my last video - audio and visuals.
Today we begin our survey of the major indigenous cultural regions of North America with an exploration of the intricately fascinating cultures of the Pacific Northwest coast.
If you like my content and want to help the channel thrive, support me on Patreon!
/ indigenoushistorynow
Sources and suggested reading
Handbook of North American Indians Vol 7, Northwest Coast - ed. Wayne Suttles
Cedar - Hillary Stewart
Peoples of the Northwest Coast: Their Archaeology and Prehistory - Kenneth Ames and Herbert Maschner
American Indian Religious Traditions: An Encyclopedia - Dennis Kelley and Suzanne Crawford
Indians of the North Pacific Coast - ed Tom McFeat
My notes from college
In the Land of the War Canoes - • Video
If you want to learn more about traditional indigenous aquaculture both in the PNW and across the Pacific, here's a fantastic website - www.seagardens.net
Timestamps
00:00 Intro
04:45 Geography
09:02 Complex Hunter-Gatherers
13:46 Complex Hunter-Gatherers: Agriculture
20:29 Complex Hunter-Gatherers: Sedentism and Possessions
25:16 Complex Hunter-Gatherers: Land Use
29:47 Complex Hunter-Gatherers: Social Stratification
44:07 The Guardian Spirit Complex
54:14 Potlatch
59:37 Art: An Analysis of Form
01:09:36 People of Salmon and Cedar
01:15:13 The Tragedy-Less Commons
i'm so blessed to be tsimshian. i grew up attending potlatches, and am forever grateful.
you haven't had salmon until you've had it our way!
I grew up sand went through school with many members of our local tribes. My brother married into one of them and I worked for one a long time. I have been to many gatherings. This video explained lot to me I’m so glad I found it.
Ancient Americas brought me here. Thanks for making this video! Subbed. Can't believe you don't have more subscribers! Your channel is a hidden gem!
Same here!
Same. This is awesome!
Yo! Same, this video is incredible!
Same here
Regarding the original peoples of the PNW, perhaps it is worth looking at their form of subsistence not as "hunter/gatherer" but rather a civilization built upon permaculture (cedar/ camas/berries) and mariculture (clams, fish, marine mammals).
And the gift economies (potlatch) made the PNW rich in culture and practices, which lasted for millennia.
A much better ecological and social stability track record than the recent European experience.
Interesting… exploring this. Thx.
interesting 😊
coast salish native born n raised in Alaska here! Very informative, accurate and interesting. I learned many news things&good sources too. Hilary stewart is amazing! I like that u spoke on the distinction between our culture from other american indians. All too often we are just lumped in together. Thanks for sharing!
Cedar is the tree of life in the PNW... ❤
Absolutely. Fun fact the Douglas fir is a false hemlock not a fir at all. and the Cedar is a Cyprus not a cedar at all! 😂
Sequoia but ye
@@ForageGardener cedar is cedar and cyprus is cyprus- Thuja is not Chamaecyparis
Better said- it used to be. Most indigenous youth now a day cannot distinguish between cedar and fir and have little interest in learning traditional practices or even the language of their ancestors [fewer and fewer elders who can speak it fluently are still alive in most places]
@@ForageGardenerDespite its common names, it is not a true fir (genus Abies), spruce (genus Picea), or pine (genus Pinus). It is also not a hemlock; the genus name Pseudotsuga means "false hemlock".
It's a distinct species.
Excellent video. I've lived in Oregon and Washington my entire life and love to hear about our native heritage. So sad to hear about the Wooly Dogs being extinct.
We are the cedar people 🙏🏻🙂🙏🏻
As someone who works in ecological restoration on the coast and who's dad work in Aboriginal affairs Canada and growing up learning about Western First Nations culture (and a history nerd on the side) this presentation pretty much goes over and blends all the info i could possibly want to learn and hear about in 1.5 hrs. Well done!
This is so incredibly interesting to a new PNW resident. So much information and knowledge is packed into this, I have to view it in sections just so I can retain more of what can be learned here. Thank you!
PNW cultures are my favorite! I only started getting into anthropology as a hobby because of them. Thanks for all the hard work!
Same for finding your channel from ancient Americas. Thank you for researching these peoples and doing their history justice
Shout out for ancient America's for recommending this video and consequently introducing me to this channel! This has instantly become one of my favorite channels.
So excited to see the new videos to come!
Your channel is criminally underrated! Just subscribed!
Their art is so beautiful
Found this video from Ancient Americas! Excellent job, as a new resident of the PNW I’ve been looking for a resource like this
I am so grateful you put so much effort into allowing us to learn more about the North Pacific indigenous cultures. I live in the Bay Area and have always been fascinated by california ethnobotany and how these “hunters/gatherers” actually controlled large swaths of food systems for human consumption. The fact indigenous communities were able to produce large yields of acorn meal on larger scales than domestic farmers is astounding (example from the coastal Miwok that lived in the area I grew up)
Lillooet language family representing
Capt. Cook records in his Journals the scrupulously fair but shrewd trading practices of the People he encountered in the Pacific Northwest.
Here from ancient Americas, only 13 minutes in and had to sub, this channel looks s tier
I had to dig through my history to find this video again, because I was looking for the word for human cultivation and management of wild species (as opposed to domesticated ones, which is agriculture). Every search engine was failing me. Turns out there isn't a word for that - the word I remembered from this video (silviculture) is specific to forest cultivation and management. It almost certainly says something about western cultural views that we don't even have a word for what was practiced so widely by indigenous people of the Americas. Anyways, now that I have the term for what native peoples in my region were doing for land management and food production, I can link people to this video when I tell them about it (saved the video so I don't have to ransack my history again). Thank you for this incredible resource!
That’s a great point about the cultural disconnect. Yeah, I’ve gotten a comment or two saying silviculture isn’t the right word or is at least inadequate. I realize it has limitations. I use it because it’s what I see getting used most frequently in the archaeological literature here in the US. Especially by people that I really trust like Nathanael Fosaaen who has his own TH-cam channel if you want to check it out.
@@IndigenousHistoryNow I understand where you're coming from. The trouble here isn't word usage, it's that there doesn't seem to BE a word for that kind of cultivation. Silviculture certainly applies to traditional indigenous forest management, and aquaculture applies to their marine practices, but those are subcategories of a larger thing (altering ecosystems for food production without domesticating the species in them) that was/is practiced in all kinds of biomes. And that larger thing doesn't have an academic term, or at least not one that's well known enough to be used in the literature. Probably someone with more etymology knowledge than me could coin one.
This Tsimshian approves
you can thank Ancient Americas for me being here, and your content for my subbing and liking!
this is just the kind of info we all could use a lot more of.
It is so amazing and sad to hear about these religious beliefs. To think of all other species as equal to humans, as actually human in essence, to only take what is necessary because of consideration for others, to redistribute wealth. Obviously their society wasn't perfect, as with slavery and inheritance, but the underlying idea of equality and compassion is just.... I can't even put into words. Imagine what our society would be like if those ideals and practices prevailed in the US instead of the intense, unaware-of-consequence consumption that drives everything.
I am from the pacific northwest coast, and it makes me all the more frustrated to know that ideas like this were not only possible but actively the norm for thousands of people and societies where I myself grew up.
Also I LOVE the shame poles. Absolutely hilarious and perfect.
New subscriber here, also cedar is used as a talisman, and it's fragrance repels moth larvae, I came from Ancient Americas he recommended your channel. A very good recommendation.
On wooly dogs, I know for certain that the Snohomish (now part of the Tulalip Tribes) raised and bred wooly dog colonies, keeping them on designated islands. I'm pretty sure that č̓əč̓əsəliʔ (Hat Island) was one of these, but it might be a different island. It was definitely agriculture.
I’m somewhat suspicious now that the modern bichon frisé dog breed has some woolly dog genes.
@@eldermillennial8330 I highly doubt it, I was told they are all extinct now and were never introduced to other dogs because they were extremely valuable, along with their fur. I could be wrong, I'm no expert
I have a tribal friend who spins and weaves. Next time I go see her I’ll ask about the wool dogs she has been doing this all her life. Love to visit her.
Very interesting . I’ll ask a couple of Whatcom County tribal friends who keep good track of history. We live in Snohomish County.
Awesome awesome awesome video! Thank you for making this. I learned a lot!
@1:21:39 ...not forgetting the 'Murdering of Slaves' you mentioned earlier
This video was a lot of work! Thank you for doing such impressive and accurate research!
this is terrific stuff as always, i've lived in the pnw most of my life and i still learned a lot here. truly one of the most illustrative examples of how environment shapes a culture
This is one of the most mind blowing things I’ve ever heard. Wow.
I am thoroughly impressed with the research, thoughtfulness, and presentation of this video. It was a great overview of many key aspects of a very unique, yet very broad and diverse cultural area. And it has motivated me to find out more about how specific tribes fit into and adapted the culture of the Northwest Coast.
As to the final statements of the video, I appreciate that you tied the environmental sustainability element of the culture into a call for action (that modern economists and others can learn from). But I do feel that in practice, individuals in those PNW cultures were motivated more through religion and respect, than the knowledge that they were part of a sustainable system. And while their religion may have evolved to encourage that system, I believe that it is an integral part of that system's success.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is: Yes, we could use the PNW culture as a model for some economic changes, but until we, as a society, focus more on respect (and dare I say... religion) in our lives, I don't see those changes making any long term improvements.
thank you for theses lessons how sad this isn't part of our required lesson
I can't quite the PNW. It is an amazing, mysterious, and spiritual place. I feel blessed to be born and raised here - between the Pacific and the Cascades 🌊🥰🔥
Water and Fire make alchemy!
As a compliment to you and your show, it is rewarding to hear the implement of eloquent language. It is a rarity today, especially in younger generations.
this was a very valuable learning opportunity, thank you so much
Ok. I’m hooked. Thank you for bringing so much information to the table in such an easy to consume way. Very interesting. Some things you brought much more detail to then I knew about and then there are those things I never knew about, like the woolly dog and the shaming pole. I admit even the slavery and occasional sacrifices was shockingly new information. Well done, sir. We sure can learn much from these beautiful people.
I very much enjoyed watching this video. Thank you! It really broadened my worldview
Great video
Haida and Tsimshian here. So far away from the PNW tho. I live in Oklahoma and i really miss it out there
thanks for this amazing video! i look forward to binge watching your entire channel :)
As a non-Indigenous person who has lived in the Pacific Northwest basically all of my life, it was really cool to hear that a lot of these languages use the sea and the mountains to tell direction as opposed to the cardinal directions, because that's what I do! I have a really hard time using the Cardinal directions, or trying to figure out which way I'm going based on the sun and time, but if I know where the water is, or where the mountain is, I can generally piece it together. Even when I'm trying to figure out something cardinally, I figure out which direction the water is and from there I put together whether I'm facing north, west, east, or south. Connections to the land really do define a people!
I do the same thing. I’m never worried about getting lost in the Olympics because I know I can just find a river and follow it downstream.
Great video! I learned so much.
Great video!!
I find your discussion of not putting judgement similar to the way Murray Bookchin discusses it, in his ecology of freedom in that he specifies that he uses the word civilised in the original latin context, referring to those who dwell in cities and not as a moral judgement. I highly recommend checking his work out if you haven't.
I'm a year late, but great video! Moved to Seattle area last year and this is really interesting.
Thanks for this series! I really like the detail that clearly goes into your research and enjoyed the story of the Bering Land Bridge Theory's rise and fall. If you do more about the PNW, I'd appreciate more about what life looked like after a potlatch -- it's hard for me to picture what the host got up and did the next day, and how prestige works to make them more powerful in the long run.
Thanks for the feedback! I’ll add that to my suggestion list
Look forward to checking out more of your well researched vids! In particular, the art of the PNW. (This was only the first lol) Cheers
It seems to me that in the absence of minted currency, the person holding the potlatch was a vehicle for creating the community currency. So giving away all the liquid assets wasn't a big deal as a potlatch was just the minting process. Having ownership of all the wealth creation ensured they didn't have to labor physically in order to have control of the currency. It's much the same today. Brilliant that they had figured this out back then. Its not about the cash in hand, its about control of the flow of currency which makes a person wealthy.
They made a big show of giving away their wealth at the potlatch. Usually they would ask for it back the next day.
@@redwater4778 I'm curious as I haven't studied this and I find it fascinating. What do you mean by "ask for it back the next day?" How did that work and was that social flow conducted?
@@BladeFitAcademy It's hard to find truthful history these days. Where I live the British made the natives stop potlatching. This I learned in grade 5 in the 60s. They told us it was about them giving their wealth away . I do now believe the gift giving was just for show. The chiefs expressing "Bravado"
I have since learn the real reason for ending the potlatching was because the chiefs had contest among themselves to see how many slaves they could kill. The British also made them end slavery.
What a fascinating culture. They have my Awe and respect. However, I can't resist to make this one joke.
23:26 You've head of the Tomahawk Chop? Now get ready for.... The Copyright Strike.
* giggles under my shame pole *
This Cherokee/Choctaw bloodline person and as well as a multi grain saltine has given this a great review
didnt coast salish peoples farm oysters?
Yes! There’s a whole world of Northwest Coast aquaculture that I only barely touched on
19:44 No its a case of Farming not Agriculture. Agriculture refers specifically to plants, this is animal husbandry, a type of farming.
21:15 Do you have a source on Hunter-Gatherers closely following migrating game?. From what I have read in Southern Africa and the Near East, they followed game but only through their rough territory and that's it.
I’m using “closely” as a relative term here. You’re right, generalist hunter gatherers in North America would follow in the rough territory of their prey. I’m meaning to say that generalists are following their game in such a way that they’re moving around much more than just twice a year.
@@IndigenousHistoryNow You know, Ignore the agriculture comment might just be different use of terminologies.
And I meant the rough territory of the foragers not the rough territory of the hunted beasts.
id like to see some info on the war canoes and war parties
I will eventually have an overview video on indigenous warfare across the continent. I unintentionally overlooked that aspect in this script.
Which source refers the silviculture parts? Also, great video.
That section was synthesized from a bunch of different sources, not all of which I cited here. The aquaculture website and the Handbook are the two in the description under this video that talk about it. oregonencyclopedia.org is another website with some articles on the topic. Beyond just the PNW, Charles Mann’s book 1491 has a couple chapters talking about silviculture across the whole continent. Nathanael Fosaaen’s TH-cam channel also has a few videos talking about it mainly in the Eastern Woodlands. He’s a North American archaeologist. There are lots of other sources, but that’s a good start.
Thank you for the information. I'm trying to compile data for a project in my biocultural conservation class. @@IndigenousHistoryNow
@@kipross5728oh cool! In that case I also suggest Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Kimmerer, Tending the Wild by Kat Anderson, and Indians, Fire, and the Land by Robert Boyd.
My family Ancestry comes from the James Town S'Klallam and Samish from the North.
You allude to it briefly, but I have heard arguments that the cultivation of camas in some areas was more or less agricultural as well.
(14:00 food) (1:04:00)
15:19 so it's the self-sustainable, most functional form of agriculture?
But did they use cedar??
I would love to get in contact, i am kwakwakawakw and grew up in my culture, i think your video is very well done. It would be cool to talk about the culture.
I would love to! Shoot me an email: indigenoushistorynow@gmail.com
well my society revolves around the wooly dog, did you ever think of that?
Cedar
Your Mic. Is very tinny ! I hope you can fix that would subscribe!
1:17:50 people really underestimate how self aware Hunter-gatherer cultures often are about their lifestyle
1:21:00 here is the thing: it doesn’t scale up past that size of community, and even at that size, it HAD to develop organically with super strong family ties to work so well. It would take hundreds of years to redevelop an equivalent strong system, and one of the greatest weaknesses of our age is extremely self conscious impatience with systems experiments. Nobody wants to plant a tree for our great grandchildren, we want that shade OURSELVES in our lifetime, so we muck with the plant to make it grow faster, risking weird abnormalities. That’s just the mindset we have and we have to somehow get out of that before we could try to adopt such sustainable but multigenerational experimentation.
Anyone here know anything about Maggie Roe?
We still would have needed a word for things that we call 'savage'.
I’m not saying savage is an unnecessary word to have in the vocabulary, I’m saying it gets unnecessarily used as a slur against hunter-gatherers
I'd rather share than keep it and be miserable. I'm too much like my dad
Oh yes, people certainly can break private property laws 😊 but should they?
Yes, yes they should
ozette potato
You first deride the concept of the tragedy of the commons then go on to explain the social and physical pressures that cause this to be the case amongst pacific northwest cultures.
As a mechanism to explain how the concept falls apart, in modern western society (or imply perhaps).
When the concept was created by a westerner about westerners, not indigenous peoples.
What I'm trying to say is: why turn the last section of this into a political speech? The information that you present (which is comprehensive and interesting) clearly demonstrates why these innovative(to us) systems work for them and how they're maintained, and thus also demonstrate why they are far less applicable to the western world(at least without modification).
Here's an example, you mentioned droves of leeches suckling not being present in indigenous society. This is true, but if you look at the mechanism of wealth redistribution in those cultures you'll see that it's fundamentally different than the kinds employed by europeans (and I am referring to welfare and grain doles as wealth redistribution because they definitionally are). Whereas these indigenous peoples redistribute means of production(in this case: land and fishing rights), europeans distribute goods and commodities (food and money).
Why these two mechanisms would work so differently should be obvious. "Give a man a fish" as it were.
Now, I'm not saying that it's a bad idea to attempt to follow their example, on the contrary I think it has some very good concepts and ways to make social safety nets more functional. However the way you present the politically relevant part of your last section implies that you're not. Or rather, the way you discuss modern ideas in relation to indigenous cultures is incoherent because you don't properly explore the nuanced differences between western ideas and indigenous application.
If you're going to be political, you should go all in and actually delve into the application of these ideas in the modern world or simply present the ideas themselves as they manifested in native societies and allow the audience to ask "Could this be applied to the modern world?".
Aside from that, pretty good video.
Thank you for your thoughts, and I apologize if what I’m about to say didn’t come across as intended in the video.
I’m not deriding the concept of the tragedy of the commons. It’s a very real thing and I don’t dispute its existence. What I’m deriding is the idea that private ownership of land is the only (or even best) way to deal with it. This section presents multiple strategies used in the PNW to avoid the tragedy of the commons other than private land ownership. That they had a multitude of solutions for the tragedy of the commons attests that they were aware it was a potential issue. I’m not disputing that the problem exists, just that there’s only one way to deal with it.
Also, I don’t mean to be disrespectful in any way, but I don’t know where from this video you got the idea that PNW wealth redistribution only redistributes the means of production and not material commodities. The potlatch did both and I talk about both in the video. Yes, titles and rights to land were conferred at potlatches, but only to select individuals. On the other hand, material commodities were redistributed to every guest present at every potlatch-things like food, clothing, tools, canoes, weapons, artwork, blankets, etc-and the concept of holding status-holders accountable for stingy potlatching applied mostly to their generosity in this distribution of material goods. There is a lot of “giving a man a fish without teaching him to fish,” as you allude, in the potlatch system.
@@IndigenousHistoryNow I apologize if I misread your implications regarding the tragedy of the commons. Thank you for clarifying, and I agree with you on that.
It's alright to be disrespectful, I was a bit rough in the initial comment too. I actually didn't think about that second bit, about only select individuals getting things like land rights. It kind of throws my statement on its head. Makes the potlatch seem less like wealth redistribution and more like a mechanism of intertwining high status individuals with a side effect being some goods gifted to lower status individuals.
The concept of holding status-holding individual's accountable is pretty huge, although I didn't touch on it. I reckon it might be *the* thing that holds it together.
The primary value of private land ownership is not to eliminate over-exploitation, but rather to encourage capital investments which have the potential to generate more value on the same plot of land. In the context of hunter-gatherer societies, the latter point may be moot, as hunting and fishing grounds will generate very little additional value when capital improvements are made, compared to farms, factories, and mines. You can even see the problems with collective or trust ownership on modern reservations, where individuals have very little incentive to invest in anything more than mobile homes because the tribe can ultimately remove them from the land at will.
the part of communism i mean communal land sharing is it seems what helped make it possible is it relied heavy on slave labor.
not that capitalism does not, i am just saying lol
great vid though thanks
I would disagree with that. All of my research indicated that slavery was not so central that the economy relied on it. You could’ve removed it and had the same social and economic structures largely unchanged. In fact, beginning in around the 1850s tribes up and down the coast ended the practice under pressure from Western governments, and didn’t have to change anything else in their societies as a result. It really only served to enable faster, more dramatic wealth accumulation by status holders.
@@IndigenousHistoryNow hard to say because colonization changed the dynamic of life for modern indigenous, but i see what your saying, Hell i want to believe that a utopia of peace and cooperation can exists, but seems no one else can replicate that social environment now a days, greed is to rampant, and materialism too idolized,. everyone's claim is always socialism works it just hasn't been instituted properly i guess now i see why this claim is thrown around.. maybe in a smaller, simpler world my friend. i think that maybe within generations, mindsets need to be changed, children need to be raised differently.
would give the good a better chance against the wicked, if the wicked dont develop it
Great video!