If you have ever heard of the potlatch ceremony or other similar ceremonies, you know that gift-giving and generosity are important to many Indigenous cultures across the world. The Kwakwaka’wakw people of British Columbia continue the tradition of potlatch today, believing that “a rich and powerful person is someone who gives the most away.” This ceremony (and truly their everyday existence) is marked by celebration and generosity, and we have so much to learn from it.
In a society where we value scarcity mindset over generosity, how can we rewire what we believe about power and status? What if we really understood that the more we have, the bigger the responsibility to bless others? What if today’s millionaires and billionaires, today’s corporate executives, truly understood this? How would it change everything about America’s inequities?
This message is excerpted from “Generosity as resistance” by Kaitlin B. Curtice in the July/August 2023 Gather magazine.
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