Why a Government Once Feared the Simple Act of Giving

If you want to understand a society, look at what it calls a crime.

In 1885, Canada outlawed a ceremony. Not murder, not theft — something to do with generosity.

The ceremony was called the potlatch. In it, the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest gave away everything they owned, and the government found this dangerous. The ban lasted a full sixty-six years, until 1951. Looking back, one question remains: why would a government be afraid of someone giving gifts?

Everyone gives gifts. But the answer to “why are you giving?” quietly reveals what a society believes about power, wealth, and the ties between people.

For some, giving is a display. For others it is a debt. For others still it is a pure act of love. The same gesture can hide very different meanings.

Here we will set two worlds against each other: the potlatch tradition of the Pacific Northwest coast, and the modern Western idea of the gift, shaped by the logic of the market.

The Leader Who Grows by Giving

In a potlatch, a chief rises and gives away everything in his hands: blankets, sheets of copper, hunting gear, sometimes canoes. The rule is simple but startling — the more you give, the more respect you earn.

The ceremony lasted for centuries among the peoples of the northwest coast, in the region stretching from Haida Gwaii to Vancouver Island.

In the world of these peoples, the community’s memory kept the givers, not the hoarders.

Beneath this lay an intuition that worked like a law of nature: wealth exists in order to flow into the community, and if it does not flow, it rots. Think of water. Running water stays clear; standing water turns foul. The potlatch saw wealth in exactly this way. A person’s worth was measured not by what they held, but by what passed through their hands.

In some potlatches this logic reached its furthest edge. Chiefs did not merely give; they destroyed their wealth in full view — breaking valuable sheets of copper, throwing blankets into the fire, even pouring oil into the sea.

To a modern eye this looks like madness. But in that culture it carried a message: “I need these things so little that I can even burn them.” The highest form of mastery over wealth was to need none of it at all. Two rival chiefs would sometimes enter a kind of duel of generosity, each trying to outgive the other for the upper hand. Power here was measured not by what you could hoard, but by what you could let go.

When I first read about this, I noticed something: the ceremony is really an invisible machine for redistribution. In a good year, the chief who earned the most gave it back to the community through the rite. No one stayed very poor, no one stayed very rich. What modern states try to do through taxes and welfare, these peoples had turned into a ceremony of honor. And this was no dry economy. Births, marriages, deaths — all were marked by the potlatch. Giving was also a way of keeping the community’s memory alive.

The Gift That Creates Debt

In the modern West, the gift speaks a very different language. Birthday presents, holiday parcels, wedding registries — all are part of a fine social exchange. The French sociologist Marcel Mauss analyzed this in his 1925 essay “Essai sur le don” (The Gift). For him, every gift carries a part of the giver — a kind of soul — and that is why you feel bound to give something in return.

The Western gift economy rests on exactly this debt of reciprocity. When someone gives you something too expensive to match, you feel uneasy. The reason is not politeness but debt — you have fallen under an obligation you cannot repay. The gift builds a bond, but at the same time it sets up a quiet balance of power. The giver has stepped one pace ahead.

You can see this logic of debt everywhere in modern life. As the holidays approach, millions fall into the panic of “what should I get them?” — often not out of desire, but out of the duty to reciprocate. We smile even at a gift we dislike; quietly passing an unused gift on to someone else is kept secret, like a small crime. We even tune the price of a gift with care: not so expensive that it burdens the receiver, not so cheap that it seems like disdain.

There is a moment when I caught this discomfort in its barest form in myself. I had made a small gesture of thanks to someone who had done a job for me; in return, they handed me something small I had not expected. Reason said it was enough to accept it and say thank you. But something in me grew restless — I could not bear to carry that open thread without repaying it, so I paid a little extra and called us even. Later I laughed at myself: I criticize the way a gift creates debt, yet I live squarely inside it. Emerson caught the same unease long ago, observing in his essay “Gifts” that we never quite forgive those who give to us, because a present can feel like a quiet claim upon us. To give is one thing; to be able to swallow receiving without repaying is a maturity all its own.

In the potlatch, the aim was to give the most; in the modern West, the aim is usually to strike the balance.

At the root of the difference lie two ideas of ownership. In the West, wealth belongs to the individual; to gain it, grow it, and guard it is a legitimate power. In the potlatch tradition, wealth that does not flow to the community has no meaning. The Protestant work ethic has endlessly reproduced the tension between earning and hoarding. Even charity does not resolve this tension; it can only frame it as a rewarded exception.

Modern gift-giving turns the gift into a carrier of personal meaning. A flower, a handwritten letter, a small object chosen with care — all of them say “you are special.”

In the potlatch, giving is for the community, yet it takes the form of a bestowal. In the modern world, giving is for building or sustaining a relationship. One distributes wealth; the other binds hearts.

If a government fears generosity, what it truly fears is not generosity but another idea of power lying beneath it. The one who gives reinforces their standing, in material or in spiritual terms.

The West managed to turn the gift into an invisible thread between two people. The first shoe a mother keeps from her child, the note inside a book a friend gave years ago — gifts sealed with such memories have no monetary value, yet they are priceless. Even the smallest object, when it leaves the right hand, becomes solid proof of a love.

So perhaps what makes a gift singular is both the ability to give generously, without keeping count, and the ability to place in what we give a meaning that belongs to that person alone. Today, caught in the rush of our lives, we often put a price on a gift and fail to honor it enough. Sometimes even a gift card can stand in for a gift.

What makes us generous is not what we own, but whether we can give a part of ourselves — material or spiritual — to the person before us. Either way, the idea that a world built on sharing is possible gives me hope…