Potlatch ban
[2] "Second only to the taking of land without extinguishing Indian title; the outlawing of the potlatch can be seen as the extreme to which Euro-Canadian society used its dominance against its aboriginal subjects in British Columbia.
[8] However, Canadian Prime Minister John A. Macdonald did not see this tradition as valuable or appropriate and, under the guise of unifying the Dominion of Canada, encouraged the government to lay "an iron hand on the shoulders of the [native] people" by restricting some of their non-essential, inappropriate rituals and leading them towards what he perceived as a "healthier" European mindset.
Some criticized the idea, such as James Benjamin McCullagh in his essay on the tribal lifestyle of the indigenous peoples of Canada, "The Indian Potlatch".
Though there was an obvious political motivation for suppressing the potlatch, it was also very foreign to the norms of Protestant and mercantile Euro-Canadians who found it hard to comprehend.
Euro-Canadians saw the potlatch as a pointless ceremony that did little but advance barbarity and retract the ability of the native peoples to fully assimilate themselves in mainstream society.
[14] Essentially, the potlatch was an important ritual to the natives that prevented assimilation into the melting pot the Euro-Canadian government sought to enforce.
Many of the aboriginal peoples of 1800s British Columbia were often motivated to work in order to gain wealth which would permit them to buy more items for potlatches, which would result in greater honour.
[1] According to John Lutz, written accounts of white employers were almost bipolar because of the indigenous peoples' seasonal working habits.
[15] On the issue of health, the missionaries worried about the spread of disease amongst the large groups that gathered for potlatches, and critiqued the native peoples' recklessness.
[16] On the issue of morality, missionaries claimed that potlatches and financial requirements led wives and "maiden daughters" of those hosting to turn to prostitution to help their fathers gather wealth, as well as the consumption of alcohol.
[16] The issue of economics was simple in the notion that the native desire to give away all their goods was the opposite of the "Christian capitalist" values held in high esteem by Euro-Canadians.
The first person to be charged under the law was a Sto:lo man from Chilliwack, Bill Uslick, who horrified Indian agent Frank Delvin by giving away all his goods, "practically left himself destitute.
"The legal suppression of the potlatch became a symbol, in both native and white communities, of the Canadian treatment of British Columbia Indians.
