Announcing a Potlatch

Announcing a Potlatch

British Columbia
Indigenous people
Ritualism
Colonialism
20th century

This source is a painting of a costumed bird and rowers on a ceremonial dugout canoe, made from a single cedar log. The purpose of the scene depicted was to announce a potlatch which would celebrate a birth or wedding or commemorate a death. The preservation of this painting would be important for indigenous people because it presents ritual and customs that were suppressed by British colonial power. An anti-potlatch clause was included in a revision of the Indian Act in 1884, with the non-native colonists recognizing the need to remove the integral role that the potlatch played in First Nations culture. The colonists saw the sharing of wealth at these ceremonies as excessive and wasteful, and counterproductive to their focus on assimilation and private property ownership.

Lazare and Parker, National Wildlife Federation

The Canadian Encyclopedia

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/media/161/

unknown

David Cook

Lazare and Parker, National Wildlife Federation

N/A

Visual - painting

19th century British Columbia