Culture

“Every Indian or other person who engages in or assists in celebrating the Indian festival known as the "Potlatch" or in the Indian dance known as the "Tamanawas" is guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall be liable to imprisonment ... and any Indian or other person who encourages ... an Indian or Indians to get up such a festival or dance, or to celebrate the same, ... is guilty of a like offence ..."
Indian Act, 19 April 1884

Potlatch law 1884
The history of the Potlatch Collection
umista.ca/pages/collection-history

“The third clause provides that celebrating the “Potlatch” is a misdemeanour. This Indian festival is debauchery of the worst kind, and the departmental officers and all clergymen unite in affirming that it is absolutely necessary to put this practice down.”
Sir John A. Macdonald, 1894

"Take our music and our dances and you take our hearts."
Poundmaker

"When you took the potlatch away from us, you gave us nothing to take its place."
Chief Scow

"We do not worship the sun. The dance is an expression of the joy and ecstasy of a religious life, of being thankful for life, the beautiful creation, the rain, the sun, and the changing seasons. The medicine men or women performing the ritual express their gratitude to the Great Spirit for all these things and pray for a good future, health, strength and prosperity for the tribe."
Chief John Snow, These Mountains Are Our Sacred Places

"Our religion seems foolish to you, but so does yours to me."
 Sitting Bull, 1889

"They say that sometimes we cover our hair with feathers and wear masks when we dance. Yes, but a white man told me one day that the white people have also sometimes masquerade balls and white women have feathers on their bonnets and the white chiefs give prizes for those who imitate best, birds or animals. And this is all good when white men do it but very bad when Indians do the same thing."
Chief Maquinna, 1896

"Since our forebears first set foot on this continent, the white man has been taking from the Indians: his food, his source of livelihood, his traditional way of life. The only thing the white man has refused to accept is perhaps the most valuable thing he had to offer: his unique sense of values."
Joe Rosenthal, 1971

"The attitude that there are only two 'founding' cultures in Canada is typical of the colonialist, and even racist, attitudes which Native Canadians are forced to contend with."
Harry W. Daniels, 1979

"We want to be recognized as a distinct society too. If the government is willing to recognize the distinct society in Quebec and give it powers to preserve and protect their culture . . . why can't the same treatment be given to us."
Elijah Harper, Winnipeg Free Press, 25 September 1991

"What was to be done with a people who were, by nature, semi-nomadic, when they began to live collectively in all seasons instead of travelling from camp to camp in search of wild game? The administrators had a ready answer to the Inuit predicament: cultural assimilation, which could later lead to cultural genocide."
Alootook Ipellie, 1993

"We should . . . [be] proud to celebrate Alexander Mackenzie as a man who embodied the very essence of perseverance. . . Mackenzie overcame all odds in exploring the untamed wilderness that would one day become part of a unique country. But he is a footnote in our history, an unknown in most parts of Canada. Mackenzie was an historical failure. Why? Because he didn't murder, maim, rape, pillage or torture. . .  He negotiated rather than confronted. He traded rather than stole. He respected the ways of the cultures he encountered rather than trying to change them. Ho hum."
Jerry MacDonald, The Vancouver Sun, 11 August 1993

"An indigenous culture with sufficient territory, and bilingual and intercultural education, is in a better position to maintain and cultivate its mythology and shamanism.  Conversely, the confiscation of their lands and imposition of foreign education, which turns their young people into amnesiacs, threatens the survival not only of the people but of an entire way of knowing.  It is as if one were burning down the oldest universities in the world and their libraries, one after another — thereby sacrificing the knowledge of the world’s future generations."
Jeremy Narby, “The Cosmic Serpent:DNA and the Origins of Knowledge.” 1998