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. Work thus began on an amendment to the Indian Act of 1880. 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". In the third section of the Indian Act, signed on April 19, 1884, it was declared that: Not all non-Aboriginal people supported the ban. German-born Anthropologist Franz Boas not only opposed the ban; with the help of his First Nations assistant, he actually hosted one. Despite this, the ban was enacted, lasting until repealed in 1951. First Nations affected by the ban quickly saw the law as an instrument of injustice and intolerance. Reasons for the ban As Canada expanded, they adhered to a number of ideologies at the time, including converting their colonial subjects to Christianity. Seeing that the potlatch was at the heart of a non-Christian cultural system that opposed colonization, the potlatch was targeted by missionaries and colonial officials. 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. They saw the ritualistic act of giving away nearly all of one's hard-earned possessions as a sign that the indigenous people were "unstable". Under the encouragement of the Indian Reserve Allotment Commission, the Indian Reserve Commission, and the Anglican Church, this behaviour was deemed as a possible destabilizing force in the nation because it was so dramatically opposed to the values of the ideal "Christian capitalist society". Two major players in the Canadian potlatch ban were George Blenkinsop and Gilbert M. Sproat. Blenkinsop was a government agent commissioned to survey the lifestyle of the indigenous peoples residing in Barkley Sound. His findings on native culture were not encouraging to the Government, as he reported that there was "little hope of elevating ... [the natives] from their present state of degradation" without eliminating ceremonies such as the potlatch. Gilbert M. Sproat, on the other hand, was a "joint Federal-Provincial appointee to the Indian Reserve Commission". In this regard, he had worked closely with different native groups and tribes throughout British Columbia. In 1879, Sproat sent a strongly