to prepare for the ceremony. Canada: Obstruction, prohibition and resistance The Government of Canada, through the Department of Indian Affairs (now Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Development Canada), persecuted Sun Dance practitioners and attempted to suppress the dance. Indian agents, based on directives from their superiors, did routinely interfere with, discouraged, and disallowed sun dances on many Canadian plains communities from 1882 until the 1940s. The Canadian government outlawed "any celebration or dance of which the wounding or mutilation of the dead or living body of any human being or animal forms a part or is a feature" in an 1895 amendment to the Indian Act. Anyone who engaged, assisted or encouraged (either directly or indirectly) was liable to imprisonment. Though not all nations' Sun Dances include the body piercings, the amendment legally prohibited its performance for those communities that did. It is unclear how often this law was actually enforced; in at least one instance, police are known to have given their permission for the ceremony to be conducted. The First Nations people simply conducted many ceremonies quietly and in secret. Sun dance practitioners, such as the Plains Cree, Saulteaux, and Blackfoot, continued to hold sun dances throughout the persecution period. Some practiced the dance in secret, others with permissions from their agents, and others without the body piercing. In 1951, government officials amended the Indian Act, dropping the prohibition against practices of flesh-wounding. Contemporary practices The Sun Dance is practiced annually in many First Nations communities in Canada. The Cree and Saulteaux have conducted at least one Rain Dance (with similar elements) each year since 1880 somewhere on the Canadian Plains. In 1993, responding to what they believed was a frequent desecration of the Sun Dance and other Lakota sacred ceremonies, US and Canadian Lakota, Dakota and Nakota nations held "the Lakota Summit V". It was an international gathering of about 500 representatives from 40 different peoples and bands of the Lakota. They unanimously passed the following 'Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality': "Whereas sacrilegious "sundances" for non-Indians are being conducted by charlatans and cult leaders who promote abominable and obscene imitations of our sacred Lakota sundance rites; ... We hereby and henceforth declare war against all persons who persist in exploiting, abusing, and misrepresenting the sacred traditions and spiritual practices of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota people." - Mesteth, Wilmer, et al (1993)Taliman, Valerie (1993) "The