It is mandatory. Peter John, seventy-six, a former tribal chief in Minto, could not remember a death that was not followed by a funeral potlatch. It is apparently an obscenity to suggest that possibility. While a potlatch may be held to celebrate secular occasions, the funeral potlatch is distinguished by its fundamentally sacred aspect. The ritual has its origins in antiquity and it has not changed in any important respect since anthropologists first began to describe it.
Food is the cornerstone of the ritual.
From the moment the death is learned of, food preparation begins. People begin to arrive in the village from nearby and remote places. Food is brought by all participants to one or several houses associated with the deceased and is shared in several pre-burial meals. The body will not be buried until a sufficient quantity of the proper food is prepared for the post burial feast. In the case of Delnor Charlie this took four to five days.