Dakotas reopen Pipestone smoke shop

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This article was published 17/11/2011 (5285 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One day after provincial authorities seized thousands of Mohawk cigarettes from the Dakota Chundee Smoke Shop, store clerks had restocked their tobacco supply and reopened the doors at noon.

“It’s business as usual,” store employee Charles Blacksmith told the Sun yesterday, three hours after it reopened. “We’ve had no problems so far.”

Blacksmith says he was one of three men who were charged under the province’s Tobacco Tax Act on Tuesday, following a noon-hour raid in which 89,550 cigarettes were seized by the Manitoba Finance Special Investigations Unit.

Dakota Chundee, run by Smoke and Chief Frank Brown of Canupawakpa under the name Great Buffalo Nation Dakota, has been selling tobacco products supplied by Mohawk distributors in Quebec for about $40 a carton. Cartons of 200 cigarettes normally sell for about $98 in Manitoba.

Though the shop was operating yesterday, Blacksmith indicated that one of the three men tending the shop is no longer employed by Dakota Chundees’ owners.

“We’re dropping one guy,” Blacksmith said. “He’s a family guy and I don’t think he wants to (continue).”

The province’s action against the smoke shop was praised on Tuesday by the National Coalition Against Contraband Tobacco, which lauded the Manitoba government for taking “quick action” against the group.

“It is good news that the province acted quickly to seize contraband from this smoke shack,” said Gary Grant, a 39-year veteran of the Toronto Police Service and spokesman for the NCACT, in a press release.

“The experience in other jurisdictions, particularly Ontario and Quebec, has seen government inaction lead to an expansion of the smoke shack network and a growth in the influence of organized crime.”

The NCACT claims there are currently more than 300 smoke shacks operating in Ontario and Quebec, which typically ignore federal and provincial regulations, including for packaging, display and ID requirements. Contraband tobacco, like that sold at smoke shacks, finances the illegal activities of more than 175 criminal gangs, including guns, drugs, and human smuggling, according to the RCMP.

But it wasn’t committing crimes that was on the minds of the Dakota leaders when they opened the shop, Dakota Plains Chief Orville Smoke told the Sun yesterday.

Smoke said it was his people’s sovereign right to declare territory in Manitoba because the Dakota never ceded any land by signing a treaty.

“I think the land still rightfully belongs to us because nobody consulted with us to have Manitoba establish that kind of stuff,” Smoke said. “The people who challenged the laws before were never the Dakota. I think we’ve been overlooked from time immemorial and even at the time the treaties were signed we were overlooked.

“So they left the door open and we’re just now exercising that right to establish certain sovereignties.”

As of late yesterday afternoon, Smoke had not been contacted by provincial officials or RCMP. But he said he had a “funny feeling” that the store’s reopening will prompt contact with authorities shortly. Both Brown and Smoke signed the land title document for the smoke shop property.

When asked whether reopening the smoke shop yesterday would do much to advance the Dakota’s cause in court, Smoke was uncertain.

“Whether opening it again is the way to do it, I don’t know. It’s something that remains to be seen. We may now be stepping into a situation where we may be deemed as agitators simply because we didn’t remain closed.”

» mgoerzen@brandonsun.com