Smoke shops not helping Dakota First Nations

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/06/2016 (3738 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“I find it puzzling with all the evidence we provided to the court on the jurisdiction issues that it’s never accepted by the court. The Crown insists they have jurisdiction over us even though we’ve stated conclusively, and provided documentation, that we’ve never surrendered our rights.”

— Craig Blacksmith

Earlier this week, several Dakota First Nation members who were charged for selling contraband tobacco lost a legal bid to have the case tossed out on the grounds that their people have no official treaty with Canada, and therefore the courts have no jurisdiction.

As the Winnipeg Free Press reported, the two accused — smoke shop owner Craig Blacksmith and employee Tammy Walters — were arrested during a 2014 raid by RCMP on Dakota Plains near Portage la Prairie.

RCMP, the Dakota Ojibway Police Service and Manitoba Finance taxation officials seized 4,800 cartons, which amounted to 951,225 cigarettes. More than 1,840 tins of chewing tobacco, six firearms, one vehicle and an unspecified amount of cash were also seized. All told, finance officials calculated $292,572.68 of tax was avoided.

Two other co-accused have been charged, but they are dealing with their legal issues separately. Matthew Audi and Christopher Wilkins are both residents of Quebec and are accused of making a U-Haul delivery to the smoke shop.

For anyone who has been following the ongoing and controversial issue of the non-treaty Dakota in western Manitoba, this argument — that Dakota Plains has no official treaty status in Canada, and therefore should not be subject to Canadian law —  is a familiar refrain, one that has not seen much traction in our federal or provincial courts.

This particular court case has its roots in the original Chundee Smoke Shop that was opened by former Canupawakpa Dakota First Nation chief Frank Brown on a piece of land near Pipestone back in 2011.

At the time, Brown was using the smoke shop as a means to push Canada into acknowledging that the Dakota were not refugees in Canada, and to force the federal government to the bargaining table to get a better deal for the five Dakota bands in the province.

He believed, at the time, that the opening of the shop would settle the status of Manitoba’s Dakota once and for all — and if not, they’d make some money for the band anyway.

“Either way, it’s going to benefit us,” Brown once told the Sun. “If they don’t act, it’s going to benefit us. If they do come and raid, and confiscate and seize and whatever, that’s good, too. This has to be addressed once and for all.”

That endeavour ended very poorly for all those involved, after RCMP ran a series of raids on the shop. The men — Orville Charles Smoke, Charles Conrad Blacksmith, Garth Leon Blacksmith and Brown — were fined a combined $190,000 and put on probation for two years.

These four Dakota men made the same argument as Craig Blacksmith, but were nonetheless convicted in a Brandon courtroom under the same tax act.

We’ve maintained all along that the Dakota have a good case when it comes to trying to create a new agreement with the Canadian government. They have evidence that shows they were not merely refugees in this land when they fled American armed forces in the late 1800s.

This fact was conceded by the Manitoba provincial government in an email written by a provincial Crown attorney during the original Chundee Smoke Shop court drama.

“For the purpose of the pre-trial motion challenging the court’s jurisdiction, the Crown is willing to concede that the Dakota people used or occupied southern Manitoba prior to Confederation and before the assertion of Crown sovereignty,” reads the email, written by Crown counsel Michael Conner on behalf of Manitoba Justice.

“The Crown is also willing to concede that the Dakota First Nations of Manitoba have not signed treaty with Canada ceding any rights or title to land in southern Manitoba.”

But, as has been found by several court justices over the years, this does not mean that the Dakota have the right to break Canadian laws. These smoke shops are not helping the Dakota in their struggle for a better deal with Canada.

Perhaps it’s an avenue that proponents of Dakota sovereignty would be best to abandon.