Violence mounts over smuggling

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The pirates have come to Akwesasne.

Most nights, they lie in wait off the rocky shores of Cornwall Island in the St. Lawrence River, hoping the cigarette smugglers making their runs from the United States on the south shore won't be heavily armed.

Some of them are from Vietnamese gangs in Montreal, some are Hell's Angels. Some are from Cornwall, an industrial town slowly sinking under the pressure of the recession.

Local RCMP and the town's mayor refer to them collectively as organized crime Some are Natives from Akwesasne.

But no matter where they come from, the privates are after the same thing - cash, cigarettes and weapons.

For many of the 8,500 residents of Akwesasne, the river the no place to be after sundown. Many have grown accustomed to the sound of gunfire in the evenings and early mornings, gunfire signalling the time for cigarette runners to make a dash for the Canadian side.

But four weeks ago, the gunfire changed. A group of pirates intent on taking someone's cargo, opened fire one morning on a boat-load of smugglers cruising past St. Regis, a small Native community. The gunfire was low and close to shore. When the bullets starting hitting houses, people in St. Regis knew they were in trouble. One home had 13 children in it.

Fortunately, no one was killed that night. The shooting stopped and the boats disappeared. And when Mohawk Council of Akwesasne Chief Brian David showed up, there was little he could do but deal with people's anxiety.

"Pirating is definitely a problem. It's a dangerous activity. They are carrying weapons, they take over the boats, they take whatever load they have on the boat."

Anxiety is the common emotional denominator for many of the residents of the reserve," which straddles the American and Canadian border along the St. Lawrence. Cigarette, cocaine and alcohol trafficking are nothing new to the Natives, some of whom have made a career out of sneaking various contraband past Customs officials.

Smuggling a boon for some, hardship for others

The cigarette trade has been around for almost 20 years. But the recent surge in violence, mostly between rival cigarette smugglers, is making everyday life at Akwesasne hard to deal with, said David, who also serves as the MCA's chairman of the Akwesasne Mohawk Police Commission.

The shooting has dropped off in the last three weeks, due in part to requests by local police forces both on and off the reserve to the smugglers to stop indiscriminate shooting.

Their efforts seem to have worked, said David. People don't hear random gunfire as often. But the lucrative cigarette trade which fostered the pirates is still going 24 hours a day.

The flow of illegal cigarettes actually begins in Canada. Wholesalers across northern New York State buy cartons destined for sale in duty-free shops in the U.S. Distributors on the American section of Akwesasne then legally purchase those cigarettes from those distributors in Buffalo or Rochester and bring them back to the American portion of Akwesasne.

Under New York State laws, the sales are legal as long as the cigarettes are sold on the reserve. The cheap, duty-free cigarettes, which go for about $3 a pack, are then sold by the box-load to the runners, who takes them across the St. Lawrence river by boat.

Landing points for the smuggled goods vary. Some loads go down river to the Kahnawake and Kanesatake Reserves in Quebec and are sold in Montreal. Others go straight across the south channel to the only road on Cornwall Island, eluding Canada Customs by a mere 50 meters and ending up in Ottawa for up to 25-per-cent less than the usual price.

"According to the Canadian authorities, it becomes illegal at the point where it crosses the international line," David said. "But here in Akwesasne, we're Mohawks and we don't recognize the international line. The view that I've taken is that it really doesn't become illegal until it leaves the territory of Akwesasne because the international linedoesn't really exist in a sense."

Runners are caught coming off the water, but the volume is so high that police forces in Ontario can only catch a small portion of them, said Cornwall RCMP spokesman Jean Bourassa.

In the first nine months of 1993, RCMP around Cornwall made 277 arrests, most on land, Bourassa said. Close to 50 of them were made in September alone and the majority of those arrested were non-Natives.

As of Sept. 1, Cornwall RCMP have seized about $7.8 million in contraband in an area about 200 kilometres in diameter around Cornwall, only a fraction of the estimated $2 billion worth of cigarettes that get past the police every year.

Cigarettes marked for sale outside Canada are often hard to spot, Bourassa said, because they are sold under the counter.

"This was perceived as a victim-less crime. But the victim is everyone. The Canadian consumer has a definite responsibility here. To me, the consumer is as guilty as the smuggler."

Most of the contraband cigarettes probably are marked "not for sale in Canada," but that won't matter to the buyers, David said.

"If you've got a chance to pick up a pack of cigarettes for 25 per cent less than the market value, or even 50 per cent less, and it says 'not for sale in Canada', and you recognize that it's a stamp from the federal government, your Joe Canadian out there (knows) who put the tax on the smokers - the federal government. Who are you cheating? You're getting back at the federal government."

It's that same feeling of striking back at an unjust government that motivates many of the cigarette "traders" from Akwesasne to run cigarettes over the river past Canadian Customs officials, said Loran Thompson, the owner of a marina on the American side of the St. Lawrence.

Thompson's marina is one of many sports from which contraband departs for Canada every day.

"Right now, what a lot of people are doing are moving tobacco products across the river and selling them in Indian territory in what most peole would call Canada," he said. "We don't have a problem with the industry. Right now, it's economics for our people. It's supporting many of our people."

It's also a matter of Native sovereignty, he said.

"We have never given up our right to sovereignty. We have never given up our rights to commerce. So that's what's in the minds of our people as they travel across the land with their tobacco product. Once your purchase something, it's yours. As you're carrying it across, it remains yours until you get to where ever you're going to sell it."

For that reason, Thompson said he does not consider himself a smuggler.

"It doesn't apply to me. I know I'm not. I don't even use the term because I don't fit into that category. I know that Native people do not fit into that category. The Canadian government, the RCMP, all the police forces, all of the mayors, all of the public officials can go day and night trying to convince our people that they are smugglers. They'll never convince me. I know what my rights are in the Americas. Many of our people do. And those that don't need to sit down and look carefully at who and what they are and where they should be standing."

Thompson said he only sells cigarettes to Natives. Although some non-Natives show up to buy, he tries to "discourage" it. Where the cigarettes end up afterwards is none of his business.

"I sit up here and I got employees down there and they do all of the work and make all the preparations and the people come here and do the purchase and they're gone."

Now in his fourth month as a retailer, Thompson moves 200 to 300 cases of cigarettes a day, which he buys from non-Native suppliers with federal Indian Traders Licenses in New York.

"Right now, you buy a product for $700 and you sell it for $710. (Profit) varies anywhere from $5 to a few bucks. I don't know what it's worth in money but I do know

it employs in this business here - 10 people working directly in the business. And then the construction that ges on around the area, there's other people employed indirectly."

The trade also supports the economies of the local non-Indian towns around Akwesasne, Thompson said.

"In our territory, we don't have sawmills or paper mills or clothing manufacturers, so we are consumers. The nearby towns profit with all of the money. All of the money that the Indians are making finds itself right back to the non-Indian communities."

Employees at Jerry's Limousine, a limousine rental business on the American section of the reserve, also said business has been good since the cigarette trade boomed, although none of them wished to be identified.

Akwesasne's current economy is a far cry from what it was 10 years ago, Thompson said, when the only money on the reserve came from Ottawa and went straight to the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne in St. Regis.

"They were the almighty power in Akwesasne," he said. "They were the ones dealing with the Canadian government and administering the Indian funds. So they could dictate who got the nice homes, who got whatever in this community."

"Even though the Canadian government has poured millions of dollars into the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne...they still have not been able to stand on the power that they once enjoyed. Today, the majority of Akwesasne is self-employed...and couldn't give a damn who they elect on to the band council."

For its part, the MCA tries to remain neutral on the subject of smuggling, David said.

"I don't particularly condone the activity. But at this point in time, I'm caught in the position where I have little at my disposal to do anything about it - out-gunned, out-numbered, no support."

The movement of contraband is a federal matter so the RCMP is the force with the jurisdiction to control it, David said. The Mohawk's police force, designed to provide security to the people of Akwesasne, is at odds in participating in any "outside" police operations designed to control cigarette running. But if the RCMP are planning