Mohawks Smolder Over Tax Flap : Canada Reservation Violence Feared Over Cigarette Issue

When 200 heavily armed federal agents raided six cigarette shops on this tiny Indian reserve for alleged tax violations, angry Mohawks responded by blockading a major highway into nearby Montreal for 30 hours.

The police claimed that duties and excise fees on the U.S.-made cigarettes--a complex tax structure that more than doubles their price--had not been paid.

But Indian leaders said that cigarette sales were a minor issue masking a much larger one: the right to a sovereign and inviolable homeland.

It is a controversy that some fear could resurface later this summer with potentially violent results.

Tax-Free Shops

Since 1985, a handful of enterprising Indians here have opened tax-free shops selling cartons of cigarettes for as much as 25% off their normal price, a discount that can save a heavy smoker a few hundred dollars each year.

But a few days after the June 1 raid by members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, cut-rate cigarette sales were still flourishing on the 6-square-mile Caughnawaga Reserve, 5 miles south of downtown Montreal.

Members of the Mohawk Warriors’ Society, the more traditional and often militant side of the reserve’s 5,700 inhabitants, have vowed to use any necessary means, including firearms, to keep the police from coming back.

Those threats have so far not deterred the police. “We intend to apply the law. We don’t plan to stop,” said Pierre Schryer, in charge of enforcing federal tax laws for the Mounties in the province of Quebec.

17 People Arrested

Within hours of the raid, in which 17 people were arrested and $375,000 worth of U.S. cigarettes were seized, Mohawk Indians dumped gravel and parked an 18-wheeler across a major highway that passes through their reserve, snarling traffic throughout the Montreal region.

The 30-hour blockade by rifle-carrying Indians was lifted only when federal Indian affairs officials and Indian leaders met for a day of talks in Ottawa.

There are 420,000 Indians in Canada, about 2% of the country’s population, and two-thirds of them live on reserves. Those who work on them pay no income tax. In Quebec, the stiff provincial sales tax does not apply to commerce on reserves.

“In exchange for taking our land, we pay no taxes,” was one young Indian’s succinct explanation of the arrangement.

Fundamental Disagreements

But many Indians say that such special treatment as tax breaks can never compensate for territory lost over 200 years.

They disagree with the Canadian government on such fundamental issues as the role of the Mohawk nation inside modern-day Canada and the validity of land claims based on charters granted by colonial powers 300 years ago.

For Indian leaders, the cigarette tax flap is a case in point.

While debate over the propriety of tax-free cigarette sales has split the community, everyone agrees that the issue should be resolved within the reserve and not by outside authorities.

Opposing Views

“This is our territory. We’ll look and judge this ourselves,” said Allan Delaronde, a leader of one local Mohawk group on the reserve.

But the federal government’s top-ranking civil servant in the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development takes the opposite view.

“Because of their history, the Mohawks have the notion that they are a sovereign and unconquered people,” Deputy Minister Harry Swain said. “But we start with the proposition that we are all Canadian.”

Accepting the sovereignty of Indian reserves, Swain said, “would allow nations to be embedded like raisins in the fabric of Canada.”

The traditional Mohawk nation, one of six in the Iroquois Confederacy, stretches from southern Canada down into New York state and numbers about 15,000.

500 Ironworkers

Links with the United States are still strong, and local Indian officials estimate that as many as 500 members of the reserve are ironworkers on New York city skyscrapers, returning home to the reserve each weekend.

Because their traditional land straddles the U.S. and Canadian borders, many Mohawks believe that formalities and customs duties between the two countries should not apply to them.

“The way I see it, why should I have to pay any attention to any borders? I should be able to travel freely back and forth,” said a member of the 15-officer Caughnawaga Indian police force.