New native-made cigarettes causing stir

At $20 a carton, some young entrepreneurs from the Kanasatake reserve near Montreal are selling a lot of cigarettes.

The brands they are pushing may be unfamiliar to most people - Native and Mohawk Blend - but they come from a manufacturing plant on the American side of the Mohawk reserve in Akwasasne.

Making cigarettes has become an important business in Akwasasne. There are two manufacturing plants employing a couple of hundred people. The cigarettes are sold in native communities all across the United States, and now in some Canadian communities as well.

According to Rowena General, chief of staff at the Akwasasne tribal council, it's all perfectly legal.

What the Mohawks don't pay is the excise tax other cigarette manufacturers pay. Canada Customs and Revenue and the RCMP say that makes the Mohawk cigarettes illegal. And the big manufacturers say avoiding taxes, which are as high as 70 per cent in some provinces, gives the Mohawks an unfair advantage.

"We operate within the law and we feel our competitors should be operating within the law," said Imperial Tobacco spokeswoman Christina Dona.

So far there have been no attempts to stop the Mohawks from selling their product on Mohawk territory. But smokers seem to care little about who makes the cigarettes, or who pays the taxes. What counts is a good deal.

But for the Mohawks, making cigarettes is a question of sovereignty and the Mohawk First Nation's tax free status. "We're fiercely protective of what we believe is ours," said General.

And what they believe is theirs is the right to practise free enterprise on Mohawk land.