Feeding in with political tensions around the perceived exploitation of sovereignty and spiritual traditions in support of illicit activities, are fears of many Mohawks that their people are entering unholy alliances with increasingly unsavoury characters. Many Mohawks are troubled by the ever more common reports that suggest the trade in which some of their people engage as a right carries with it responsibilities for a wide range of social harm. The reality that smuggled cigarettes may play a role as a commodity of exchange in the drug trade, and that drug smuggling involves liaisons with Hell’s Angels15 or ethnic-based drug groups, or that the smuggling of human migrants requires linkages with Asian organized crime groups, brings a dimension to local smuggling which frightens many Mohawks and mobilizes them against the contraband trade. Living with the anxiety implicit in such perceptions, and the reality that conflicts over the trade in general, and competition between traders in particular, can lead to violence, are one part of the harm which restorative responses might be required to redress...
Tangible harm includes the impact of easy money on vulnerable youth and families, the constant threat of violence implicit in the presence of smugglers, their ambiguous loyalties to anything other than profit, and the arsenals and thuggery which are the language through which they articulate their struggles over routes and suppliers. The presence of illicit commodities is no less harmful, contraband drugs and alcohol place as many-if not more-Mohawk children and youth at risk as they do the outsiders who form the bulk of the willing customers of such commodities. In addition, concomitant with dependencies on drugs and alcohol are the multiplicity of criminal activities associated especially with drug culture, including property crimes perpetrated to support drug consumption, and the range of person offences which tend to arise when people are under the influence of drugs or alcohol...
Similarly, while the trade in contraband cigarettes and other commodities has brought unprecedented wealth into the community, it has also in many cases contributed to a severely skewed socioeconomic structure. While some Mohawks have experienced almost obscene levels of personal wealth, others remain mired in desperate poverty, blocked from “contraband charities” by the absence of involved relatives or friends in the trade. The resentment and frustration implicit in denied opportunities is common to most aboriginal reserves in
The reality is that the same disagreement amongst Mohawks over linkages between sovereignty and smuggling also colours perceptions of victims, offenders and assessments of harms associated with the trade. Among those who perceive their right to import cigarettes or any other commodity as based on sovereignty (or who adopt this position publicly as it is to their benefit to do so), their actions are not criminal, they are political. And it is only because their actions are political that the state chooses to criminalize them, as states have always done with those who challenge the existing order of things. It is a compelling and romantic view of crime, and one which is that much more attractive to communities...
Smugglers, in their own view, are therefore standing up and for their rights as Mohawks-a thus denying their label as “criminals” and, by extension, their fellow Mohawks as among their “victims”. That denial rings rather hollow in those cases where smugglers clearly have no intention of sharing the wealth, and thus the mantle of “offender” or “criminal” is perhaps easier to assign and more appropriately borne. However, there is clearly a greater unease among some community members when it comes to assigning that label to those who have used profits from smuggling to help out fellow Mohawks and support community-building activities. Technically, these smugglers are still breaking laws and enlisting Mohawk rights as a prop for that illicit activity, but they also present a challenge to local conceptions of smugglers as criminals, and thus also to those who might qualify as victims...
There is a wide range of harm implicit in smuggling, and its victims are everywhere. These victims are not limited to those who fall in violent clashes between smugglers, those whose lives are ravaged by the drugs and alcohol imported, or wounded or killed by contraband weapons. These are not the desperate and vulnerable migrants who are smuggled across the border like so much baggage and dumped at the first opportunity by the smugglers, only to be detected cold and starving by community members or police, or worse. These are arguably the silent or silenced victims of smuggling as a form of aboriginal organized crime; they will never take a seat in a sentencing circle or a community conference...