CANADA LETTER:The Akwesasne Native American reservation has few opportunities but a busy cross-border trade in contraband
BY DAY, the river flowing through the cross-border reservation of Akwesasne is a picturesque spot.
With its soothing view over forest-fringed islands and inlets, it’s just the sort of place you might imagine visiting for a spot of weekend fishing. Chances are though you would reel in some surprise catches – a crate of cigarettes or an AK-47, for example – for you would actually be chilling out in smuggler country.
By night, local smugglers hotfoot it across the river in snowmobiles or speedboats, darting in and out of the river’s maze of islands in their bid to outwit American and Canadian border patrol agents.
Locals are used to the nocturnal games of cat and mouse. “Sure, we hear the motors going all through the night, but ya soon get used to it,” says a riverside resident with a shrug.
A Native American reservation, Akwesasne has been used as a conduit for illicit cargo since the days of prohibition. Legend has it that Al Capone himself ran boats of alcohol across “the rez”. Today, according to a spokesman for US Border Patrol, it is drugs, firearms, people and native-made cigarettes. Police have tightened their dragnet around the territory in recent years, seizing millions of dollars worth of contraband, yet organised crime still pulls the strings around here.
Split between two countries, the Mohawk reservation has no living, beating heart, just a series of potholed roads featuring scattered shops with names such as “Another Damn Cigarette Store”, a glitzy redbrick casino rising surreally from a vast expanse of wasteland and no shortage of mangy stray dogs. Outside law and order are clearly not welcome, judging by a roadside sign proclaiming the border patrol, state police, FBI and others to be “terrorists”.
Bill Sears is owner of the adjacent building and chief of the “warriors council”, a local vigilante group. “They call me the legend,” he announces as we shake hands in the Bear’s Den. “I’ve been a boxer, an ironworker, a bar fighter, a womaniser, a drunk, you name it.” He had nothing to do with the sign – “it was the people,” he says, – but he agrees with the sentiment.
“It’s not hard for the kids to get caught up in the smuggling. Everyone wants the big muscle cars and the fancy clothes. The kids see that and they commit crime,” he says.
Later, I spot a nearby construction worker with a big red beard taking a cigarette break in the sun. He resembles Yosemite Sam, Bugs Bunny’s gun-toting adversary in the cartoons. Water drips from melting snow on the rooftop as he squints at me. “I’m not sure I like talking to you,” he drawls. “Feels like I’m talking to police.”
Eventually, he confides that he suspects his two sons are smugglers. “If they are, I don’t wanna know. I don’t want to hear them bragging about how they went out on the ice.”
A lot of kids around here are “on the oxy”, he tells me. He’s referring to OxyContin, a highly addictive painkiller smuggled across the border in increasing quantities. At $1 a milligram on the black market – tablets commonly come in 40mg or 80mg, with severe addicts reportedly taking up to 10 tablets a day – it’s an expensive habit.
“We’re seeing a rise in petty crime. People who need to support their habit steal and hold up businesses,” says Chief Andrew Thomas of the Tribal Police.
Hannah Lazare, adviser at a local employment centre, is well acquainted with the smuggling scene. Not only did she dabble as a youngster, she now works with kids trying to get back on the straight and narrow.
Young people get hooked on the lifestyle. They earn a lot of money – $200 a pop dropping off crates of cigarettes on the other side of the border – and then go partying, she says.
“Once they’ve hit 19 and been busted or have criminal records, they . . . do try to change, but when they can’t find a job, they go back. We know because we see their names in the newspaper.”
At the redbrick casino, there is no sign of smuggler types, just lots of pensioners in leisure wear and gaudy jewellery over on day trips. Amid the jingle jangle of slot machines, however, a woman working at the gift shop tells me how someone close to her perished after his snowmobile fell through the ice.
Driving at high speed in the dark, headlights turned off, border patrol on your back, it’s easy to lose your way. “There are areas out there where there’s only a thin crust of ice,” she says.
In this insular world of limited opportunity, it seems the lure of fast money has led too many on to the thin ice.