First Nations smoke shop, gaming centre opens its doors
Advertisement
Read this article for free:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Digital Subscription
One year of digital access for only $1.44 a week*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*Billed as $5.77 plus GST every four weeks. After 52 weeks, price increases to the regular rate of $19.95 plus GST every four weeks. Offer available to new and qualified returning subscribers only. Cancel any time.
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Add Free Press access to your Brandon Sun subscription for only an additional
$1 for the first 4 weeks*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*Your next Brandon Sun subscription payment will increase by $1.00 and you will be charged $17.95 plus GST for four weeks. After four weeks, your payment will increase to $24.95 plus GST every four weeks.
Read unlimited articles for free today:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/11/2011 (5316 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
CANUPAWAKPA DAKOTA FIRST NATION — The doors have opened on a controversial smoke shop and gaming centre near Pipestone.
About 80 people were lined up to buy cheap cigarettes from the Dakota Chundee smoke shop, which proprietors assert is on sovereign land not subject to Manitoba laws. The shop, about 100 kilometres southwest of Brandon, opened early Wednesday afternoon.
Plans are also underway for a Texas hold ’em tournament to start at 6 p.m. tonight – despite the shop being neither provincially licensed for gaming nor for tobacco sales.
None of that matters, says Frank Brown, one of the men behind the smoke shop, adding he’s dismissing a warning he received from the provincial Finance Department.
A letter from Finance’s taxation division, addressed to Brown, was found taped to the door of the smoke shop this morning. It warned that his plans to open the shop today were in violation of Manitoba laws.
But a competing legal notice posted on a wall nearby declares the shop to be on land belonging to the “sovereign nation” of the Dakota First Nation, and not subject to Manitoba laws.
Brown is chief of the Canupawakpa Dakota First Nation, and one of the principals behind the establishment of the shop, which will sell the cigarettes at about one-third the total cost of a provincially taxed cigarette, with taxes collected on behalf of the Dakota First Nation, not the province.
The smoke shop is to be combined with a temporary casino establishment featuring 75 to 100 VLTs purchased from the United States. Because the VLTs haven’t yet arrived, poker tables are being set up in the gaming section of the shop.
— Brandon Sun
History
Updated on Wednesday, November 9, 2011 7:04 PM CST: Minor corrections