While some Indigenous dispensary owners have had their accounts closed for years, there seems to have been a recent uptick in financial actions taken against Indigenous entrepreneurs, almost to the point of an economic embargo. Many of these actions have taken place against individuals living in territories where Band Councils have passed by-laws acknowledging the sovereign right of their residents to cultivate and sell cannabis and where referendums and surveys have shown community support for the cannabis industry.
Posts published in “Dispensing Freedom”
A spate of four dramatic robberies of ATM machines from Six Nations businesses underlines the risks facing Indigenous entrepreneurs who’ve been banned from using Canadian banks.
Audio recording reveals OPP Detectives told the Hwy 17 Dispensary and Trading Post that they would only raid if “the township does not permit it.” By Dispensing Freedom staff MASSEY – On Aug 17th, 2023, the sovereign Highway 17 Dispensary and Trading post was opened at 195 Sauble St. in…
To the media and the people of the Township of Sables-Spanish Rivers. The Hwy 17 Trading Post and Dispensary at 195 Sauble Street in Massey, Ontario represents a deliberate exercising of sovereign Anishinaabe rights on our lands. These inherent Aboriginal and treaty rights are constitutionally protected, though they have long…
A BC court has thrown out a lawsuit filed by several BC cannabis retailers who say the government has failed to enforce its own regulations. From StratCann by David Brown September 19 2023 The plaintiffs had alleged that the BC government failed to enforce its licencing requirements to shut down…
Over forty people came out to hear former National Chief Del Riley speak at the grand opening of the Highway 17 Dispensary and Trading Post in Massey on August 17th, 2023. The trading post is the latest sovereign cannabis dispensary to open up off-reserve as Indigenous entrepreneurs move beyond the Indian Act and assert Aboriginal and treaty rights to their traditional territory.
The Indigenous co-owner of an unlicensed medical marijuana dispensary says he feels validated after both Stratford police and its police services board said there would be “no extra attention paid” to his business.
A sovereign Indigenous cannabis store operating in downtown Brantford, Ontario was robbed on Tuesday Sept 12th by the Brantford Police department. Sovern 4/20, which opened the day before the raid occurred, is located at 14 Dalhousie Street on lands deeded by the Crown to the “Mohawks and such others of the Six Nations” by the Haldimand Proclamation of 1784.
From Marijuana Moment by Ben Adlin September 7 2023 The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) passed a referendum Thursday in favor of legalizing marijuana, becoming the first jurisdiction within the borders of North Carolina—or any of its surrounding states—to commit to the policy change. But it will be a…
By Dispensing Freedom Staff SIX NATIONS – Dispensing Freedom has received an audio recording of a customer buying psychedelic mushrooms at a Six Nations cannabis store regulated by the Six Nations Cannabis Commission. In an audio recording made on the premises of the store in July of 2023, an employee…