What we know about the unprecedented raids on Mohawk cannabis farms in Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory
It has been difficult to separate fact from fiction in the recent police raids on cannabis farms in Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory.
The following is a timeline that Real People’s Media has put together to make sense of the events.
Monday September 22
On the evening of September 22nd, a community meeting was called at the Mohawk Council House in Tyendinaga by Terry Maracle and Shawn Brant. About 100 people showed up. Terry Maracle opened the meeting, while Shawn Brant did most of the speaking. According to audio of the meeting which Real People’s Media has obtained, Brant painted a bleak picture of “turf wars and gang wars in Kanehsatake” that he claimed would soon be coming to Tyendinaga.
Brant claimed that in one year in Kanehsatake, there had been “19 arsons at dispensaries” and that “There’s been 38 homes burned to the ground in Kanensatake in the past few years.” Brant pointed the finger at his cousin and former business partner of eight years, Ian Weed for involving “outsiders” in his business and carrying out large scale cannabis farming. Brant claimed that over 500,000 plants were being grown in the community, and that in the larger farms, ”organized crime coming into our community and using our community in order to grow and cultivate and prey upon our community members.”
While acknowledging that he himself owned and operated a “grow op” and that many other members of the community grew their own cannabis, Brant claimed that large scale farming was incompatible with Mohawk rights. He stated, “that’s one of the issues that we’re here to discuss, is this something that one person can claim? Is there a sovereign right to grow 185,000 plants?”
Brant accused those hiring non-Mohawk workers on the territory of being involved with organized crime, saying “I can’t speak for the police… but you can’t drive down that Ridge Road and not look up and see that there’s criminal activity and no disrespect – Asians and Mexicans and Vietnamese and Serbians and Albanians, because that’s what they all are. I’m just going to call them outsiders. So you can’t drive down Ridge road without seeing outsiders out there working in the field, cultivating the field, showering at the water filling station behind the school. You can’t not drive down that road and say, ‘I don’t see criminal activity. I don’t see organized criminal activity.’ If I know that, the people who were thrown out of Six Nations came there, went to that spot, that’s the spot they went. If I know it, it’s not a secret.”
Brant framed the purpose of the community meeting as a means of asking “for a mandate to give us the authority to take the action that’s necessary in order to fix the problem and to do it by whatever means is necessary.”
According to one community member who was present at the meeting, “This guy [Shawn Brant] is literally asking for a mandate to go and kill his ex-business partner and all his employees playing it under the guise of organized crime or whatever bad people.” The community member added “this whole mandate business comes from when he was in OCAP. It was their strategy as activists and as anarchists, to get a “mandate” from a group of people who they could get riled up, and fearmonger to say, “Yeah, you should do that.”
The community member said that the position of most of the people at the meeting was not in favour of giving Brant such a mandate. “We’re not giving this guy any mandate to cause any violence or hurt anybody in our community.”
Tuesday September 23rd
The following day, police raids began at 5:30am in the morning and involved large numbers of OPP officers. Militarized police driving “military style” trucks smashed through the gates of Weed’s farm and arrested Weed, his wife, and his brother-in-law at gunpoint. According to Weed, “I complied pretty quick, because I had a machine gun on me and red dots all over.”
Weed stated that “100 officers at minimum” invaded his farm. The OPP set up a “headquarters” in Weed’s garage, and they searched the property while using dogs and drones.
At 6:24am, the Tyendinaga Police Services and the OPP issued a joint statement indicating that “after an extensive investigation” the two organizations “will be executing search warrants on the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory relating to illegal cannabis production.”
The press release continued: “This investigation involves non-Indigenous criminal organizations exploiting Indigenous rights and lands, regrettably aided by a limited number of community members. The projected profits, estimated in the millions, serve only to benefit those community members and the associated criminal organizations – not our community. Tyendinaga is not alone in this struggle, as numerous Territories are plagued by the presence of criminal organizations. In response many Territories have put aside ideological differences taking action to remove these criminal organizations and those jeopardizing the safety and security of our communities.”
Grey SUV’s being driven by officers wearing either all grey or all green fatigues were spotted in multiple places throughout the community. Some officers were wearing patches saying “ERT” which is most likely the OPP’s Emergency Response Task force which is used in hostage situations and high conflict scenarios. Real People’s Media has been unable to confirm rumours that JTF-2 and the RCMP’s CIRG group had been spotted on the Territory.
One Mohawk woman who spoke to Real People’s Media said that she and others in the community felt unsafe due to unidentified officers “pulling random people over and sitting alongside our roads – not to mention the many dump trucks racing up and down our back roads all hours of the night.” She added, “As the community was caught completely off guard with these raids, this definitely wasn’t the peoples’ decision, as we wanted and needed more clarity to come to a consensus. It was 100% a personal vendetta and the community’s safety was sacrificed.”
Wednesday Sept 24th
On Wednesday, the raids continued, but now with a focus on Jessi Corby’s farm. A statement was made at 7:11am on the Tyendinaga Police Service Facebook page that “Joint operations involving Tyendinaga Police Service and the Ontario Provincial Police will be continuing in the community throughout the day today.” At 10:37am the TPS put out another statement, saying “Police action took place yesterday and will continue today as part of the ongoing investigation. Yesterday, officers recovered stolen property, seized firearms, and halted unlawful diversion of water from the Bay. Several individuals have been taken into custody, including five who are not members of the community. A significant police presence will remain in the area as the investigation continues.”
Shortly after, the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte Indian Act Band Council came out with a public statement expressing its support of the “Ongoing Police Investigation” and thanking the Tyendinaga Police Service (TPS) and the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) Organized Crime Enforcement Bureau for their “collaboration” in the ongoing investigation.
The statement added that “This investigation is to address illegal cannabis grow operations in Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory and remove non-members of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte associated with organized crime.” The statement also referred to a “Community Safety Petition, signed by hundreds of community members, asking for these illegal operations to be dealt with, and we wish to thank the community for their support in keeping our community safe.”
Real People’s Media has learned that three Mohawk of the Bay of Quinte band members – Ian Weed, Bryan Brant, and Jessi Corby – were arrested and charged for violating Canada’s Cannabis Act. They were charged with “Cultivate, propagate or harvest a cannabis plant that is from seed or plant material that is illicit cannabis (or offer to do so).”
They were also charged with firearms violations. Brant because there was apparently a hunting rifle stored in a locked trailer, and Weed with because there was a slingshot and shot gun found on his property. Corby indicated that the Tyendinaga Police claimed that they had found a handgun on her property but stated that it had nothing to do with her.
The five “non members” of the community who were arrested were apparently temporary agricultural workers working on one of the farms. Ironically, because cutting down tens of thousands of cannabis plants from the land was so labour intensive, the OPP brought in their own temporary foreign workers to replace those they had arrested and cut down and destroy the plants.
Police tried to keep those charged in jail for three days as their “investigation” continued, but lawyer Jack Lloyd was able to get everyone released on bail on Wednesday afternoon.
Lloyd made the following statement to Real People’s Media. “It is frustrating to see law enforcement making claims about organized crime to justify the arrests of Indigenous people on their own land. Similar baseless claims of organized criminality were made about medical cannabis patients in the past. Heavy-handed enforcement of this nature has no justifiable place in a country where cannabis is a legal substance, especially when this legal substance is being grown by Indigenous people with lawful authority from their Indigenous government to do so.”
There were no charges laid relating to any kind of criminal conspiracy or criminal organization offences.
Thursday Sept 25th
On Thursday, the TPS put out another statement. It read “The Tyendinaga Police Service would like to sincerely thank the Akwesasne Mohawk Police Service and Hiawatha First Nation Policing Services for their assistance in keeping our community safe.”
The statement continued: “Tens of thousands of illegal cannabis plants have been seized, as well as a handgun with a high-capacity magazine. Investigators continue to dismantle the extensive illegal cannabis operations that have been taking place on our lands. These operations have had significant environmental impacts within Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory. A quarry has been completely depleted, negatively affecting the water table in the area. The living conditions at these illegal cannabis production sites and the illegal dumping taking place has disrespected our lands. Additional non-community members have been identified, and arrest warrants are being sought. A fulsome update will be provided when the investigation concludes.”
Assessing the impact of the raid, Ian Weed told Real People’s Media that “I can tell you that they cleaned me out. My tractor, my skid steer, all of my farming equipment, attachments, implements, if it wasn’t tied down, man, they took it.” Weed estimates that police left with over a million dollars of equipment and machinery from his farm.
Weed denied any involvement with organized crime and spoke about his intentions of donating 5% of the proceeds of this year’s harvest to the community. Weed laid the blame for the raids at Shawn Brant’s feet, saying “he seems to think that I have some kind of association to these criminal people or organizations or something because he has a hard time fathoming that I’ve had as much success as I’ve had since me and him parted ways. He didn’t want to see me pull off this harvest that I worked so hard for and invested so much money in it, because if I did, then I’m going to have more money to be able to compete against the likes of him and Terry Maracle and that would be a threat to them.”
Friday Sept 26th
On Friday afternoon, Mohawk Nation Roskenrakehtekowa Kanenhariyo served the Tyendinaga Police and Ontario Provincial Police, including the Provincial Joint Forces Cannabis Enforcement Team, with an interlocutory injunction from the Kanyen’ke:haka Nation “restraining the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), their servants, agents, or representatives, from seizing, removing, interfering with, or otherwise exercising control over property which is under the control of the Tyendinaga Reservation.”
The injunction seeks “a declaration that any indigenous person on the Tyendinaga Reservation [Tyendinga Mohawk Territory] has rights to possession and enjoyment of their property on their reserve lands which are protected pursuant to s.35 of the Charter and s.89 of the Indian Act and principles of constitutional law recognizing the protection of Aboriginal treaty rights.”
It also seeks a court order “in the form of an interlocutory injunction restraining the Respondents from arresting, stopping, prohibiting, or frustrating the livelihoods or agricultural endeavours of the indigenous peoples on the Tyendinaga reservation [Tyendinga Mohawk Territory] ie from engaging in lawful activities, on its lawful territory.”
The full text of the Interlocutory Injunction can be viewed at https://realpeoples.media/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/MohawkInjunction.pdf.
It appears that the police seizures and raids ceased shortly after the injunction was served on them.
Saturday Sept 27th
Jessi Corby, one of the three Mohawk farmers charged in the raids, issued a statement on Facebook on Saturday. She wrote, “I am not part of organized crime. I am a mother, a farmer, and a small business owner who is trying to self-sustain on my own lands. I have no criminal record. I farm my property myself and I have not rented it out to any outside organization. I help community members whenever I can – not for recognition, but because it is simply the right thing to do.”
“Despite this, I was the only person charged from my property. I have been accused of cultivating and was arrested and handcuffed in front of my children by the Ontario Provincial Police. I want to be clear: I was not stealing water. I have never had any guns on my property. Every person I hired to work with me had no criminal record. These are facts about me and how I run my life and work.”
“This ordeal has shaken my trust. For a long time, I was led to believe by members of the Band Council that what I was doing was acceptable. I followed the guidance I was given. I acted in good faith. Now I’m being portrayed as a criminal. I do not understand this reversal, and I am asking for clarity and fairness.”
“From where I stand, it feels like this situation may have grown out of a personal vendetta between two people, and I became collateral damage. In my personal view, tensions involving Shawn Brant and certain Band members may have contributed to this climate. I am not asking anyone to take sides – I am asking for the politics and personal disputes to be separated from fair treatment under community norms and our laws.”
Sunday Sept 28th
A meeting will be held at the Mohawk Council House to discuss these matters on Sunday morning at the Council House / Community Centre at 1807 York Rd in Tyendinaga to discuss these matters.
