Grand Chief and Ietsénhaienhs Gina Deer to speak at Indigenous Cannabis conference

02/21/2019

The Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke (MCK) wishes to advise the community that Grand Chief Joseph Tokwiro Norton and Ietsénhaienhs Gina Deer are in Ottawa today to speak at the National Indigenous Cannabis & Hemp Conference.

They will participate on a panel entitled Managing Community Policy & Removing Risk. They will speak on ‘The Kahnawà:ke Experience: Creating Community By-Laws,’ during which they will describe their experiences in creating the Kahnawà:ke Cannabis Control Law.

“It’s important to participate in an event such as this, as there is no doubt that Indigenous people will have a role to play in the Cannabis industry,” stated Ietsénhaienhs Deer, who works on the Cannabis file on behalf of the MCK. “In Kahnawà:ke we realized early on that we needed to be prepared one way or another for the legalization of recreational Cannabis. The community needed to control its own destiny, which is why we’ve created our own law to regulate any production and sale safely and properly, and to also ensure communal benefit should be move forward in this regard.”

The event began on Tuesday and concludes later today.