Episode 1: Start Your Engines

lobster named Loudon. I want to take a look at our starting grid as the cars about to roll off of pit Road. On the front row Carl Edwards with its first Magic Mild full and first and thirteen. He's next to two times to get Shore Winter and then way way. In the back, starting in forty second place is the Jet Black number thirty three Chevy driven by a man named Derek White. Even though Derek is forty five years old, he's a rookie here in New Hampshire.

It's his first time ever racing in the NASCAR Cup Series, his first time running with the big dogs for a guy that's been racing since he was a teenager. This is a dream come true. Fans are on there, made here in New Hampshire. Water speed like great flading is in the air, getting up and go the green flag. It's a call Derek an underdog wouldn't be totally accurate because Derek doesn't stand a snowball's chance and how at

winning this race. He's starting last in a car that's a few miles per hour off the pace even on its best days. Behind the idea Timmy close Wi that's little lay cowards the inside. Can he make it stay? In the end, he finished in thirty ninth place, ten laps behind the leader. The TV announcers never mentioned his name and the cameras only showed his car for a split second. But that's a damn shame because Derek is

making history here. Derek White is a Mohawk from Canada and he's the first Indigenous person ever to drive in the NASCAR Cup Series. Instead of putting up ads for Oscar Meyer or Viagra on his car, he chose to paint the Mohawk Warrior flag on his hood. Derek was a real hero back home, an inspiration for his community. What he didn't know was that police were watching his

every move. They were wired tapping his phone, tailing his vehicles, and intercepting all his messages because they believed Derek was a major figure in a criminal organization made up of South American drug cartels, Canadian gangsters, and outlaw bikers. Just a few months after his NASCAR debut, Derek White would go from being the pride of the community, someone the entire Mohawk Nation could stand behind, to the person splitting

it apart. M from Campsite Media and Dan Patrick Productions, This is Running Smoke, the story of a race car driver taken down in an international police stay and how we might change the future of Native rights. Episode one. Welcome to Ghanawage. My name is Roger Gola, and I grew up in Florida between the Volucia County dirt track and the day tone of Speedway. If I hadn't been blessed with severe motion sickness and a voice made for podcasting, I might have become a race car driver instead of

a journalist. So you can understand why I've been hooked on Derek's story since it made headlines back in and what had called the largest grade of its kind in America. Quebec Provincial Police carried out Operation my Gale aimed at dismantling what they called a drug, tobacco and money laundering ring. Seven hundred police officers carried out a bus that netted more than a hundred thousand pounds of contraband tobacco, eight

hundred pounds of cocaine, and millions in cash. Nearly sixty people across Canada and the US were arrested on narcotics smuggling and money laundering charges. It was the biggest bust in years, and Derek was accused of being a major figure in the criminal organization. Then I learned that Derek was taking his case all the way at Canada's Constitutional Court.

This rookie race car driver who was accused of being a major player in a criminal operation was taking on the Canadian government for his rights as an Indigenous person, and it looked like he actually had a case. So I started looking into Derek's story and put thousands of miles on my car, tracking down indigenous leaders, undercover investigators, and contrabands smugglers. And what I learned was that this story is about much more than race cars and a

drug bust. It's about what it means to be indigenous in the modern world. I knew that the first step to telling the story was to find Derek and find out who he really was. So that's what I did back in twenty nineteen, shortly after he appealed this case. I packed my car and spent three days covering the four miles from Florida to Montreal. When I got there, it turned out to be a lot easier to find

Derek than you might think. I knew that, aside from racing, he ran a grocery store in Gottawauge, the Mohawk Territory where he lived. So I left a message for him at the Mohawk Market and he met me in the parking lot about twenty minutes later. How's it going all right? Oh yeah, we've running around drugging. Yeah, man, he just yeah, just last night. It's gonna be here for a month. A month. Derek copped out of a black workman wearing roughed up boots, some old jeans, and a dusty car

Hart jacket. He looked like any good old boy I'd seen down at the track in my hometown. I made my pitch, said I wanted to tell his story. He crossed his arms and chewed on a toothpick while I talked. He was just totally unreadable. He didn't seem too happy I was there. But then Derek saw my Florida plates. He seemed impressed that I had driven all the way up just for him. He got back in the van, popped the door and told me to get in. You know new your seat bill, and you're with me, so

I'm gonna be a seat bill. I put my seatbelt on. Anyway, what do you want to go? I wanted to see Gnawaga through Derek's eye, so I asked him to give me a tour of the place he called home. Oh, we could start off at weever, he started off with my grandmother starting up her own little smoke shop right in her yard. Boa by air right now and have a look at it. On the way there, we passed a micro brewery, the cigar Lounge, golf course, a bunch of mom and pop restaurants, and of course a Tim Horton's.

This is one of my buddies. He's opening up some kind of I'm not even sure what it is. A juice place, or juice or some kind of healthy store. Donawaga didn't look like the stereotypical reservation I've seen in movies, some dusty, barren piece of land with tumbleweeds and mobile homes. Donawaga looked well off. The houses were big, the yards were tidy, and there seemed to be a new pickup truck in just about every driveway. If you go by the the statistics, I think we're one of the wealthiest

reserves in Canada. Where do you think that is? If you look across, you see the bridge there. Montreal is there. This is the main artery to cross and you have to come through Guna August. So whatever we sell on the reserve, people are gonna bite because we're always our prices are always better than the old site, so we have a lot of traffic control. The reason prices are better in Gnawaga than in Montreal comes down to one simple fact. Gnawaga is a sovereign nation, separate from Canada.

They have their own flag, their own laws, and their own government. When you cross the bridge from Montreal to go to Gnawaga, there might not be a customs agent or a passport check, but you're essentially leaving the country of Canada and stepping foot onto the independent Mohawk territory of Ganawauke. And one thing you'll notice right away when you cross into Gnawaga is that sales tax is not coited here, so tax free shops line the main roads.

And you've got all smoke shops all the all down here. That's one, two, three, four, five in a row. That aret. It's impossible to miss the smoke shops in Cottawaug. There's ubiquitous as beer bellies at a NASCAR race. You can't go more than a few hundred feet without running into one. There's Mixed Smoky's with the Golden Arches. Then there's Best Butts on the yellow best Buy logo. There's Smoke King,

Crazy Horse, Burning Leaf, Redman's, and so anymore. These smoke shops range from the size of a tool shed to a full sized truck stop, and inside you can get any cigarette you can imagine, plus a bunch of local brands you've never heard of. They come in boxes of twenty, cartons of ten boxes and cases of fifty cartons. You can even buy them in ziplock bags of two hundred On average, almost half the price of a pack of cigarettes that you might buy in New York or Quebec

is just tax. That's not material cost, that's not the cigarette company's mark up. It's just tax. But here in Gnawage you won't find those pesky tax stamps on any cigarette packs. And what's the price difference between buying the carton on the other side of the bridge we're over here, Well, you got the cartons on the outside, uh, the name

brand's demur or Explorer and stuff like that. The goal for about a hundred and twenty dollars per carton two hundred cigarettes, and you can buy two hundred cigarettes in a bag for twenty bucks, so you're saving hundred dollars per two hundred cigarettes. You can see how cigarettes sold on a tax free reservation would be pretty good business. And it's one that Derek's been involved in since he was a kid. Derek pulled off the main road and pointed through a window at a gas station with a

turquoise blue awning over two pumps. Off to one side, there was a car wash that said O c R Gas Bar. It was a logo I'd seen plastered over a lot of Derek's race cars. The gas station looked like any Shell or Snocco you've ever seen, except for the fact that it was attached to a house with a two car garage. This is what Derek wanted to show me, his grandmother's place where he got to start.

My grandmother opened up her first, uh first and only basically cigarette store was right in this little car poard here where you see this car. That was a small little store. She was a school bus driver for the kids, so she would do her run in the morning, like seven o'clock in the morning. When she would drop the kids off, she would get in her money carlo and

she would drive down the cornwall. She had enough money for half a case of smokes, and then she would drive it all the way back herself, put in her store, try to sell it off, and the next day she would turn the profit over and that and then she'd have enough to buy a whole case, and then so on and so on like that. That's where she started. Over this road here, like I said, was the main artery to get to Montreal, so there was traffic all the way down this road. So this little store was

pretty that busy. You know. Ever since he dropped out of high school, Derek had worked odd jobs on and off the reservation. He tried his hand at high rise construction, concrete pouring, even had a stint shipping vehicles internationally. Eventually, he decided to follow his grandmother's example. Tobacco and gas in Gonawaga. You couldn't go wrong when we opened this place.

I went to borrow the money at the bank and they wouldn't lend it to me because they wouldn't They said, there's not enough community members in the reserve for another gas station. So she kind of they kind of thought that it wouldn't work. But I showed them I borrowed the money off my ground larder at the time to open this station. And she she asked me, she goes, were you gonna put it? I told her, so, I'm

gonna put it right in your yard. I had no other land, So I mean, this is what started in everything. From that little gas station in his grandma's front yard, Derek built an empire. I have three gas stations. I have the Mowawk Market, the only grocery store under reserve. I got a car wash, the only car washing under reserve. I also got a construction company um back hole was dump trucks and in the same area and my property there I have a garage, a small garage that I

do tires and oil changes for locals and non locals. Also, Derek had an entrepreneurial savvy that I found remarkable. He was constantly WHEELI in dealing, looking for the next opportunity. His brain was wired for it, and it served him well. Derek had gone from constantly looking for work and getting turned away from banks to calling the shots. You speaking of French a little bit. I can understand a little bit, but not much. The people I deal would all speak English. Song.

If they've all by business, they'll talk English. Derek's success was built on the foundation that Mohawks don't pay sales tax. It was a fundamental fact of life on the territory. But on the outside that exemption can be a bit more contentious. Coming up after the break, they see we're making money, boom, they want to tax us. You know, like, just leave us alone, just bother your own people on the outside and let them collect the taxes from them,

and just leave us alone. Going on, We'll be right back. You're listening to running Smoke media. When I met Derek in He was out on bail in the middle of one of Ghanawag's most watched court battles. He was facing off against the Canadian government. He was hemorrhaging money to legal fees, couldn't leave Quebec without permission and had to check in at a police station on a regular base.

As he was simply trying to spend time with his wife and his two sons, run his businesses and keep a low profile, he had no reason to talk to a journalist. But as I started to learn, there's more to it, Derek had his walls up for a reason. Folks in Gonawaga were tired of having their story told by outsiders and having it told wrong. I think the thing that people are wary about is they get burned

by the French media. Would just come in, uh, you know, spent a couple of seconds here, get a bullshit story, and then and then view of their narrative and their skewed view of us, said, they're ignorant view of let's you know, kind of pointing at all of us as criminals. Steve Bonspiel is the editor and publisher of The Eastern Door newspaper, one of the bigger papers serving Mohawk territories across Canada. Steve's Mohawk himself and has reported on these

communities for nearly twenty years. It'll be actually nineteen years in January. Could you mean just like the barest overview of what Gottawaga is, like, how would you describe this community?

Many people are here? Like what's that? What's it like? Well, you know, it's funny because even just the question of how many people are here is is open to interpretation because I think right now there's people on the Cahaga of Gonawaga Registry, apparently there's eight thousand people that actually live here, and apparently on the Federal registry there's ten thousand. So um, your guess is as good as mine. It seems like every part of your existence here is open

to your interpretation. And it's just like this gray area. Well, I guess that's the kind of you know, the intro to this. You're you're right, I mean, it's it's unfortunately, there's so many things that have been left like that, you know, And and the the ones doing the interpreting is not us, you know, it's usually the outside governments

and non native people. One major stereotype that Gonawaga deals with is this idea that Indigenous communities are lawless places that are totally run by organized crime, that their sovereign t is really just a cover for illicit activity and provides a safe haven for the criminal underworld. I think it's a narrative that fits the running narrative of Mohawks are outside the law, you know, are are doing things in a gray area because they don't understand their rights.

You know, they don't understand why we have quote unquote special rights. It's also the reason Steve says that Gonawaga faces so much scrutiny from law enforcement. I mean, you know it's sad to say, but you know, any kind of police operations, it's it's just so normal to us. They're they're always looking for ways to get in the community. They're always working, looking for ways to nail people. So

we're we're always vulnerable. They're always watching us. When I tell people like our phones are bugged, people say, oh, he is, you know, he's crazy, he's conspiracy there. No,

it's just reality. Just in the last few years, there's been several stories of folks in Gonawaga being busted and high profile police operations that involve wire taps and undercover officers, like the case of Floyd Latch, a former pro hockey player who's taken down for selling wine illegally, or Wendy Mayo, a grandmother who's arrested in a sixteen person cigarette smuggling operation.

And there's the case of Canandio Ross, who was accused of working with the Italian mafia to finance tobacco operations. By and large, these are cases related to gnawage's tax exemptions, and depending on which side of the border you're on, those exemptions are often seen in radically different perspectives. What Mohawks se is tax free trade outsiders see his tax evasion. What Mohawks the is sovereignty outsiders see as a free

pass for criminality. As a businessman, Derek knows that double standard. Well, every time we try to do something, the government always has something to say or do they try to throw They threw a wrench in our spokes. Basically we get something going and then right off the butt they see we're making money, boom, they want to tax us. So that's what we're kind of fighting for it, you know, like just leave us alone. Just just bother your own people on the outside and let them collect the taxes

from them and just leave us alone. So when Derek chose to put the mohawk flag on the hood of his car in that NASCAR race back, it was more than just a sticker to cover up a blank body pedal. It was a bold statement in an attempt to redefine Gnawaga for the outside world. Um. Proud of who we are and where we were from. We're not We're not Canadians, were not Americans, were North American natives. Yeah, I live in Quebec, but I'm not a Quebecer. Um born and

raised in Gunnawaga, and we are native people. We're we are our own people. Were are doing our best to cover, you know, every race he was doing, and it's something you have to give the people. You have to give them something to look forward to, you know, and and make them understand you may just be some kid from the rest, but you don't always have to be, you know. So you have to fight against that narrative, to fight

against that view. And that's what he did. Racing made Derek an inspiration for his community and offered an alternative for the harmful stereotypes that have played Native communities for generations. But racing would also eventually lead Derek into a gigantic web of organized crime, making him a target for the d e A Homeland Security and Canadian police that's coming up after the break. Derek's garage is right next to

his house and almost exactly the same size. Inside pack like sardines, are race cars, vintage vehicles, and power sports toys. It's a site that would make any season podcaster forget to ask every single question. He driven all the way to Canada to ask. Gorgeous, Oh my god, you got an eight seventy one blow around it. It's like horsepower nine seventy Chevy pickup. There's a seventy five buick that that one's ready to go to. That one's ready to

race tomorrow if you want it though. That are drag car back there, a sleeper four door Bonnville, got old ash folk car, Nova, got a drag car Malibu. What's the car in here that you've had the longest? Here? All right? I go through so many cars, you know, I don't even Derek led me up the stairs to his man cave, a beautifully appointed room covered in oak paneling, sports memorabilia and a polar bear rug on the floor. Oh,

this is where we hang out and watch racing. Or okay, we've got a full bars, they say, invite some people over there. They say, it's one of the nicest bars, even in Montreal. Well, I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions when we had a quiet place. I wanted to understand how a guy like Derek ends up being accused of being the leader of a criminal organization. As it turned out, it actually started with a trip to Disney World. So were you into Nascar as a

kid too? No, you know what, it's it's kind of funny that, Uh, I never really liked Nascar. I was more like, uh in the drag racing and uh doing the burnouts, the smoke and the loud noise and you know, and after a while I kind of got boring a little bit. And then we were in Florida and Orlando with my son Jeremy, and they wanted to go to the the team park and there's a track right outside Universal Studios and I hear him ripping, you know, like

revving like like constantly. So holy shoo, what the hell is that going on over there. So what Derek was hearing was the Walt Disney World Speedway, basically a go cart track for adults, but you get to race real deal race cars. I dropped them off at the gate. They went into the studio Universal Studios, and I just took the car and I went follow the sound and I come out. There's a big tractor. I think it's a five eight mile track. So I pulled up there. I went inside and I said, Uh, who are these

do guys driving? Are they tested? No? You could rent this? What I said, where do I sign up? So I walked in there and I never drove a NASCAR before, I mean like a stock car before, and signed the waiver, put the race foot on, the helmet on, and they threw me in the car. I was like, oh. I got in there and we went around the track. You do one, one or two laps slow you and you got to stay behind the pace car and stuff like that. And but then after two three laps, I was like, Wow, Okay,

I could get used to this. I saw a little picture plaque from his first day at the track. It's a photo of him almost twenty years ago, wearing a red and blue fire suit and sunglasses. That's what we started it right there. Two thousand and six. Yeah, that's me. I got in for the four laps, and then I went again and then again and again, and I was just so holy ship. I'm still really just more hung

up on the mustache and the goatee. Oh yeah. Derek made it sound easy, just getting behind the stock car and turning a few laps, But racing is incredibly physical. NASCAR drivers will pull more g s than an astronaut on launch, and they can lose up to ten pounds in a race. They're sitting inside of a car that will get up to a hundred sixty degrees, and even though the cars don't have windows, they're moving so fast that the air just glides over the opening. The only

air conditioning drivers have is their helmet. It's an incredibly grueling experience. But as soon as Derek left race track, he knew he'd found his calling and he was ready to go all in. So Derek started asking around to see if anyone would sell him a race car. He went all the way down to just before the border of Michigan, somewhere somewhere way out in Ontario, and we the guy was closing down his sudden lost interest in it, and he was selling two cars with all the tools

and everything. So I went down there and I bought everything. That's where it started. Racing works like any other sport. You work your way through the leagues until you make it to the big time. First you work your local tracks Frogtown, Santa Stash and other short ovels around Montreal. Then once you've got enough experience and enough money, you

break into the lower regional and national leagues. Derek started out in the Penties Canada Racing Series and you can hear how much he loved it in this old interview he did with the Aboriginal People's TV Network. It's the adrenaline, you know, it flows sort of veins, the blood dis gets pumping, and once you get behind that wheel, it's a whole different world. In orders, you don't think about anything else. You just want to get on that track in that car that's ahead of you. You want to

just get in front of that car. And there's another car ahead of that car. You want to get in front of that one. Derek should promise right away, and in ten he won Rookie of the Year, not long after that, he graduated to the NASCAR Truck and Exfinity Series. The last two runs before the big time, Derek was on his way. He was brokering sponsorship deals and buying faster, better built race cars. Now, racing is expensive. There's not many people that can afford to buy a race car,

or staff a team or build a garage. So it's not uncommon for people who can afford that stuff to rent it out to people who just want to race here and there weekend Warriors, which is how Derek met a French Canadian racer named Paul John was interested in striking a deal with the racing. I met a guy that wanted to come and race, and and I had cars for rent. So basically, this individual came see me and he said, uh, I want to rent your car. This is fine. I said, you got to bring some money,

no problem. Derek's deal was simple, you want to raise one of my cars, pay me thirty thou dollars and you've got it for the weekend. For the first couple of races, things went well. Paul Jean brought Derek the cash, put on a fire suit and hopped in the car. Everything was paid up and then he got into maybe two or three different races, and uh, he was kind of behind in his payments. To me, said listen, I said, you're behind in payments. I said, I can't put you

in the car. I said, I have somebody else that's ready to pay. No, no, no, don't worry. So he offered, he goes, my friend has tobaccle. Really, I said, he goes, you interested? I said, well, if it's landed on my door, bring it. So that's where it. Uh, basically that's where it started. He brought he brought some in and then uh start paying off his bills, and he kept on racing, and it just kept on going like that. For Derek, tobacco was as good as cash. He'd grown up in

the business. He knew it. Well, can you focus on other mohawk territories who could take raw tobacco and turn it into cigarettes and they'd pay a pretty penny for a steady supply in Derek's size. There wasn't anything illegal about it. Sure, Kennedy usually levied heavy taxes on tobacco, and there was even a special police force in Quebec dedicated to intercepting untaxed tobacco shipments, but that wasn't Derek's problem.

Tobacco was something Mohawks had smoked for thousands of years, and buying it and selling it was there right as native people. He brought in tobacco and and asked him where it came from or who he got it from. Or do you regret ever making a deal with him? Yeah? I do. I should have never got I shouldn't have never bought anything off those people. I mean, I only deal with my own people. I don't deal with the outside. It's just that it's hard when you deal with somebody

you don't know who the heck they're dealing. That's exactly how it is. All this bullshit happened. You know. If I would have known that, believe it, would have stayed ten miles away from all this crap. You know. And when did you find out the Hell's Angels were involved in all this? The day we got arrested, coming up on this season of Running Smoke. You know, our elders told us, they warned us, don't do this. These people are doing international money longer, and we thought we could

control it. We were wrong. Bikers showed up and killed him right on his front porch. You know, the right people, you can get anything into going a log. I mean, look at the NASCAR. I mean it was it was built off bootlegging, you know, with the Moonshiners and all that. When I was smuggling, it was like almost a free for all. I loved it. We were met with two Madus fifty caliber machine guns on the roof of that casino. I had no choice. I had to pay them whatever

they wanted. If you did a comparison between the wealthiest Native person the wealthiest white person, that's not even close. He's not Robin Hood. They're doing it for the fucking money, period, end of story. We have helicopters over my house. They're just hovering there. They're watching. I guess we could say it was a trapdoor that bag I walk down. Someone had to do it, and I said, you know what,

it's time someone fight discovernment and see what happens. They know that if this case goes in any way our way, they got a whole new story to be right. And I'm willing. I'm ready to go to jail. I don't care if we lose. It's going to affect the Mohawk Nation. Yea. Running Smoke is a production of camp Side Media, Dan Patrick Productions and Workhouse Media. Written and reported by me Roger Gola. Our producers are Leah Papes, Laine Gerbig and

Julie Dennischet. Our editors are Michelle Lands and Emily Martinez. Sound designed and original music by Mark McAdam. Additional sound and mixing by Ewen Lyon from Ewan. Additional reporting by Susie McCarthy. Our executive producers or Dan Patrick, Josh Dean of camp Side Media, Paul Anderson, Nick Vanella, and Andrew

Greenwood for Workhouse Media. Fact checking by Mary Mathis, artwork by Polly Adams and additional thanks to Greg Horn, Johnny Kaufman, Sierra Franco, Elizabeth van Brocklin, and Sean Flynn