Two women climb over felled pine trees, some branches still green with needles, following a deep trench cut into the forest floor.

A little under a kilometre away, this forest connects to the old front lines of the 1990 Oka Crisis, or the siege of Kanehsatà:ke.

The trench, roughly three feet deep, stretches out from the back of Big Chief's Variety, a five-storey cannabis megastore that sits along Quebec's Route 344 in Kanehsatà:ke, a Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) territory about 60 kilometres southwest of Montreal.

The trench and downed trees are the result of recent construction work by the owner of Big Chief's Variety, say Kawisaienhne Albany, 27, and Karihohetstha Cupples, 23.

It's part of a widespread and relentless construction boom fuelled by the lucrative cannabis industry — one that

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