Indigenous Smudging Ceremonies Do Not Violate Federal Prison Smoking Ban, Judge Rules

The Bowden Institution medium security facility is pictured near Bowden, Alta., on March 19, 2020. The Canadian Press/Jeff Mcintosh

Traditional indigenous smudging ceremonies do not violate a federal prison smoking ban that’s been in place since 2008, a federal judge has ruled.

Federal Court Justice Trent Horne’s ruling comes on a case wherein convicted sex offender William Johnson complained that his fellow inmates’ smudging ceremonies—which include burning ingredients like tobacco, sweetgrass, cedar, and sage—irritated him and breached his Charter rights, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.

“There is insufficient evidence to conclude he sustained any adverse health consequence,” Horne wrote in his decision, adding later, “Smudging is a ceremony that is used to pray over and purify oneself and a physical space.”

“It is also used as an act of unity to open ceremonies or circles in order to prepare participants for healing and sharing.”

Johnson, an inmate at Warkworth penitentiary in Brighton, Ont., told the court in a submission that smudging ceremonies sometimes occur three times a day at the prison.

“An inmate was allowed to create clouds of smoke as inmates went to and from meals,” he wrote. “Not only does this practice contravene the no smoking policy in and around the units but is further a racial discrimination practice against all non-natives.”

Johnson’s claim against in-prison smudging ceremonies follows a previous unsuccessful claim he filed in 2018 in which he said that it was cruel for prisons to serve inmates powdered milk.

In-Prison Smoking

A parliamentary committee heard in 2011 that demand for cigarettes in prisons increased following the federal government’s 2008 ban on smoking in prisons, despite the fact that they were contraband.

“The ban on cigarettes has actually meant that there’s a greater trade now in tobacco and greater interdiction efforts used to stop tobacco entry than there ever was for drug use,” said Kim Pate, who is now a senator but was at the time executive director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, while testifying before the House of Commons public safety committee on Oct. 4, 2011.

Pate later added that possession of contraband cigarettes within prisons had become an increasingly common reason for guards to perform strip searches.

“Cigarettes have become currency,” said then-NDP MP Marie-Claude Morin during the committee meeting. “This has increased contraband tobacco and other drugs, mainly anything that can be brought into a prison.”

“Since tobacco was banned in prisons, it has been used as currency,” Morin added. “But, if tobacco was permitted in the prisons, there would be fewer possibilities for currency against other drugs that may be more harmful.”