The article covers the issues quite well. It's hell for the people who live on either side of the border, and relations with the authorities on the Canadian side have been especially bad - in addition to the protest about CBSA border guards carrying guns earlier in the decade, there was a violent land dispute at another Mohawk reservation about 30 miles to the east in 1990 in which two people including a Quebec police officer lost their lives (http://www.rcinet.ca/en/2018/07/09/shooting-death-police-ind...).

The smuggling issue is not just something that takes place on the Akwesasne area of the St. Lawrence, either. It happens throughout the Thousand Islands.