A Manitoba First Nation is asking that police  examine an ad placed  on a Web site owned by Black Press, which is a huge Victoria-based publishing company.

Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak Grand Chief David Harper said in a news release that he wants the incident  investigated as a "hate crime".

The site, UsedWinnipeg.com, featured the headline: "Free: Native Extraction Site" above a photo of three aboriginal youths. The text suggested that they are pests that can be netted and relocated to their natural habitat.

The ad stated that the service is free unless tranquilizers are needed to complete the task, in which case the fee is $9.95 for a six-pack of beer.

In the news release, Harper declared "the ad should have never made it to the website in the first place, the people who own and operate Used Winnipeg.com must be held accountable and guarantee better screening processes are in place so something like this won’t happen again".  

The young people in the ad are award-winning filmmakers from Washington state. According to the MKO, they have  shown the effect that  oil companies are having on their land.

“The Aboriginal youth in the photo have been unnecessarily victimized and we will not tolerate it," Harper said in the news release.  "This is a reality that we see far too often as First Nation People.”

The ad is no longer on the site. Video of Harper's comments can be seen here on the Winnipeg Free Press site.

Today, the Globe and Mail reported that Black Press is interested in buying Canwest's Canadian newspaper empire. Black Press owns community papers across B.C. and in parts of Washington state, as well as daily papers in Ohio, Hawaii, and Alberta.

This isn't the first time Black Press has been caught up in a controversy involving aboriginal people.

In 1998,  company owner David Black  prohibited his papers from publishing editorials in favour of the Nisga'a treaty, which was the first modern treaty in B.C. history.

Black also ordered his editors to publish eight  columns opposing the treaty, which were all written by Mel Smith.

Smith, a former assistant deputy attorney general, was  perhaps B.C.'s  most outspoken critic of the Nisga'a treaty at the time.

In January 1999, the  NDP government filed a complaint to the B.C. Press Council against Black Press, arguing that its policy breached its duty to act in the public interest and violated the council's constitution.

Black Press defended its action by stating that editors who disagreed with the policy were free to write their opinions about the Nisga'a treaty  on the letters page and that the policy had no effect on news coverage.

The council, which is a self-regulating industry body,  dismissed the NDP government's complaint, concluding that the David Black papers "did in fact carry a diversity of opinion on the Nisga'a Treaty, including those of Premier Glen Clark, Liberal Leader Gordon Campbell, Reform Party President Bill Vander Zalm as well as those of ordinary British Columbians".

Follow Charlie Smith on Twitter at twitter.com/csmithstraight.