Kanesatake elders with the Mohawk Mothers group arrive at Superior Court Thursday, Sept. 14, 2023, in Montreal. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz
MONTREAL – Indigenous women say they are worried potential evidence of human remains at the site of a former Montreal hospital will be destroyed if construction isn’t halted.
The women, who call themselves the Mohawk Mothers, lost their bid for a court order last month to stop excavation on part of the site where McGill University is expanding its downtown campus.
A spokeswoman for the group says workers could destroy evidence because they want to move material ““ without sifting through it ““ from an area where sniffer dogs indicated human remains might be found.
Kwetiio, who only identified herself using one name, says observers with her group recently found a child’s shoe on that site and that workers had found bones but did not tell the Mothers.
McGill University says a bio-archeologist believes the bones are not human and that work is being conducted in accordance with an agreement involving the Mothers, Quebec’s infrastructure agency and the university.
The Mothers say they believe people might have been buried at that site, following interviews with survivors of mind-control experiments that took place in the 1950s and 1960s at a psychiatric institute affiliated with the hospital.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 2, 2023.
