Mohawk Mothers worry potential evidence at McGill University work site will be destroyed

A group of Kanien’kehá:ka 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 Kanien’kehá:ka Kahnistensera or the Mohawk Mothers, lost their bid last month for a court order to stop excavation on part of the site of the old Royal Victoria Hospital, where McGill University is expanding its downtown campus.

A spokesperson 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 women.

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 group, Quebec’s infrastructure agency and the university.

The women say they believe people may have been buried at that site, following interviews with survivors of mind-control experiments that took place in the 1950s and 1960s at the Allan Memorial Institute, a psychiatric institute affiliated with the hospital.