The “Mohawk Mothers” are in court Thursday to stop drilling and excavation work on the site of the former Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, where there could be unmarked graves.
The request from these indigenous elders aims to suspend the work which began Monday on the construction site managed by McGill University and the Société québécoise des infrastructures.
The “Mohawk Mothers” obtained an injunction from the Superior Court last April which authorized the search for unmarked graves of Aboriginal patients buried around the Royal Victoria Hospital, which McGill University is renovating to expand its campus.
Indigenous elders are concerned that the court-ordered archaeological dig is not being conducted properly.
The “Mohawk Mothers” claim they gathered evidence of the existence of unmarked graves following interviews with survivors of mind control experiments that took place in the 1950s and 1960s at the psychiatric institute Allan-Memorial, affiliated with the Royal Vic.
The Government of Canada is named in the request for authorization to bring a class action filed in 2019. This request alleges that the Canadian government participated in the “MK-ULTRA” program of the American intelligence agency (CIA).
This program included aggressive psychological experiments carried out on vulnerable patients, notably at the Allan-Memorial psychiatric institute in Montreal.
McGill University and the Société québécoise des infrastructures told media this week that they were committed to respecting last April’s court order, which forced all parties to agree that an Indigenous-led plan must be followed before work begins on site.
This settlement agreement states that if no grave is immediately found, excavation work can begin, but with sensitivity in the event of an unexpected discovery.