An unprecedented agreement between six Mohawk citizens, McGill University and seven other government agencies paves the way for archaeological digs to determine if children were buried on the site of the former Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal.
This agreement, ratified Thursday morning by the Superior Court, was hailed as a “significant” step in the reconciliation efforts between the Aboriginal peoples and the governments of Quebec and Canada.
This legal process is likely to frame future archaeological excavations across the country with the aim of locating anonymous burials of children, particularly of Aboriginal origin.
The “Mohawk Mothers”, a group of six people who are leading this battle in their personal capacity – without a mandate from their band council – consider this agreement to be an unprecedented gesture of “trust” between the Aboriginal peoples and the governments they deem colonialists.
The excavations aim to trace the burials of Aboriginal children or children of Quebec origin. The site has housed Mohawk children and orphans from Duplessis, who claim to have been abused by medical authorities. These patients would have been victims of experiments carried out by Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron in the 1950s and 1960s.
Further details will follow.
To see in video