TRANSLATION FROM SPANISH: Mohawk Mothers fighting in Canada to uncover cruel CIA experiments 60 years ago; Author, Leire Sales; Image caption BBC News World’s Correspondent in Los Angeles Twitter, 12 December 2024:
https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/ced9w2zj1x3o
“Our children were taken and experimented upon and many were never seen again”, says Kahentinetha. “So our case is very simple: we want to know exactly what happened to them, who is responsible and who is going to pay for it,” states this 85-year-old indigenous woman from Kahnawake, a Mohawk community located southwest of the city of Montreal (Quebec, Canada), tells BBC Mundo.
We are looking for the truth, says Kwetiio, 52, a Kanien’kehá:ka kahnistensera, which is Iroquois language for the ‘Mohawk Mothers’.
These indigenous women are convinced that the track on the fate of those missing children could be underground; specifically, in the land on which McGill University, with the support of the Quebec provincial government, plans new construction. They are based on files and testimonies suggesting that unmarked graves of minors lie at the site of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal and the Allan Memorial Institute, a neighbouring psychiatric institute.
Mohawk Mothers Kahentinetha and Kwetiio have been in court for more than two years trying to delay work on the grounds adjacent to a former hospital and psychiatric institution in Montreal. Behind the walls of those institutions, in the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) funded a sinister and ultra-secret human experiment program called MK-Ultra.
In the middle of the Cold War, this consisted of subjecting patients – including indigenous children – to electric shocks, sensory deprivation and providing them with hallucinogenic drugs with the aim of developing effective brainwashing procedures and drugs. With that in mind and armed with the responsibility of protecting the inherent children of their people, the Mohawk Mothers have been engaged in a legal battle for more than two years to try to delay the construction. “If we don’t stop it now, for generations to come the truth will be much harder to recover,” Kwetiio says.
Known as the Allan, the institute was under the direction of the Scotsman-American Donald Ewen Cameron, who was considered one of the most eminent psychiatrists in the world, and was at the epicenter of some of the most extreme practices of MK-Ultra.
The program came to light more than 45 years ago, when the CIA was forced to publish documents that confirmed what some already suspected: that the agency had financed mental control experiments, often without the consent or knowledge of the victims.
Image source, Getty Images Photo Foot. The Mohawk Mothers believe, based on testimonies and archives, that the graves lie under the ground on which they want to build.
It all started in the early 1950s, with the Cold War in full swing. When some prisoners of war released in Korea returned home defending the communist cause, the U.S. intelligence services were alarmed. Fearing that the Soviets and the Chinese had developed mental control techniques, and that their agents or prisoners of war could reveal information to the enemy, the newly formed CIA allocated $25 million for psychiatric experiments on humans.
“The idea was to try to figure out how to question people and weaken them, and also how to protect their staff from those techniques,” psychiatrist Harvey Weinstein told the BBC Witness program a while ago. Weinstein authored “Father, Son and the CIA.”
The agency used organizations as a front to approach more than 80 institutions and scientists in the US, UK and Canada.
“It was the most secretive program ever run by the CIA,” historian Tom O’Neill told the BBC. There are still many unanswered questions about the program today. “There is a lot of secrecy around the medical experiments, as much of the documentation was destroyed,” Philippe Blouin, an anthropologist who assists the Mohawk Mothers in his research, tells BBC Mundo.
And the only places where there is evidence left (where it existed) are in the memories of people, survivors and the community, he emphasizes.
Meanwhile, McGill University and the Quebec Society of Infrastructure (SQI) – a provincial government agency, which manages the site, argue that neither the Mohawk Mothers nor the special interlocutor appointed for the legal case have identified patients who disappeared after being treated at the Royal Victoria Hospital or the Allan Memorial Institute.
In the courts in October 2022, the women managed to get the court to issue a court order to temporarily suspend the works of the multimillion dollar project, which includes the renovation of the old existing buildings and the construction of a new university campus and a research center. The women did it without lawyers, representing themselves. “We use our ways, because no one can speak for us,” Kwetiio explains.
This was followed by a conciliation agreement in April 2023, which, in addition to guaranteeing the Mohawk Mothers access to the archives of McGill University, included an archaeological plan for the site guided by a panel of experts selected between the parties, which would recommend the techniques and procedures to follow.
Thus, in the middle of last year, using track dogs and specialized probes combed the vast and ruinous buildings of the property. They managed to identify three areas of interest for excavations. However, both McGill and SQI – also a signatory to the agreement – argue that to date no human remains have been discovered.
In addition, after the panel gave its last report on 17 July 2023, the work of the panel ended, as established in the agreement. However, the conciliation agreement indicates that, if an unexpected discovery occurs, McGill, SQI and Kahnistensera will seek the advice of the panel, the university confirmed to BBC Mundo.
And he reiterated: “To this day no unexpected discovery has been made.” Echoing that statement, SQI stressed that it always intended to “rain light, in a spirit of collaboration,” about the allegations surrounding the presence of burials, but that none were found today. And in an interview with the Canadian media CityNews, they added that they continue to respect the conciliation agreement and that they adhered to all the recommendations of the panel.
Mohawk Mother Kwetiio passes in front of the dedication plaque of the McConnell wing of the Montreal Institute-Neurological Hospital on July 17, 2024, in Montreal, Canada. However, the Mohawk Mothers accuse both parties of failing to comply with the spirit and the letter of the agreement, and therefore went back to court. They gave themselves the power to lead the investigation of potential crimes committed by their own employees in the past, Philippe Blouin, an anthropologist who assists in the search driven by the indigenous women, tells BBC Mundo. There is at least one conflict of interest. Indigenous people also point out that McGill and SQI selected only those recommendations from the panel that suit them, while rejecting others, and claim that there is evidence that was lost. After a setback in an appeals court this October, they decided to take the case to the Supreme Court of Canada, the country’s highest court. “Our children are part of us. We were born with that, each of us, as women, with that responsibility,” Kwetiio explains. “That must be said also in the Supreme Court, because there is the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that says that we need to be heard and that the truth must come to light, so that there is reconciliation.”It was not until a few years ago that in Canada the atrocities committed for decades against the native people came to light. Generations of indigenous children were interned in Canadian Residential Schools where they were stripped of their language, culture and identity in what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in its 2015 report described as “cultural genocide”.
Between 1831 and 1996, some 150,000 minors were taken from their homes and placed in 139 of these centres. Thousands of them never returned to their home communities.
They took them and we didn’t see them again, or they would return after being subjected to procedures, and spent the next few years sitting on the porch, in the care of their relatives, tells Kahentinetha to BBC Mundo. We all have those indelible memories.
A sign reading “Colonialism is Forbidden” and pieces of orange cloth hangs on the site of the former Royal Victoria Hospital before the demonstration and march “Every Child Matters” on September 30, 2023 in Montreal, Canada. The march was intended to draw attention to the atrocities that occurred during the time of the residential schools system. (Photo by ANDREJ IVANOV/AFP via Getty Images)
In May 2021, the discovery of anonymous graves of 215 children at the Kamloops Indigenous Residential School in the province of British Columbia gave way to a national reflection on this dark chapter of Canadian history.
And it also led to the search for more such burials across the country. It was not just about boarding schools, but also hospitals, sanatoriums, churches and orphanages, Kwetiio reports.
They wanted to exterminate us,” Kahentinetha adds. “But we are still here, and the truth has to come out so that it does not happen again.”
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