MCGILL CANA’JON

MNN. June 30, 2024. McGill is in the trenches with the robots! The state did not want indigenous around so they experimented on them to create the genocide plan sanctioned by Colonial law. The politicians and scientists who set up the “sleep room” at the Allan Memorial Institute during the 1940s to 1970’s “took orders” from those who own McGill and are trying to destroy creation. People now listen seriously to the debate of two top US robots who are vying to ‘run’ the world. Militaries are now creating robotic armies to fight each other. Allegedly a California designed robotic office worker committed suicide by throwing itself down a flight of stairs landing in pieces. McGill actually has “war labs” creating these weapons for their clients to murder people. The enlistment rate has declined drastically. The police use robots to attack people in their homes. Robots are not paid and so far have no drug or sex problems.  A robot is programmed to not deal with back stabbing, fork tongued murderers. A robot feels no pity, remorse, or fear. They don’t stop until their target is dead, or their battery dies. As Lakota activist Russell Means said to Congress, “Welcome to the reservation. You are now the new Indians!” 

Here’s “O Canajon” sung by a Mohawk Mother to remind or enlighten the colonists of their genocidic “100 year business plan” that comes due on October 25, 2024 called the Framework Agreement based on the “Indian Lands Acts”, whereby this title acknowledges that the land is totally owned by the indigenous. 

O Canajon

We will heal.

Now watch the “Sleep Room” on the tactics developed at the McGill Allan Memorial Institute under the direction of Dr. Ewen Cameron” to turn people into robots.

The Sleep Room   The CIA and MK Ultra in Canada

Contact:

MohawkMothers.ca

mohawknationnews.com

kahnistensera@sunrise.net

kahentinetha2@protonmail.com

#991 kahnawake quebec canada J0L 1B0

DARPA: DARK SIDE OF MCGILL

MNN. June 29, 2024. In the 1800’s McGill military academy was crashing and desperately needed money. They fraudulently borrowed from the “Iroquois Trust Funds” which were never repaid to the Mohawks. Now McGill has offered to return these stolen funds by paying for any Mohawk who attends their university, though Indian Affairs already pays tuition and expenses for all Indigenous who go there. This looks like part of the continuation of the state terror program through their education system.

Canada considers the indigenous as state property entrenched in their colonial system which is sustained by repression, lies, constant fear and death. The band council system known as “government mules” on each POW encampment called ‘reserves’, carry out the genocidal orders of the state. Our children are being  herded into one of the foremost corporate brainwashing institutions in the world, McGill, where the merciless enemies of the indigenous are trained to not apply peacetime rules. We are not grateful to be offered our own money by an education system based upon genocide and European values, similar to the deathly residential schools that have been acknowledged as “cultural genocide” by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Genocide is genocide!

We are waiting for every indigenous place name to be publicly reinstated throughout onowaregeh turtle island. The European names reflect genocide. 

“THE DARK SIDE OF DARPA”.

 

People throughout the world see that the levee is about to break and the people of McGill might not be prepared for it. As the song says, when the levee breaks, honey, you gotta move:

If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to breakIf it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to breakWhen the levee breaks I’ll have no place to stayMean old levee taught me to weep and moanLord mean old levee taught me to weep and moanIt’s got what it takes to make a mountain man leave his homeOh well, oh well, oh well
Don’t it make you feel badWhen you’re tryin’ to find your way homeYou don’t know which way to go?If you’re goin’ down SouthThey got no work to doIf you don’t move to Chicago
Cryin’ won’t help you prayin’ won’t do you no goodNow cryin’ won’t help you prayin’ won’t do you no goodWhen the levee breaks mama you got to moveAll last night sat on the levee and moanedAll last night sat on the levee and moanedThinkin’ ’bout me baby and my happy homeGoing to ChicagoGoing to Chicago
Sorry but I can’t take youGoing down, going down now, going downGoing down now, going downGoing down, going down, going down
Going down now, going downGoing down now, going downGoing down now, going downGoing d-d-d-d-downWoo, woo

When The Levee Breaks feat. John Paul Jones | Playing For Change | Song Around The World

 

Contact: mohawnationnews.com

kahnistensera@sunrise.net

MohawkMothers.ca

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH0-WXUFY2kLed

kahentinetha2@protonmail.com, Box 991 kahnawake que. canada J0L 1B0

EMANCIPATION IS HERE ON THIS ISLAND

MNN. June 28, 2024. Everyone in the world knows that we onkwehonwe are turtle island. The colonists took up residence, and stole the land, forests, waters, resources from the natural people placed here by kasastensera kowa saoiera, creation.  What they are doing to us is not fair, just or reasonable. They know we can never give up our mother earth. The kanienkehaka of akwesasne are carrying out their duties according to the kaianerekowa, the great peace.

Land Back at Barnhart

Contextualizing the Re-occupation of Barnhart Island in Shared Legacies of Struggle

By Jennifer Lee


Views expressed in this opinion editorial do not represent those of any of the eight individuals arrested at Barnhart Island.

Some of the members of the Akwesasne 8 along with Indigenous supporters from outside of the community. (Photo by Akwesasne community member Demetri Lafrance)

On May 21, 2024, a group of eight Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) community members from Akwesasne were arrested at Niionenhiasekowa:ne (Barnhart Island). Certain individuals among the “Akwesasne 8” had originally gone to Barnhart to exercise their right to build a hunting and gathering shelter on their own territory, in part to protest an ongoing land claim settlement that threatens to hand over Kanien’kehá:ka title to this island, among other traditionally held territories, to New York State. The settlement is being negotiated between New York entities and three Akwesasne government councils.1 Presently, the settlement negotiations would require the extinguishment of Mohawk title to Barnhart Island, which would be effectuated through an act of Congress.2 By asserting their right to the land, the Akwesasne 8 have sent a clear message to both negotiating parties. Barnhart Island, like all other territories illegally stolen and swindled from their community, is not for sale—particularly not by collaborationist band and tribal council entities that purport to represent the full community but that were in fact historically imposed upon it at gunpoint.

READ THE STORY:

https://magazine.scienceforthepeople.org/online/land-back-at-barnhart/#easy-footnote-15-16285

 

By Marina Johnson-Zafiris


“[This] is not a story of triumphs of engineering over nature, nor is it a story of masterpiece on international diplomacy, nor even a story about change. It is rather a story about the intimate relationship that the Mohawks of Akwesasne had with the environment in which they lived from time immemorial and how change was forced upon them, through really no choice of their own. It is the story of how the forces of outside government and corporate America seemingly conspired to break the identity of the Mohawk in a manner that no residential school had ever successfully accomplished—by changing the environment in which Mohawk survived . . .” (Elders Study, 1995)

READ THE BACKGROUND TO THIS ISSUE:

https://magazine.scienceforthepeople.org/online/akwesasne-and-the-history-of-hydropower/

Our minds and hearts are chained to that island for thousands of years. There is nothing that can break that chain, as Joe Cocker sings to our intruders: 

Unchain my heart
Baby let, let me be
‘Cause you don’t care
well, please
Set me freeUnchain my heart
Baby let me go
Unchain my heart
‘Cause you don’t love me no moreEvery time I call you on the phone
Some fella tells me that you’re not at home
Unchain my heart
Set me freeUnchain my heart
Baby let me be
Unchain my heart
‘Cause you don’t care about meYou’ve got me sewed up like a pillow case
But you let my love go to waste
Unchain my heart
Set me freeI’m under your spell
Like a man in a trance baby
Oh but you know darn well
That I don’t stand a chanceUnchain my heart
Let me go my way
Unchain my heart
You worry me night and day

Why lead me through a life of misery
When you don’t care a bag of beans for me
Unchain my heart oh please
Set me free
Alright

I’m under your spell
Just like a man in a trance, baby
But you know darn well
That I don’t stand a chance

Please unchain my heart
Let me go my way
Unchain my heart
You worry me night and day

Why lead me through a life of misery
When you don’t care a bag of beans for me
Unchain my heart
Please set me free

Oh set me free
Oh woman why don’t you do that for me
You don’t care
Won’t you let me go
If you don’t love me no more
Like a man in a trance
Let me go
I’m under your spell
Like a man in a trance
Oh but you know darn well
That I don’t stand a chance no
Oh
You don’t care
Please set me free

Joe Cocker - Unchain My Heart 2002 Live Video
box 991, kahnawake quebec. canada. J0L 1B0

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UNKNOWN UNIDENTIFIED

 

THE PIG STY CEMETARY
MNN. June 26/24. The aim of real archeology is to try to understand the future. To find what happened in the past to help us interpret the present. To find what we have forgotten. Something makes us want to see what is going on around us and what happened to us. Our ancient language is about hidden knowledge, such as, for example, what happened to the Duplessis orphans when the colonial settlers decided to develop a super liquor warehouse on top of a graveyard of children who died at the nearby hospital. It was called the ‘pig sty cemetary’. A lot of the secrets about this sordid event are now coming out into the open. The orphans saw things and were told it was in their imagination. They want to remember who they are. The more they seek and find the truth, the less angry they will be for the disappearances they witnessed of their friends.  SEE THE APTN COVERAGE: 
It seems like Ricky Scaggs may have visited the Montreal East site near the Port of Montreal where they moved out their filth from the pig pen:
I got a pig, home in a penCorn to feed him onAll I need is a pretty little girlTo feed him when I’m gone
Dark clouds are risingSure sign of rainGet your old gray bonnet onSweet little Liza Jane
I got a pig, home in a penCorn to feed him onAll I need is a pretty little girlTo feed him when I’m gone
Bake ’em biscuits, babyBake ’em good and brownWhen you get them biscuits bakedWe’re Alabama bound
I got a pig, home in a penCorn to feed him onAll I need is a pretty little girlTo feed him when I’m gone
Goin’ on a mountainTo sow a little caneRaise a barrel of SorghumSweet little Liza Jane
I got a pig, home in a penCorn to feed him onAll I need is a pretty little girlTo feed him when I’m gone
I got a pig, home in a penCorn to feed him onAll I need is a pretty little girlTo feed him when I’m gone

TRAFFICKING OF “INDIGENOUS CULTURAL HERITAGE”

MCGILL/MCCCORD & MOHAWK MOTHERS DISCUSSION, JUNE 3. 2024 

TRAFFICKING OF INDIGENOUS CULTURAL HERITAGE “-

Six Nations chiefs explaining wampum belts 1871.

MNN. June 15, 2024. This message was delivered to McGill McCord Museum on behalf of Kahnistensera Mohawk Mothers:

“Wampum belts have been trafficked across international borders not recognized by us. Trafficking of cultural goods is the illicit import, export and transfer of cultural property. In 2011, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Homeland Security announced that the illicit sale of cultural property is the third most profitable black market industries in the world, following weapons and narcotics trafficking! Wampums were stolen from indigenous communities on Turtle Island, often by using coercive strategies or middlemen who profitted from the misery and chaos of colonialism.

Band Councils do not represent us. They are an incorporated entity of Parliament and represent Canada, not the original indigenous peoples.   

One dish one spoon Agreement: Natural resources such as animals, fish and medicinal plant should be shared in a respectful manner amongst  onkwehonweh people. 

Wampum cannot be sold by an individual. They are stewarded by specific families to conserve them for the future generations. Individuals cannot sell Kanien’keha:ka cultural heritage, like a piece of merchandise. They are historical agreements that are recorded for the future generations. For a century, McGill’s McCord Museum has possessed Kanien’keha:ka wampum that were acquired when our people were experiencing great duress on financial, social and physical levels, which Canada has recently acknowledged as genocidal. This history was not communicated to the public at the recent display of wampum. Today we are here to renew our relationship on better terms, based on collaboration, justice and truth-telling. We offer the McCord Museum an opportunity to return Kanien’keha:ka belongings to our communities, where they belong.

McGill and McCord squat on unceded Onkwehonkwe land and retain possession of and control over immensely valuable cultural heritage which forms the backbone of our identity, governance structures and nationhood. We traditional Kanien’keha:ka Longhouse people live in accordance with our precolonial constitution which our ancestors helped us to develop from time immemorial, the Kaianerehkowa. Wampum form the very basis of our cultural identity. Our right to live, possess and control our heritage is the basis of our culture, which is acknowledged by Section 35 of the Constitution Act of Canada 1982, which states: “The existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed”, as well as by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, which is the Federal repatriation of the UNDRIP protocols outlined by the United Nations.

In the United States, these conversations have led to the creation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which currently requires museums to collaborate on projects with Indigenous peoples to  repatriate all Indigenous heritage to Indigenous communities. The historic, traditional and artistic materials created by a people as an expression of themselves belongs to us, the original people from whom the objects were stolen and separated from the historical settings of these objects.

The UNDRIP Act in Canada states in Article 31 that: “Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, as well as the manifestations of their sciences, technologies and cultures, including human and genetic resources, seeds, medicines, knowledge of the properties of fauna and flora, oral traditions, literatures, designs, sports and traditional games and visual and performing arts. They also have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their intellectual property over such cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions.” Article 25 says: “Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their distinctive spiritual relationship with their traditionally owned or otherwise occupied and used lands, territories, waters and coastal seas and other resources and to uphold their responsibilities to future generations in this regard.”

Regarding Indigenous peoples, all states and publicly-funded corporations such as McGill are expected to recognize and protect the exercise of these rights. Every living being on earth has a spirit, including wampum that were handmade by our ancestors which carried forth our knowledge and instructions for future generations of Onkwehonweh. The spirit placed into the wampum was for the future generations of our people, not for the enjoyment and entertainment of tourists and academics. We feel the spirit of these teachings from our ancestors in our whole being. An object having an historical, traditional or cultural importance central to the indigenous people or culture itself, are not property owned by an individual. They cannot be alienated, appropriated or conveyed by any individual, corporation or organization. Such objects are inalienable by all parties at the time the object was created.

According to the Two Row Tehiohate philosophy, our society knows how to govern ourselves from birth. We had no jails, police, weapons or threats of death to manage our relationships. We are a true free self-determining people, with a “constitution” that is a true world heritage that has influenced what came to be called “democracy” all over the planet. For example, the United States’ decentralized semi-autonomous state system was appropriated from our traditional governance structures by Benjamin Franklin and the League of Nations. Wampum is the promise of the Kanien’keha:ka to pass our knowledge and traditions to future generations and to carry out the agreements made between the parties involved. As colonialist Cadwallader Colden described, “Wampum is a system of memory and recall far more advanced than anything they have seen in Europe.” The wampum was taken out regularly from the basket in the general council and the words were repeated to remind the people of the promise. The white people were invited to the wampum recitals, though their memory was faulty and many promises were broken.

Teiohateh Two Row, is the universal relationship of non-domination, balance and harmony between different people.

Wampum belts are promises of peace. To us it is not right to display our cultural heritage in museums as dead objects that no longer matter. We will not accept being put on display any longer. Wampum are living heritage that we are still using as the basis of our agreements, traditions, protocols and relationships. The fact that the McCord Museum of McGill University hold these items and put them on display remind us of how these agreements were violated by Europeans and transformed into entertainment items, stripped of their social, spiritual and political meaning. The essence of our agreements is in our minds. Wampum only work if we entertain a living relationship with them. Our honesty brings back our words and thoughts from these discussions. Our message based on the kaianerekowa, the great peace, has never been diminished. We must regularly review the original meanings.

We indigenous people belong to the land. The women made the belts because they have the duty of peace. The McCord exhibit misinterpreted certain meanings, for example stating that the straight line in the middle of the wampum represents the rule to govern. This improper representation must be corrected by our Elders and Knowledge Keepers. A gross misrepresentation in the exhibit suggested that we used wampum as money. It is Europeans who turned our wampum into a form of money, an idea that did not exist in our way.

The museum overlooked the original cultural meanings of the wampum. We offer to work together to correct this so that such violations, abuses, and misunderstandings can be made right. We will begin by discussing proper arrangements for the return to our communities of our heritage. We pledge to inform everyone of the true power, spirit and meanings of the wampum which is the basis of our relationship with all peoples and all life. We wish to remove the misleading narratives devised by European scholars and other foreigners by putting our wampum back in our hands. The way that these wampums were lost to our communities is very dark and troubling.

For many invading colonists all over the world our wampum were valuable objects of fashion that they stole and used as symbols of status. Some were taken right off the dead bodies of murdered Indigenous people throughout turtle island and then sold. Some wanted souvenirs to hang on their wall to remind them of having murdered us. Colonial institutions, especially museums, and their funders, such as the Bank of Canada, are pervaded by the continuation of a deep historical legacy of racism and genocide which must now stop. The general lack of information stems from the horrific conditions under which wampum were taken away from us. McCord did not provide meaningful and truthful explanations of the wampum and of how they ended up in McCord’s storage rooms. Somewhere the trail of information leading to their origins has been suppressed. We come to state without any ambiguity that it is time to return all our heritage to us for us to determine how our past, present and future will be used and interpreted. 

Wiskniontsakeh signifies the alliance of five different peoples

who pledge to live by the great peace.  

We hereby propose the following agreement: McCord Museum shall:

1. Relinquish all claims of ownership to Indigenous cultural heritage. 

2. Negotiate the transfer of Kanien’keha:ka cultural heritage to the Kahnistensera Mohawk Mothers, who will coordinate their rematriation to Indigenous communities. McCord may hold the material on our behalf until arrangements are made to move them.

3. Understand that Kanien’keha:ka cultural heritage, including but not limited to wampum, is on temporary loan to the McCord Museum from the Kanien’keha:ka, contingent on proper care of the material culture and in good faith to facilitate the rematriation of Kanien’keha:ka belongings held by the McCord Museum.

4. Provide the Kahnistensera and Indigenous communities with a complete inventory of wampum, including all related documents and data that McCord may possess or have access to.

5. Fund Indigenous-led research into the meaning and historical movements and displacements of each wampum, to share correct information with the public. This includes funding a Kahnistensera-led program with Kanien’keha:ka elders, knowledge keepers and youth to correct the record.

6. Fund the safe and secure storage of Kanien’keha:ka cultural heritage until Indigenous communities are able to properly take on the care of these belongings.

[a] The Kanien’keha:ka belongings contained within the inventory will be completely under the ownership and control of Kanien’keha:ka traditional people. [b]  During McCord’s temporary stewardship pending rematriation, McCord shall grant any Indigenous community or persons’ requests to access and use Indigenous cultural heritage, including wampum belts, for their own purposes.

7. Assist with curation expertise and resources, including securing sufficient funding, to ensure, in a timely manner, safe storage of the cultural artifacts in facilities controlled by traditional Indigenous governance systems. McCord shall provide free access to said belongings to all Onkwehonweh of any Indigenous communities to learn, physically handle, and use them for social, educational and ceremonial purposes.

8. Assist in the funding of the Kahnistensera Mohawk Mothers in order to arrange with Kanien’keha:ka communities for the creation, maintenance, and curatorial protocol to build the proper facilities for the transfer of the belts and articles to traditional Indigenous communities.

8. All historical agreements with other parties that allowed our wampum to be taken away and placed in colonial institutions shall be superseded by this agreement, because the original community ownership was never, and could never be, relinquished.

Robbie Robertson sings about the “Ghost Dance” to remind everybody “we shall live again, we shall live again” because of our love for our mother earth and all life.

Crow’s brought the message
To the children of the sun
For the return of the buffalo
And for a better day to come

You can kill my body
You can damn my soul
For not believing in your God
And some world down below

You don’t stand a chance against my prayers
You don’t stand a chance against my love
They outlawed the Ghost Dance
They outlawed the Ghost Dance
But we shall live again, we shall live again

My sister above
But she has red paint
She died at Wounded Knee
Like a Latter-day Saint

You got the big drum in the distance
The blackbird’s in the sky
That’s a sound that you hear
When the buffalo cry

You don’t stand a chance against my prayers
You don’t stand a chance against my love
They outlawed the Ghost Dance
They outlawed the Ghost Dance
But we shall live again, we shall live again
We shall live again

Crazy Horse was a mystic (yeah)
He knew the secret of the trance
And Sitting Bull, the great apostle
Of the Ghost Dance

Come on Comanche
Come on Blackfoot
Come on Shoshone
Come on Cheyenne

We shall live again (we shall live again)
We shall live again (we shall live again)

Come on Arapaho
Come on Cherokee
Come on Paiute
Come on Sioux

We shall live again (we shall live again)

You used to do the Ghost Dance
Used to do the Ghost Dance
But we don’t sing them kinda songs no more

 

 

MCGILL/SQI & MOHAWK MOTHERS CLASH IN APPEAL COURT

Submission by Kahnistensera Mohawk mothers

Shé:kon Sewakwekon, Justices,

The Kahnisrtensera Mohawk Mothers stood before the three justices of the Quebec Appeals Court in Montreal. All kanienkehaka women are Kahnistensera, “life-givers”, with a privileged relationship to the children and the earth which lies at the heart of this court case. Kahnistensera contains the word Onerits’ta, which is the umbilical cord and the stem of a fruit. As a tree bears fruit, of which they are caretakers. Their precolonial constitution, Kaianerehkowa, comes from time immemorial and is translated as the  path of the “Great Law of Peace.” 

The Women’s Nomination Belt, which was presented to the judges, is a reminder of women’s duties. Section 44 of the first written translation of the Great Law of Peace, published in 1916 states “The lineal descent of the people of the Five Nations shall run in the female line. Women shall be considered the progenitors of the Nation. They shall own the land and the soil. Men and women shall follow the status of the mother”. They are the stewards and caretakers of the land for the coming faces, “Tahatikonhsontóntie.” Furthermore, they hold the titles of the 49 families that make up the Confederacy and depose those who stray from the great peace.

It is the women’s duty to search for the missing and murdered children following the colonial genocide program inflicted on indigenous people. They must find, protect and return the remains of the relatives to their families and communities, one of the most important exercises of their inherent duties.

They self-represent in these colonial legal proceedings because the Kaianerehkó:wa and their cultural practices, customs and traditions provide that they do so. Their position is based on the clan-based consensual decision-making protocols from time immemorial. They are now carrying out their duty to represent themselves before the Superior Court beginning almost two years ago. Justice Gregory Moore of the Superior Court Montreal recognized their public interest standing and their right to represent themselves in his judgement of September 20th, 2022; that they can legitimately represent themselves and the public interest of their people by  upholding their individual responsibilities as caretakers of the land and children.

This judgement was never appealed. The Attorney General of Quebec now submits that they aren’t worthy of the honour of the Crown because they are individuals and not an incorporated group. First, they are carrying out their obligations towards their children of the past, present, and future. Second, Incorporation is a feature of colonial society, not theirs. Their society has organized councils, fires, traditions and families. They condemn the Attorney General’s attempt to undermine their standing as the original people on onowarekeh, turtle island, their collateral attack on Justice Moore’s decision; and their attempt to relitigate what was already adjudicated, which constitutes sharp dealing and an abuse of process.

The House of Commons ratified the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the UNDRIP Act, 2021; the provinces are encouraged to implement the Act and the Declaration as a basic source in interpreting Canadian law. Articles 3 and 5 protects their right and duty to represent the interests of coming generations; Articles 11 and 12 asserts the rights of cultural manifestation, traditions, ceremonies, and laws; and Article 18 provides that “Indigenous peoples have the right to participate in decision-making in matters which affect their rights, through representatives chosen by them according to their own procedures”, as well as to maintain and develop their own indigenous decision-making institutions.

The rights in this case fall under a larger nation-to-nation relationship with the Crown as sovereign allies for centuries. “Canada” is a Mohawk word. They are bound by shared histories and original agreements, the Tehiohate Two Row Wampum and the Silver Covenant Chain. These processes uphold mutual respect and dialogue on onowarekeh. 

Yet the Attorney General of Quebec claims that the Honour of the Crown is not at stake in this issue. They beg to differ. Kahnistensera brought these claims as mothers, in their traditional and official capacities, as custodians of the soil and of everything it contains, and of the children of the past, present and future. They are born into their lifetime of duties, bound to uphold them forever according to the kasahtsensera kowa sahoiera, the Great Natural Power, which is creation.

No one can represent okwehonweh, the original people placed here by creation. Each has a final say. Quebec Crown agents can only act with Band Councils which are Canada’s corporate bodiies imposed on indigenous people by the colonial Indian Act, not by a traditional indigenous governance system. This contradicts the spirit of reconciliation. The Attorney General of Quebec quotes the Manitoba Metis Federation decision which states that “It must be explicit that the obligee of the obligation is an indigenous group,”so that a group can’t be partially composed of Indigenous people.” The Attorney General cherry-picks which parts of that decision are relevant so as to claim that the kahnistensera cannot invoke the Honor of the Crown. To exclude kahnistensera, especially in a case that involves abused and murdered children who were in their care, contradict the principles of Section 35(1) of the Constitution Act 1982 and the spirit of Reconciliation. These women are definitely not a group of opportunists with a few token Indigenous members. THEY ARE ALL REAL LIVE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE. The honour of the Crown applies FIRST AND FOREMOST to them, rather than to any corporation represented by attorneys who have sworn allegiance to the Crown who are strangers to indigenous ways.

Finally, the Attorney General suggests that the Honor of the Crown cannot be engaged through litigation! They submit that the kahnistensera brought dishonour to the Crown outside of court through their faulty execution of the Settlement Agreement!! The Appellants almost immediately breached the jointly-drafted agreement in several ways. They tried to find a common ground and deal with these issues with the Appellants outside of court, but to no avail.

The ruling now under appeal addresses the urgent breaches of the Agreement because of the Appellants’ failure to abide by the Agreement. These breaches are: First, the refusal to implement recommendations from the expert Panel regarding forensic precautions and the sharing of data. They infer that the term “guided” in section 13 of the agreement does not make the panel’s recommendations binding. But what does “guided” mean if recommendations can simply be unilaterally dismissed without any credible explanation or discussion? The kahnistensera would never have agreed to such a clause. 

Second, the Appellants unilaterally decided to fire the expert third party Panel mandated by all parties to the agreement, essentially electing themselves as sole decision-makers. Kahnistensera did not and would not have agreed to such a short and limited mandate for the Panel.

Third, the Panel insisted that it was their professional and ethical duty to access the data of the Appellant’s service providers and to oversee the implementation of the techniques they recommended. Section 13 of the Agreement binds all parties to the Panel’s recommendations, which techniques were to be used and how. The Appellants’ alternative interpretation is absurd. 

Fourth, Section 17 of the Agreement states that the Panel must be involved in case of any “unexpected discoveries”. In a letter which McGill’s attorney Doug Mitchell addressed to Justice Moore on June 14, 2023, McGill posed that what the Historic Human Remains Detection Dogs first alert was dequalified as an “unexpected discovery” and therefore triggered Section 17 of the Agreement. The Appellant’s agreed with the women’s request for a Case Management Conference following the discovery. Then the SQI later argued that Section 17 is only triggered after an actual burial is discovered. They stressed that if bodies were found the police and coroner would take over, explicitly stating that neither the Kahnistensera nor the Panel would be involved. Thus, Section 17 is either meaningless, or blatantly deceptive.

Fifth, the women submit that Section 17, and the spirit of the Agreement as a whole, necessarily involves the Panel to disentangle conflicting opinions about the techniques and how they are implemented as soon as problems are encountered. McGill and the SQI are not archeologists, and nor are the women. That’s why the Panel was jointly selected to replace the injunction that was not appealed. It was to allow, on one hand, the Appellants’ construction to continue while giving the women the assurance that a thorough and credible archeological investigation would come first.

This is the crux of the matter: The Kahnistensera would never have signed an agreement which would cause irreparable harm to them, to survivors and to their communities. This irreparable harm is in the SQI’s submissions, which state that the settlement agreement provided for the SQI and McGill to investigate unmarked graves by excluding the Kahnistensera from the process that they initiated at great pain and effort.

The Agreement replaced the injunction, which no party contested, and that the investigation should be Indigenous-led, which halted all excavation work on the site. By signing the agreement, the Kahnistensera made a considerable compromise, giving up Indigenous control of the investigation in exchange for the oversight by an independent and jointly-appointed third party Panel of experts to search for unmarked graves. The Agreement bound all parties. Due to this compromise, McGill and SQI were able to proceed with their construction work. By using the way of the kaianerekowa, such as the consensual decision-making protocols and wampum-based diplomacy, an agreement must be based on “being of one mind,” which is a true shared understanding.

There are some parallels between our ancestral ways and Canadian contract law. We have to make sure that we signed the same contract with the same meaning and that both parties understand it the same way. In this case, the Panel was meant to act as an independent third-party capable of resolving disagreements on best practices and techniques throughout the investigation. The Appellants dismissed these. We saw the irreparable harm that occurs when the Appellants are not under the supervision of the independant Panel: For instance, the Appellants excluded the investigation of the portion inside the Hersey building which was part of the 10-metre radius zone. The Panel recommended excavation around the target where search dogs alerted, which was next to the wall. Our cultural monitors then witnessed the Appellants’ contractors doing demolition work on the flooring on the other side of the wall. They never responded when asked what was happening. The Appellants barred access to the inside of the building even though the dog handlers said the dogs can smell through stone walls. •

The Kahnistensera cultural monitor Lloyd Benedict states in his affidavit that he found a century old child’s shoe left on the sidewalk in zone 11, the absence of care in handling potential evidence, and reported that excavation happened there without any archaeological monitoring, though monitoring was mandated by the Panel. Thirdly, the Panel’s recommendation to immediately and manually sift the soil where the dogs alerted were ignored, and the soil was left to the elements for several months before being inappropriately passed through a mechanical sifter made for mining, not archaeology. According to Mohawk archaeologist Benedict’s affidavit, this most likely would destroy the fragile bones of children. The Appellants’ contractors then concluded that the bone fragments were now too small to identify. This is the irreparable harm we have to prevent: the destruction of the very evidence this whole investigation is about!

We now fear that the same will happen with the TWO OTHER targets the dogs identified since then, including one next to the Allan Memorial Institute, where a S4 probe also confirmed compounds in the soil consistent with human decomposition. These will be destroyed if the Appellants proceed without the Panel’s oversight. The purpose of this investigation is to find the truth. Every archeological scholar we talked to was appalled at the details of the archeological investigation which proceeded unilaterally under the Appellants. They fell so drastically short of best practices. In fact, they’ve never seen anything like it.

McGill and the SQI misinterpreted the Agreement in every way to resume construction, while disregarding their responsibilities by depriving the Kahnistensera of the guidance of independent experts. By excluding both the Panel and the Kahnistensera – except for periodic email updates and a few tokenized cultural monitors whose only power, it seems, is to burn sage and tobacco , the Appellants have determined that they will investigate the crimes allegedly committed by their own employees in their own institutions in the past. Sincerely, Justices, this cannot be what Reconciliation looks like. When the women signed it, it was clear that all parties wanted to replace any unilateral endeavour by any party with a jointly-appointed independent body, the Panel.

Justice Moore read the entire Agreement. He decided to homologate it within the Superior Court, giving it the force of a Judgement. The SQI then tried to object. Justice Moore’s Judgement is now under appeal. The Appellants’ interpreted that it  was too narrow and did not make sense. We applied to enforce the homologated agreement as the Appellants found the whole investigation was seriously compromised, which created a situation of utter helplessness for the survivors of the crimes and our communities. Justice Moore simply tried to enforce the implementation of the Agreement as it stands, to prevent further irreparable harm. His ruling was to preserve the status quo and to allow the investigation to continue so it minimizes the harm done to all the parties. Once human remains are destroyed, they cannot be repaired. Once land is excavated, the soil cannot be put back. The Judgment now seems moot given the several months that have passed,. The situation is just as urgent now as it has ever been. The urgency is to restore human dignity after so much dispossession and neglect. Reconciliation, if it means anything, must mean this much.

https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/mcgill-quebec-clash-with-mohawks-over-possible-buried-bodies

Tommy Tucker’s song “Hi Heel Sneakers” could be about some of the ‘clashes’ that go on in the courts of law that indigenous people are forced into: 
  
Put on your red dress, babyLord, we goin’ out tonightPut on your red dress, babyLord, we goin’ out tonightAnd then wear some boxin’ glovesIn case some fool might wanna fight
Put on your hi-heel sneakersWear your wig hat on your headPut on your hi-heel sneakersWear your wig hat on your headAnd I’m pretty sure now, babyDon’t you know, you know you gonna knock ’em dead?

Court Reporter Thahoketoteh@ntk.com

MohawkMothers.ca

Kahnistensera@sunrise.org

mohawknationnews.com

box 991, kahnawake que. canada J0L 1B0

kahentinetha2@protonmail.com

REMATRIATION OF TURTLE ISLAND – McGill Grads Statement

MNN. JUNE 6, 2024.

 

CONCORDIA & KAHNISTENSERA MOHAWK MOTHERS

“Good Medicine Talks Series” 

Indigenous Knowledge Chair

Lead by Dr. Catherine Richardson Kineweskwen

The McGill graduation remarks at the Bell Centre in Montreal reflects how our young people see things. The kahnistensera Mohawk Mothers wish you love, freedom and peace.

 Bob Dylan sees it your way.

 MohawkMothers.ca

mohawknationnews.com

Box 911 – kahnawakw – quebec – cabada – J0L 1B0

kahentinetha2@protonmail.com

MASS MACABRE MUSEUM INC.

MNN. JAN. 29, 2024. All North American museums depict lies  and “genocide” of the onkwehonwe, the original people of turtle island. We want back everything that was taken from us such as the wampum records that were hidden or destroyed as if we never existed. Stop displaying our skulls for profit such as Apache Geronimo’s skull stolen and being filled with whiskey for the “Skull and Bones” ritual of the graduating elite at Yale University. We want all the museum buildings so we can display the truth of the evil practices that destroyed the people of the great peace to create the U.S.”Republic of War”.

Our “hanging tobacco” have been in the shadows doing their work. The truth must be shown such as the residential school death camps, the MKULTRA experiments by the CIA and Canada, the murders of our children whose remains are now being found. 120 million original people of the Western Hemisphere were murdered by the settler colonialists. The whole truth must be displayed! Grave robbing must end! Canada must step up to the plate immediately to enact a Graves Protection Act to help us find our people. Canada’s reaction to the mass graves found in 2021 was to create the Office of the Special Interlocutor for Missing Children. Their mandate will finish next summer. We need a permanent permanent  independent onkwehonwe office for investigating the murders of our children. Although Canada has admitted genocide, there are no laws as in the US to protect our heritage?  

Leading Museums Remove Native Displays Amid New Federal Rules

https://www.yahoo.com/news/leading-museums-remove-native-displays-183325697.html

NEW YORK — The American Museum of Natural History will close two major halls exhibiting Native American objects, its leaders said on Friday, in a dramatic response to new federal regulations that require museums to obtain consent from tribes before displaying or performing research on cultural items.

Professors use actual skulls of murdered Indians to teach.

The halls we are closing are artifacts of an era when museums such as ours did not respect the values, perspectives and indeed shared humanity of Indigenous peoples,” Sean Decatur, the museum’s president, wrote in a letter to the museum’s staff on Friday morning. “Actions that may feel sudden to some may seem long overdue to others.”

The museum is closing galleries dedicated to the Eastern Woodlands and the Great Plains this weekend, and covering a number of other display cases featuring Native American cultural items as it goes through its enormous collection to make sure it is in compliance with the new federal rules, which took effect this month.

Museums around the country have been covering up displays as curators scramble to determine whether they can be shown under the new regulations. The Field Museum in Chicago covered some display cases, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University said it would remove all funerary belongings from exhibition and the Cleveland Museum of Art has covered up some cases.

But the action by the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which draws 4.5 million visitors a year, making it one of the most visited museums in the world, sends a powerful message to the field. The museum’s anthropology department is one of the oldest and most prestigious in the United States, known for doing pioneering work under a long line of curators including Franz Boas and Margaret Mead. The closures will leave nearly 10,000 square feet of exhibition space off-limits to visitors; the museum said it could not provide an exact timeline for when the reconsidered exhibits would reopen.

Some objects may never come back on display as a result of the consultation process,” Decatur said in an interview. “But we are looking to create smaller-scale programs throughout the museum that can explain what kind of process is underway.”

The changes are the result of a concerted effort by the Biden administration to speed up the repatriation of Native American remains, funerary objects and other sacred items. The process started in 1990 with the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, which established protocols for museums and other institutions to return human remains, funerary objects and other holdings to tribes. But as those efforts have dragged on for decades, the law was criticized by tribal representatives as being too slow and too susceptible to institutional resistance.

This month, new federal regulations went into effect that were designed to hasten returns, giving institutions five years to prepare all human remains and related funerary objects for repatriation and giving more authority to tribes throughout the process.

We’re finally being heard — and it’s not a fight, it’s a conversation,” said Myra Masiel-Zamora, an archaeologist and curator with the Pechanga Band of Indians.

Even in the two weeks since the new regulations took effect, she said, she has felt the tenor of talks shift. In the past, institutions often viewed Native oral histories as less persuasive than academic studies when determining which modern-day tribes to repatriate objects to, she said. But the new regulations require institutions to “defer to the Native American traditional knowledge of lineal descendants, Indian Tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations.”

We can say, ‘This needs to come home,’ and I’m hoping there will not be pushback,” Masiel-Zamora said.

Museum leaders have been preparing for the new regulations for months, consulting lawyers and curators and holding lengthy meetings to discuss what might need to be covered up or removed. Many institutions are planning to hire staff to comply with the new rules, which can involve extensive consultations with tribal representatives.

The result has been a major shift in practices when it comes to Native American exhibitions at some of the country’s leading museums — one that will be noticeable to visitors.

At the American Museum of Natural History, segments of the collection once used to teach students about the Iroquois, Mohegans, Cheyenne, Arapaho and other groups will be temporarily inaccessible. That includes large objects, like the birchbark canoe of Menominee origin in the Hall of Eastern Woodlands, and smaller ones, including darts that date as far back as 10,000 B.C. and a Hopi Katsina doll from what is now Arizona. Field trips for students to the Hall of Eastern Woodlands are being rethought now that they will not have access to those galleries.

What might seem out of alignment for some people is because of a notion that museums affix in amber descriptions of the world,” Decatur said. “But museums are at their best when they reflect changing ideas.”

Exhibiting Native American human remains is generally prohibited at museums, so the collections being reassessed include sacred objects, burial belongings and other items of cultural patrimony. As the new regulations have been discussed and debated over the past year or so, some professional organizations, such as the Society for American Archaeology, have expressed concern that the rules were reaching too far into museums’ collection management practices. But since the regulations went into effect on Jan. 12, there has been little public pushback from museums.

Much of the holdings of human remains and Native cultural items were collected through practices that are now considered antiquated and even odious, including through donations by grave robbers and archaeological digs that cleared out Indigenous burial grounds.

This is human rights work, and we need to think about it as that and not as science,” said Candace Sall, the director of the museum of anthropology at the University of Missouri, which is still working to repatriate the remains of more than 2,400 Native American individuals. Sall said she added five staff members to work on repatriation in anticipation of the regulations and hopes to add more.

Criticism of the pace of repatriation had put institutions such as the American Museum of Natural History under public pressure. In more than 30 years, the museum has repatriated the remains of approximately 1,000 individuals to tribal groups; it still holds the remains of about 2,200 Native Americans and thousands of funerary objects. (Last year, the museum said it would overhaul practices that extended to its larger collection of some 12,000 skeletons by removing human bones from public display and improving the storage facilities where they are kept.)

A top priority of the new regulations, which are administered by the Interior Department, is to finish the work of repatriating the Native human remains in institutional holdings, which amount to more than 96,000 individuals, according to federal data published in the fall.

The government has given institutions a deadline, giving them until 2029 to prepare human remains and their burial belongings for repatriation.

In many cases, human remains and cultural objects have little information attached to them, which has slowed repatriation in the past, especially for institutions that have sought exacting anthropological and ethnographic evidence of links to a modern Native group.

Now the government is urging institutions to push forward with the information they have, in some cases relying solely on geographical information — such as what county the remains were discovered in.

There have been concerns among some tribal officials that the new rules will result in a deluge of requests from museums that may be beyond their capacities and could create a financial burden.

Speaking in June to a committee that reviews the implementation of the law, Scott Willard, who works on repatriation issues for the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, expressed concern that the rhetoric regarding the new regulations sometimes made it sound as if Native ancestors were “throwaway items.”

This garage sale mentality of ‘give it all away right now’ is very offensive to us,” Willard said.

The officials who drew up the new regulations have said that institutions can get extensions to their deadlines as long as the tribes that they are consulting with agree, emphasizing the need to hold institutions accountable without overburdening tribes. If museums are found to have violated the regulations, they could be subject to fines.

Bryan Newland, the assistant secretary for Indian Affairs and a former tribal president of the Bay Mills Indian Community, said the rules were drawn up in consultation with tribal representatives, who wanted their ancestors to recover dignity in death.

Repatriation isn’t just a rule on paper,” Newland said, “but it brings real meaningful healing and closure to people.”

c.2024 The New York Times Company

Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” is an illustration of how scared our innocent  and unaware youngsters must have been after being kidnapped and placed in the residential schools of horror run by the settler colonialists and the churches:

 mohawknationnews.com kahentinetha2@protonmail.com

MohawkMothers.ca

kahnistensera@riseup.net

box 911 kahnawake que. canada J0L 1B0 

CONTESTED SOVEREIGNTIES @ RVH/MCGILL UNIVERSITY

MNN. Jan. 24, 2024. Please Post & Distribute.

A cool young kanienkehaka [Mohawk] McGill student wrote this. Pictures were added by MNN:

TITLE: “A Landscape of Contested Sovereignties: Fissure Points Arising from the Archaeological

Investigation at the Old Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, Quebec

 by Dallas Karonhianoron Canady

ID: 260987251

Dr. Peter Johansen

ANTH 450: Archaeology of Landscapes

10 December 2023 Canady 1

TIME FOR INDIGENOUS TRUTH

We shall resist by every means any aggression, any violation of the treaties, any disturbance of our people in the free use and enjoyment of our land, any usurpation of our sovereignty, any encroachment and oppression. We pledge that the noise will be heard from one end of the world to the other.” — Louis Karoniaktajeh Hall (2023:167)

“[The] — David M. Schaepe (2009:244)

Ohèn:ton Tsi Karihwatéhkwen, Matters Before All Else

It is the summer of 2022. I’ve just finished my third year of undergraduate studies in anthropology at McGill University, but any sense of accomplishment I could have experienced was done away with following the death of my father on Easter Sunday. I’ve been bombarded with the responsibilities of handling his estate as his only child, just twenty-one years old. I spend most of my days at home, enraptured in a violent cycle of reminiscing on what used to be and catastrophizing about what my life could possibly become. Somehow, I managed to pick up a job working as a research assistant despite all of this. A professor in my department tasked me with reviewing and annotating some thirty-years worth of archaeological publications as it concerned the discipline’s engagement with Indigeneity, Indigenous peoples, and the concept of reconciliation. I finished my work in August, and it was around this time that I was put in touch with the Kanien’kehá:ka Kahnisténsera– also known as the Mohawk Mothers. They were preparing to file an injunction in Quebec’s Superior Court to stop a construction project that was going to take place on the northwestern sector of McGill’s downtown campus (Mohawk Nation News 2022).

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Figure 1. A screenshot of a model of the Société québécoise des infrastructures (2023) buildings of the Old Royal Victoria Hospital complex.

Known as the New Vic Project, this endeavor is framed as a collaborative effort between McGill University, the City of Montreal, and the government of Quebec to refurbish the shell of a hospital in the downtown core that has been partially abandoned since 2015. “Classic patient wards and medical facilities will be reimagined and completely reinvented,” notes the university’s website (McGill 2023), as classrooms, dormitories, research labs, restaurants and green spaces. The former Royal Victoria Hospital is considered a cultural heritage property (un immobilier de patrimoine culturel) belonging to the settler state. Further, the land that the hospital was built upon– in fact the entirety of what is now called Mount Royal– is itself considered a heritage site (Culture et Communications Québec 2023). Pursuant to Quebec’s Loi sur le patrimoine culturel (2011), this means that any and all construction taking place was to be subject to, and only to, provincial oversight.

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The Kanien’kehá:ka Kahnisténsera raised three potent issues in their application for an injunction: 1) that the land encompassing the Royal Victoria Hospital and Mount Royal fell under Mohawk jurisdiction; 2) as such, in accordance with the Kaianereh’ko:wa (Great Law of Peace) the Kahnisténsera are endowed with the responsibility of protecting the land for the future generations; and 3) also in accordance with the Kaianereh’ko:wa, the Kahnisténsera are entrusted with protecting any and all children of the past, present and future– dead or alive. They came forth with hundreds of articles of evidence detailing horrific crimes that took place at the site of the Royal Victoria Hospital throughout the 20th century, including the now infamous CIA-funded MK-Ultra brainwashing experiments (Burton 2023). Most damning is eyewitness testimony provided by a former patient, Lana Ponting, who alleges that she was institutionalized alongside Indigenous children at the hospital’s psychiatric institute and had reason to believe some of them were buried on the grounds (Annable 2020). In calling for a halt to construction, the Kanien’kehá:ka Kahnisténsera also demanded that there be an Indigenous-led archaeological investigation to protect any potential unmarked graves on the site.

The role of archaeology in this situation is a complex one. The investigation itself sits on a fragile border between historic and forensic, raising the question of how far in the past must a crime be committed in order to be considered archaeological and not punishable under state law. It is also unique in that it is the first search for unmarked graves of Indigenous children within the province of Quebec, in addition to the fact that this search is taking place at a hospital and not a former residential school site, as is the case elsewhere in Canada (Cooper 2023). But what I will focus on for the remainder of this paper is the way in which the Royal Victoria Hospital– as an archaeological site– has acted as a medium through which contested sovereignties are articulated, imagined and reified. I argue that in mobilizing the concept of, as well as legislation

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relating to cultural heritage, the settler-colonial state of Quebec is in fact making a claim to territoriality and political legitimacy. This is consistent with the historic weaponization of archaeology against the Mohawk nation, which has and continues to be used as a means to usurp our authority and belonging to Land.

A History of Archaeology in Quebec

There are very few scholarly publications concerning themselves with the history of archaeology of Quebec, as compared to the plethora of literature available on the history of archaeology within Canada as a whole. This is despite the fact that the oldest archaeological collection in Canada consists of slate arrowheads found by early 18th-century laborers near Trois-Rivières, Quebec in the town of Bécancour (Clermont 2001:1079). What research does exist primarily concerns itself with the recent development of commercial archaeology in the province (Arpin and Bergeron 2006; Zorzin 2010; Zorzin and Gates St-Pierre 2017; Gates St-Pierre 2018). These academics have largely endorsed the view that there was simply no formal discipline in the province prior to the secularization that took place during the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s (Gates St-Pierre 2018:3; Clermont 1999:8-9). Prior to this, it is argued that archaeology was an intellectual domain restricted to the interest of Catholic clergymen (Gates St-Pierre 2018:3-4), anglophone elites and foreigners (Martijn 1998:165-168).

A pillar in the history of archaeology in Quebec and Canada generally, is the re/discovery of the historic Indigenous settlement of Hochelaga in downtown Montreal circa 1860. Named the Dawson site after John William Dawson, a trained geologist and then-president of McGill University, archaeology was mobilized in this instance to “search for traces of […] Jacques Cartier’s voyage up the St. Lawrence River in 1535-1536” (Waselkov 2009:617). The existence of Hochelaga, and whether or not Cartier encountered Hochelaga or another site, have been

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debated at-length since the 19th century. Adding another degree of complexity to the Dawson site is the fact that Samuel de Champlain allegedly found, upon his return to the island of Montreal in 1603, that the village Cartier identified as Hochelaga “had disappeared entirely, leaving no trace of [its] existence” (Hale 1894:2). Dozens of archaeologists, over more than a century, have devoted exorbitant amounts of time and energy in an attempt to identify the ethnic identity of Hochelaga’s inhabitants. Unable to agree on any singular interpretation, this resulted in the creation of the mythic “St. Lawrence Iroquoians” (Trigger 1968). This ethno-historical label describes a group of Indigenous peoples who share traits with contemporary Indigenous nations, but indeterminately so. As described by James F. Pendergast (1975:50):

“[…] There was a large group of Iroquoians in the St. Lawrence River Valley above Hochelaga, present-day Montreal, who were not Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, Huron, or any of the other historic Iroquoian tribes to which they have been attributed. It is postulated that this distinct group of Iroquoians, the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, are the result of an in-situ development in the upper St. Lawrence River Valley during the period A.D. 1250-1575 [emphasis added].”

This narrative profoundly usurps any kind of modern-day claims to political authority and belonging to land made by Indigenous peoples, particularly as it concerns the Mohawks who have insisted that much of the St. Lawrence Valley was known and inhabited by our ancestors (Hall 2023; Gabriel-Doxtater and Van den Hende 1995; Delaronde and Engel 2015). By establishing the St. Lawrence Iroquoians as an entity separate and distinct from contemporary First Nations, and therefore non-existent in the present, archaeologists have created an imagined landscape. This landscape can be understood as res derelictae– that is, abandoned by its original inhabitants. Unoccupied territories fall under the domain of the Doctrine of Discovery: “the legal means by which Europeans claimed rights of sovereignty, property, and trade in regions they allegedly discovered” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada 2015:192). This blatant, yet unchallenged denialism has formed the roots of archaeological theory and practice in the

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province of Quebec, and beyond. In the next section, I will outline the ways in which archaeology has affirmed the authority of the settler-colonial state following its absorption into the Quebec government post-Quiet Revolution.

Archaeology, Colonialism, and the Codification of Heritage

Due to time and page constraints, I’m unable to discuss the particularities of the Quiet Revolution. However, there are two primary outcomes of the Revolution that are relevant to my endeavor here. The first of which concerns secularization and the centralization of public services under the provincial government, and secondly, the rise of Quebecois ethnonationalism. Both of these factors were influenced, in part, by growing anxieties about Quebec’s ability to determine its own place within Canada and an increasingly globalized world. It is within this socio-political milieu that archaeology came to be seen as an exploitable resource, one that politicians in particular needed to draw upon were they to advance their claims of a culturally distinct and/or sovereign Quebec (Zorzin and Gates St-Pierre 2017:415-16). Additionally, the government’s investment into archaeology as an institution manifested as a form of ‘speaking back’ to the minority of anglophone elite that dominated in the realms of politics and the economy since Quebec came under the jurisdiction of the British Crown in 1763. In many ways, the Quiet Revolution signaled the commitment of a majority of Quebecois to securing the right to self-determination.

1961 saw the establishment of a provincial archaeological regime in the creation of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs and its Service d’archéologie et d’ethnologie (Martijn 1998:150). L’Université de Montréal and McGill University founded their departments of anthropology soon thereafter, in 1961 and 1968, respectively (Gates St-Pierre 2018:3). The first piece of legislation to be passed concerning archaeology and cultural heritage in Quebec was the Loi sur les Biens

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culturels (“Cultural Property Act”) in 1972. This, alongside the concurrent Loi sur la qualité de l’environnement (“Environmental Protection Act”) mandated developers in the private and public sectors to investigate the archaeological potential of sites prior to construction or demolition, and report their findings back to the Minister of Cultural Affairs (Zorzin and Gates St-Pierre 2017:414). This included the newly incorporated infrastructure conglomerate, HydroQuébec. In fact, commercial archaeology largely developed in response to the overwhelming number of hydroelectricity projects taking place in Northern Quebec throughout the 1960s and 70s– projects that the provincial Service d’archéologie et d’ethnologie was ill-equipped to finance (Martijn 1998:171). Ultimately, archaeologists working in the province throughout the late 20th century were tasked with identifying and protecting aspects of cultural heritage while navigating the intense infrastructural demands associated with nation-building and modernization.

How exactly is cultural heritage defined under the provincial legislation? Under the Loi sur les Biens culturels, there was no definition of cultural heritage per se. Rather, a bien culturel (literally, “cultural good”) was defined as “a work of art, a historic property, a historic monument or site, an archaeological property or site, or a cinematographic, audiovisual, photographic, radio or television work” (1985 [1972]:3). In contrast, the act that succeeded the original 1972 legislation, the Loi sur le patrimoine culturel (2011) elaborated on several heritage-related terms. An objet patrimonial is classified as “a movable property […] that has archaeological, artistic, emblematic, ethnological, historical, scientific, social or technological value, in particular a work of art, an instrument, furniture or an artifact” (2011:5). Further, paysages culturels patrimonials (“cultural heritage landscapes”) are defined as lands “recognized by a community for [their] remarkable landscape features […] and are worth conserving and, if applicable, enhancing because of their historical or emblematic interest, or their value as a source of identity” (2011:5).

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It is never explicitly stated whose heritage or culture is being referred to in the act. Legally speaking, objects and sites of cultural heritage themselves are stated to “belong to the owner (whether private or public) of the land where they are found” (Gates St-Pierre 2018:5). This is a reflection of the Quebec government’s disengagement with the management and implementation of archaeological practice since the 1990s, wherein it has relegated more and more power to municipalities and private corporations. This does not, however, reflect a diffusal of Quebecois ethnonationalism or a disinterest in cultural heritage. Rather, I would argue that Quebec’s release of much of the control it originally allotted itself in the Loi sur les Biens culturels signifies two things– one being a certain comfortability/air of stability with narratives surrounding Quebec’s history and Quebecois identity, and the other being the implication of private entities in the protection/enforcement of the province’s authority and claims to territoriality. In other words, neither colonialism nor archaeology have disengaged from their reliance on each other– their relationship has merely transformed to fit the demands of capitalist settler-colonial realities.

Kahentinétha et al. vs. Société Québécoise des Infrastructures et al. (2023)

My historical overture of archaeology and heritage law in Quebec serves as a framework that one can use to understand in greater depth the situation that has arisen at the site of the Old Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, which I described briefly in the introductory section of this essay. Here, I aim to dig into the specificities that make this archaeological site a landscape of contested sovereignties. Given that the parties involved remain in court and fieldwork is on-going, my analysis should be taken with a grain of salt, insofar that the situation could develop significantly from now (December 2023) onwards. The case brought forth by the Kanien’kehá:ka Kahnisténsera is precedent-setting in the context of Quebec, and even more so

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for First Nations across Canada who are engaged in on-going searches for missing and murdered Indigenous women, children and two-spirit folks. As the New Vic Project is taking place within a site registered as a heritage property (the Old Royal Victoria Hospital), which itself sits within the context of a greater heritage landscape (Mount Royal), it is subject to the oversight of the government of Quebec. This includes the Ministry of Culture and Communications, which is responsible for approving archaeology and construction permits, as well as the Société québécoise des infrastructures (SQI), an intergovernmental entity that acts as a property manager for the province. Under the Loi sur le patrimoine culturel, public and private institutions alike have no requirement to notify or consult Indigenous peoples about infrastructure work, archaeological investigations, or changes to heritage legislation/status. Rather, the Minister of Culture and Communications is merely entrusted with the power to “enter into agreements […] with a Native community represented by its band council” should such an agreement lead to the development of “knowledge of cultural heritage and protect, transmit or enhance that heritage” (2011:26). This framework is problematic for several reasons: 1) it establishes the acknowledgement of Indigenous presence and authority as optional; 2) the only Indigenous political body that could possibly be acknowledged or collaborated with is the federally-imposed band council system, and; 3) such agreements should only be drawn up if they are perceived as being beneficial to the settler state.

McGill University (2023), as a party leasing land from the SQI for its portion of the New Vic Project, alleges that it “engaged Indigenous communities” as early as 2019, in an effort towards “making the New Vic welcoming and culturally safe for the entire Montreal community.” This included, among other things, notices sent to the three Mohawk band councils surrounding the island of Montreal– but no notice was sent to the Kanien’kehá:ka Kahnisténsera,

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whom I will reiterate are the traditional title holders under the Kaianereh’kó:wa (Hall 2023; Hill 2017). In my personal experience working with the Kanien’kehá:ka Kahnisténsera, I’ve come to conclude that Indigenous involvement in the New Vic Project was either an afterthought, or a thought given very little critical attention. For example, McGill University, the SQI and its contracted archaeological firm Arkéos, proceeded with archaeological fieldwork during the two days that the Kanien’kehá:ka Kahnisténsera’s motion for an injunction was being heard in Quebec’s Superior Court in October 2022 (CBC News 2022).

Only after the judge mandated collaboration did McGill and SQI enter into negotiations to do so. This resulted in the creation of a settlement agreement between the parties in April 2023. A legally enforceable contract, the agreement outlines the nature of the parties’ collaboration as well as the parameters that the archaeological investigation must follow. Crucially, this included the following: 1) the investigation must be Indigenous-led; 2) must conform to Indigenous laws and protocols; 3) must be in accordance with archaeological best practices, as outlined by the Canadian Archaeological Association; and, 4) must be undertaken in the spirit of reconciliation (Falconers LLP 2023a). Additional safeguard measures were put in place by the settlement agreement to ensure these articles were followed, including the establishment of a third-party expert panel of archaeologists and a body of Indigenous cultural monitors to survey fieldwork as it progressed.

A degree of collaboration took place in the summer of 2023, especially after the allegations of unmarked graves were verified by historic human remains detection dogs in June (Fournier 2023a) and ground-penetrating radar in July (Grewal 2023). However, any trust that existed between the parties was shattered after the Kanien’kehá:ka Kahnisténsera and Indigenous cultural monitors were assaulted on-site by an SQI-hired security guard in July (Fournier 2023b).

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Tensions were further exacerbated that same month when McGill University and the SQI signaled their intent to dismiss the expert panel and most, if not all, of their recommendations for best practices (Falconers LLP 2023b). Additionally, throughout my time working as a cultural monitor at the New Vic site, I either experienced firsthand or witnessed service providers’ (archaeologists, GPR technicians, among others) open hostility to any questions or concerns raised about their methods and/or analyses. Then in October 2023, the SQI stated that they were no longer going to allow the Kanien’kehá:ka Kahnisténsera to be present on the site, regardless of whether or not archaeological digs were taking place. With the safeguards they had fought so hard for made void by McGill University and the Société québécoise des infrastructures, they turned once more to the court for help. On November 20th, 2023, a judge once again ruled in their favor, finding McGill and SQI in breach of the settlement agreement (Falconers LLP 2023b). But no degree of punishment or enforcement of the law has been seen since, even as archaeological work has increasingly given way to full-on construction and demolition efforts.

Conclusion

What the case put forth by the Kanien’kehá:ka Kahnisténsera does in this instance is disrupt the normative assumptions that Quebecois political authority and territoriality are inherent, unquestionable and absolute; and further, that a landscape or aspects of a landscape are ‘things’ that can be owned. In demanding to not only be consulted but to lead the archaeological investigation, the Kanien’kehá:ka Kahnisténsera are asserting Mohawk sovereignty and their unrelinquished title to land. The inability of colonial institutions such as universities and governments to recognize Indigenous political authority outside of the band council system, and therefore, the inability to recognize Indigenous authority as existing beyond the confines of the reserve system, reflects an inability to accept Indigenous peoples’ rights to self-determination

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and sovereignty. These profound disconnections, notes David Schaepe (2009:244), “remain as points of contention and conflict” so long as the same relational dynamic exists between colonial and Indigenous bodies, and/or as long as one continues to assert an existence that negates the life of the other. At the site of the Royal Victoria Hospital, divergent understandings of landscapes and sovereignty has resulted in an almost complete divergence from the Kanien’kehá:ka Kahnisténsera’s mandate: to find and protect the unmarked graves of children.

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References Annable, Kristin 2020                                                                                                                                                    Winnipeg Woman Brainwashed in Montreal Psychiatric Hospital Hopes New Year Brings New Compensation. CBC Investigates, January 2nd, 2020. Accessed December 7th, 2023. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/mkultra-allan-winnipeg-cameron-1.5410817.

Arpin, Roland and Yves Bergeron 2006                                                                                                                                        Developing a Policy on Cultural Heritage for Quebec. Museum International 58(4): pp. 70-76. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0033.2006.00585.x.

Burton, Orisanmi 2023                                                                                                                                                                                  New Docs Link CIA to Medical Torture of Indigenous Children and Black Prisoners. Truthout, June 22nd, 2023. Accessed December 7th, 2023. https://truthout.org/articles/new-docs-link-cia-to-medical-torture-of-indigenous-childrenand-black-prisoners/.

CBC News 2022                                                                                                                                                                          Kanien’kehá:ka Elders Win Fight for Injunction to Stop Work at Montreal’s Old Royal Victoria Hospital, October 28th, 2022. https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6632734.

Clermont, Norman 

1999 Archéologie: La préhistoire québécoise. In Québec 2000. Multiples visages d’une culture, edited by Robert Lahaise, pp. 57-75. Éditions Hurtubise: Montreal.

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Cooper, Anderson 2023                                                                                                                                                                    Canada’s Unmarked Graves: How Residential Schools Carried Out ‘Cultural Genocide’ Against Indigenous Children. CBS News, February 12th, 2023. Accessed December 7th, 2023. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/canada-residential-schools-unmarked-graves-indigenous -children-60-minutes-2023-02-12/.

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Falconers LLP 2023a                                                                                                                                                                           Historic Deal in Search of Indigenous Children: Mohawk Mothers Succeed in Holding McGill and Quebec Accountable. Webpage, accessed December 10th, 2023. https://falconers.ca/historic-deal-in-search-of-indigenous-children/.

2023b McGill/SQI Found in Breach of Court Ordered Settlement for Firing Expert Panel at Royal Vic Redevelopment. Webpage, accessed December 10th, 2023. https://falconers.ca/mcgill-sqi-found-in-breach-of-court-ordered-settlement-for-firing-exp ert-panel-at-royal-vic-redevelopment/.

Fournier, Emelia 2023a                                                                                                                                                                          Cadaver Dogs Sniff Out Potential Human Remains Near Old Royal Victoria Hospital Site. Webpage, accessed December 10th, 2023. https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/cadaver-dogs-sniff-out-potential-human-remainsnear-old-royal-victoria-hospital-site/.

2023b Video Shows Security Guard Confronting Mohawk Mothers at University Site in Montreal. Webpage, accessed December 10th, 2023. https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/video-shows-security-guard-confronting-mohawk-mothers-at-university-site-in-montreal/.

Gabriel-Doxtater, Brenda K. and Arlette Kawanatatie Van den Hende 1995                                                                                           At the Woods’ Edge: An Anthology of the History of the People of Kanehsatà:ke. Kanehsatà:ke Education Center: Kanehsatà:ke.

Gates St-Pierre, Christian 2018                                                                                                                                                          Quebec Archaeology. In Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, edited by Claire Smith, pp. 1-9. Springer Publishing, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51726-1_2632-1.

Government of Quebec 1985 [1972] Loi sur les biens culturels. Webpage, accessed December 7th, 2023. https://www.legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca/fr/document/lc/B-4.

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Grewal, Jasjot 2023                                                                                                                                                                                McGill Reports Nine Potential Grave Zones at New Vic Site a Week After Security Verbally Assaulted Mohawk Mothers. Webpage, accessed December 10th, 2023. https://www.thetribune.ca/news/mcgill-reports-nine-potential-grave-zones-at-new-vic-site -a-week-after-security-verbally-assaulted-mohawk-mothers-04092023/.

Hall, Louis Karoniaktajeh 2023                                                                                                                                                          Mohawk Warrior Society: A Handbook on Sovereignty and Survival, eds. Philippe Blouin, Matt Peterson, Malek Rasamny and Kahentinetha Rotiskarewake.. Between the Lines Ltd., Toronto.

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Hale, Horatio 1894                                                                                                                                                                                      The Fall of Hochelaga: A Study of Popular Tradition. Journal of American Folklore 7(24): pp. 1-14. https://doi.org/10.2307/532956.

Hill, Susan 2017                                                                                                                                                                                          The Clay We Are Made Of: Haudenosaunee Land Tenure on the Grand River. University of Manitoba Press, Winnipeg. https://mcgill.on.worldcat.org/oclc/1027127440.

Martijn, Charles A. 1998                                                                                                                                                                              Bits and Pieces, Glimpses and Glances: A Retrospect on Prehistoric Research in Quebec. In Bringing Back the Past: Historical Perspectives on Canadian Archaeology, edited by Pamela J. Smith and Donald Mitchell, pp. 163-190. University of Ottawa Press: Ottawa.

McGill University 2023                                                                                                                                                                                The Site: The New Vic Project. Webpage, accessed December 7th, 2023. https://www.mcgill.ca/newvic/site.

Mohawk Nation News 2023 Mohawk Mothers File Case August 25th, 2022. Webpage, accessed December 7th, 2023. https://mohawknationnews.com/blog/2022/08/27/mohawk-mothers-file-case-aug-25-22/.

Pendergast, James F. 1975                                                                                                                                                                          An In-Situ Hypothesis to Explain the Origins of the St. Lawrence Iroquoians. Ontario Archaeology 25(1): pp. 47-55.

Schaepe, David M. 2009                                                                                                                                                                      Identity and the Cultural Landscape of S’ólh Téméxw. In Be of Good Mind: Essays on the Coast Salish, edited by B. G. Miller, pp. 234-259. UBC Press, Vancouver.

Société québécoise des infrastructures 2023                                                                                                                      Requalification du site de l’ancien Hôpital Royal Victoria. Webpage, accessed December 7th, 2023. https://projetroyalvictoria.com/.

Trigger, Bruce 1968                                                                                                                                                                        Archaeological and Other Evidence: A Fresh Look at the ‘Laurentian Iroquois.’ American Antiquity 33(4): pp. 429-440. https://doi.org/10.2307/278594.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada 2015                                                                                                              Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Library and Archives Canada: Ottawa.

Waselkov, Gregory A. 2009                                                                                                                                                                    French Colonial Archaeology. In International Handbook for Historical Archaeology, edited by Teresita Majewski and David Gaimster, pp. 613-628. Springer Publishing, Cham.

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Zorzin, Nicolas 2010                                                                                                                                                                      Archéologie au Québec: portrait d’une profession. Archéologiques 23(1): pp. 1-15. https://proxy.library.mcgill.ca/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=t rue&db=ahl&AN=56518674&scope=site.

Zorzin, Nicolas and Christian Gates St-Pierre 2017                                                                                                                                The Sociopolitics of Archaeology in Quebec: Regional Developments within Global Trends. Archaeologies 13(1): pp. 412-434. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11759-017-9328-4.”

This is celebration time. So come on. Bring the good times.  Stand up and move your feet with Kool and the Gang: 

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kahentinetha2@protonmail.com POBox 991, kahnawake Que.  Canada. J0L 1B0

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MMN. Jan, 1 2024. Everybody knows and agrees that the defendants violated the judge’s order. If there is no more agreement, then the case reverts to the original mandate. The judge can force the defendants to obey his order of October 27th 2022. In our way, if two indigenous people work out an agreement, and one  violates it, then there would be some kind of serious confrontation. According to all parties, “this was agreed to so that the differences could be resolved in a nice way”. The plaintiffs did all they could to fulfill the agreement. We’ve never withheld any information. Now they lost another argument and have appealed it. 

Finding our children is our destiny. Our three issues are: finding our children, who killed them, and who is accountable. We are unfamiliar with the white man’s court system. We know our system of justice, the kaianerekowa. These children were brought here to McGill and its institutions and they died here. We must find them. Those responsible must be held accountable. Everybody knows murder is a crime. We want proof. Our murdered children are being found all over turtle island. Obviously the institutions do not want to be charged or held accountable. 

The corporation of Canada and its institutions are concerned about money. Their investors want to keep McGill going to make military and mental hardware. They don’t appear to be concerned about students. Quebec Premier Legault wants a French Quebec Republic on indigenous land! Impossible! Mcgill wants to keep everybody at bay. We came to this court because it is their way of law. We have our own justice system with checks and balances that far outweigh the colonial corporate construct of Canada. Since they appear not willing to follow our justice system, the only appellant court we will recognize is the World Appellant Court in The Hague.  

Remember, this is a crime scene. Everybody knows no one is suppose to contaminate a crime scene. If the victims were other than indigenous, nobody would tolerate such tampering of evidence. It is not in McGill’s interest for the truth of the crime to be revealed. 

Sections 35 and 52 of the Constitution Act of Canada 1982 states clearly that Section 35 recognizes the indigenous culture and principles; and Section 52 acknowledges the supremacy of the indigenous way on mother earth. All other laws are null and void. We must find our children. Even Prime minister Trudeau vowed, “We’re going to find those bodies”. 

The judges of the appeal court are appointed by the Prime Minister. So there is a bias here. Our great peace does not recognize the white man’s system. The colonial Constitution Act of 1982 provides that Canada has recognized aboriginal rights which lays the groundwork for the supreme court of Canada to deal with this issue. This ground breaking precedent applies throughout turtle island. McGill and SQI are trespassing on turtle island of which we are the caretakers since time immemorial to the end . We cannot give it up as we belong to the land. Today we are imprisoned in reserve compounds throughout turtle island.  

The appeals court judges must become acquainted with us to understand our natural position on our motherland. We are constantly being bashed with procedural rules from a foreign system of lawyers who take oaths to foreign entities. They create procedural swamps of foreign sewage. 

They try to erase the reality of the murders of our children to stops us from saying anything. They make it like nothing ever happened by putting the genocide into foreign concepts.

The same entity sets up the courts, appoints the judges, makes up those biased laws to cover up their crimes and also carry out the crimes without impunity. This is a “stacked deck”. Like las vegas the house always wins. The “house” is the court of appeal. 

The kasatstensera kowa soiera is the ‘great natural power’ that provides us with the ‘way’ that we are to live, according to the instructions of creation with all our brothers, sisters, families, which includes the natural world of which we are a part.  

No one ever asked us if we agreed to their reservation system or their Admiralty Court system. The citizens of Canada today have never been asked if they agree to be ruled by a Governor General and Privy Council mocking a foreign autocrat.  We wonder what is wrong with the Canadian people who do not event think of these things. The shareholders of the company of Canada don’t ever want their corporate property/citizens to vote on any constitution.

Leonard Cohen says that “Everybody knows”:

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