A group of Indigenous women is hoping to stop bulldozers from demolishing a former Montreal hospital they believe may hold the truth about missing children from a half-century-old CIA experiment.
They have been trying to get McGill University and the Quebec government to delay the construction project for the past two years.
“They took our children and did all kinds of things to them. They were experimenting on them,” said Kahentineta, an 85-year-old activist from the Mohawk community of Kahnawake, southwest of Montreal, who goes by only one name.
Activists are relying on records and evidence that show the site contains unmarked graves of children who were previously housed at the Royal Victoria Hospital and neighbouring psychiatric hospital, the Allan Memorial Institute.
In the 1950s and 1960s, behind the unassuming walls of an old psychiatric institute, the US Central Intelligence Agency funded a human experimentation program called MKU Ultra.
During the Cold War, the program aimed to develop procedures and drugs to effectively brainwash people.
Experiments were carried out in Britain, Canada and the United States, subjecting people – including children indigenous to Montreal – to electro-shock, hallucinogenic drugs and sensory deprivation.
“They wanted to wipe us out,” Kahentineta said.
A leading figure in the indigenous rights movement who travelled to Britain and the United States to denounce colonialism, she described the battle as “the most important fight of her life”.
“We want to know why they did this and who will take the blame,” he said.
sniffer dogs
In autumn 2022, the Mothers obtained an injunction to suspend work on a new university campus and research centre on the site – a project priced at 870 million Canadian dollars (US$643 million).
Fellow activist Quetio, 52, who uses only one name, said he insisted on arguing the case on his own without lawyers, “because in our modus operandi, no one speaks for us.”
Last summer, sniffer dogs and special investigators were brought in to search the property’s vast and dilapidated buildings. They were successful in identifying three areas of interest for excavation.
But, according to McGill and the government’s Société québécoise des infrastructures (SQI), “no human remains have been found.”
The Mohawk mothers accuse the university and a government infrastructure agency of violating the agreement by selecting the archaeologists who conducted the search and ending their work too quickly.
“They gave themselves the power to lead investigations into crimes that might have been committed in the past by their own employees,” says Philippe Blouin, an anthropologist who worked with the mothers.
Although his appeal was rejected earlier this month, he has vowed to continue his fight.
“People need to know history so it doesn’t repeat itself,” Quetió said.
In recent years, Canada has opened its eyes to the atrocities of the past.
For generations, Indigenous children have been sent to residential schools, where they were stripped of their language, culture and identity, which the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Report said amounted to “cultural genocide.”
Between 1831 and 1996, about 150,000 Aboriginal children were removed from their homes and sent to 139 such schools. Many thousands of them never returned to their communities.
In May 2021, the discovery of the unmarked graves of 215 children at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia triggered national reflection on this dark chapter in Canadian history, as well as the search for more graves across Canada.
“It wasn’t just residential schools, it also included hospitals, sanatoriums, churches and orphanages,” said Quetio.
For him, the most important thing is to shed light on what happened so that “things can change” and “the harmony that existed before colonialism can be restored.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
