Mohawk traditionalists in Kahnawake are unhappy that the local band council is supporting the government's plan to complete the eastern section of Highway 30 along a rural corridor of expropriated farm land outside the reserve.
Stuart Myiow, secretary of the Mohawk Traditional Council, said yesterday the original plan, developed under the former Parti Québécois government, to complete Highway 30 on the existing Highway 132, between Candiac and Ste. Catherine, would have been preferable for Mohawks.
Myiow said it makes no sense for the band council to support highway construction along a rural corridor where Kahnawake Mohawks have a longstanding land claim.
The traditional council represents the old hereditary form of Mohawk governance.
The band council, which is elected, is the representative body with which the government of
The two councils are often at odds on public policy.
Last weekend, the band council withdrew its opposition to the start of Highway 30 completion work in return for a pledge from the provincial government to help provide the Kahnawake reserve with land compensation.
That claim can only really be extinguished, however, through negotiations between the band council and the federal government. But the provincial government is promising to transfer certain provincial crown lands over to federal control, so that the federal government can in turn make them part of an eventual land-claim settlement.
The Mohawk land claim is the most important such aboriginal claim in the Greater Montreal area and one of 450 unresolved land claims in
The band council and federal government have been negotiating the Mohawk claim since 2005. It is rooted in a seigneurial grant made to the Jesuit order in 1680 by which the Jesuits were put in charge of running the seigneury for the use and benefit of the "Iroquois of the Sault" - today, the Mohawks who live near the Lachine Rapids.
The original seigneury territory includes land on which the the municipalities of Delson, Ste. Catherine and St. Constant are located, as well as rural land where the new Highway 30 link is to be built.
Construction work began last Monday.
Myiow, a representative of the Wolf clan within the traditional council, said the band council's condoning of green space being turned into highway "is absolutely in no way representative" of historic Mohawk values.
Highway 132 is already asphalt - that's where Highway 30 should go, he said.
The band council said the land compensation promised by