Cody Diabo meets with mayors
Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK) grand chief Cody Diabo met with the mayors of surrounding municipalities earlier this week, as part of an effort to remind them of the outstanding land grievance with Canada.
“There’s definitely lots of work to do in the future,” said Diabo, who met with many of the leaders for the first time ever on Wednesday.
That group included all the mayors represented among the Roussillon regional county. Diabo got the chance to meet with them after they had gathered in St. Constant that day for the county’s regularly scheduled meeting, held at the end of each month.
Some of those municipalities sit squarely in the footprint of the former Seigneury of Sault St. Louis. In spite of the band council’s long-standing grievance with Canada over that land base, development is continuing without any effort to consult, or even notify, the community of Kahnawake, Diabo said.
He mentioned a number of housing projects that are already underway in particular. One The Eastern Door has already reported on proposed along Highway 30 in Chateauguay would require the destruction of wetlands to move forward.
While many of these leaders are certainly familiar with the land grievance, what they’re not considering is their respective responsibilities in light of it, Diabo said. Those responsibilities include consultation, he said.
“People also need to be made aware that if you’re promoting these areas to be developed by different developers, the developers should also know that they’re developing, in our view, without the proper consent from the original title holders. That’s still our land,” he said.
“We have to have these frank conversations,” the MCK grand chief added. “And that’s what I told them. I said, ‘You know, it’s Kahnawake’s intent that we’re getting our land back.’”
The band council would not agree to selling returned land to those municipalities if a return of parcels is finalized one day, he said.
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Work is underway to host another gathering that would include not just the mayors of those municipalities, but all their elected officials, to continue the discussion. The hope is to see something scheduled for the spring, with the aim of providing officials with an in-depth history of the land grievance and its legal implications.
Diabo said he hopes federal and provincial officials will also be willing to take part.
