Members of an Ontario indigenous group have moved to temporarily disrupt construction work at the St. Lawrence Market North redevelopment, saying the City of Toronto has not allowed an indigenous archaeologist to monitor the site.
Aaron Detlor from the Haudenosaunee Development Institute walked onto the jobsite, located at the northwest corner of Front and Jarvis streets on Wednesday in the early afternoon and informed them that he was there to exercise his treaty rights as a member of an indigenous community with ties to the site in question and to prevent any more construction work from occurring.
“We had a discussion about who had priority of interest,” Detlor said, referring to the conflict between his treaty rights and the city’s property rights at the site. “They asked me to leave and I refused.”
A short while later, police arrived at the scene to remove Detlor from the property.
He said they and the workers eventually “all packed up and left” the job site sometime later.
Toronto City spokesperson Natasha Hinds-Fitzsimmons said archaeological work at the site resumed Wednesday afternoon and work continued unimpeded on Thursday.
Detlor said the Haudenosaunee people want their own archaeologist allowed into the job site to observe the conduct of construction workers.
“We just want to have somebody on the ground, with an eye out, watching.”
The city knocked down the existing structure on the site last summer and plans to build a multi-use structure including space for a northern portion of St. Lawrence Market, a municipal offences court and an underground parking garage.
Work is expected to be complete by 2019.
Detlor says the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, which represents the Iroquois nations of Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca scattered throughout Ontario and Quebec, has been in talks with the City of Toronto for five or six months.
“At this point we’re waiting for the city to come back and engage in negotiation.”
Hinds-Fitzsimmons said the city considers St. Lawrence North a “Euro-Canadian archaeological site.”
It is believed that remnants of three older market buildings —dating to 1831, 1851 and 1904 — once stood on that site.
She said that the city has offered to involve the Haudenosaunee in the archaeological exploration of the site only “in the event that archaeological resources are encountered and deemed to be indigenous in origin.”
Detlor said the construction firm at the site has an archaeologist monitoring construction, but the Haudenosaunee wants their own archaeologist at the site, as the construction company’s archeologist may be pressured not to interfere with construction if rare items are located.
He said the city’s approach falls short of what indigenous peoples expect in these cases and doesn’t take into account their concerns, but the city says it is following its official plan, and the law.
“This approach is in accordance with all legislated and City of Toronto Official Plan requirements,” Hinds-Fitzsimmons said. She added that archaeological assessment is already underway.
Detlor said the city’s stance ignores the concerns his group has about the site, even if it is likely no indigenous artifacts are buried there.
“From our perspective, the very land itself is sacred – digging into the land itself, our mother earth, is a violation.”
He said that so long as the city does not negotiate with his group, they will continue to exercise their treaty rights and periodically disrupt construction work at the site.
