DESERONTO, Ont. - About 30 members of an eastern Ontario aboriginal community have erected barricades outside a construction-related business in the town of Deseronto.
Shawn Brant, spokesman for the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte, says the protest is being held outside a quarry operated by Thurlow Aggregates, at Desoronto Road and Highway 2.
He says the company was targeted because it would be assisting in the development of a condominium development on disputed land called the Culbertson Land Tract.
Brant says the protest was forced by Kingston developer Tim Leith when he set today as a deadline for progress to be made in the ongoing land dispute.
Brant says a number of police officers are watching the peaceful protest.
The federal government earlier appointed land claims negotiator Sean Kennedy to try to resolve the dispute, which is eerily similar to one at the heart of an ongoing aboriginal occupation in Caledonia, Ont., south of Hamilton.
The Indian Claims Commission website says the Mohawks' claim centres on the illegal disposition of some 827 acres of land in 1836 and 1837. The tract consists of land within the original Mohawk Tract granted to and reserved for the Six Nations in 1793.
The basis of the Mohawk claim is that no part of the Culbertson Tract was ever given up. The claim was submitted in 1995 and accepted for negotiation in 2003.
