David Grey Eagle Sanford says the spirits of his ancestors can still be seen on land in Markham that once was a Huron village.

Representatives of the Hurons, Seneca and Mohawks gathered on the site yesterday to say they are appalled that their sacred ground is about to become a burial ground for Catholics.

They are taking the province to court over a hasty land swap for the 69-hectare site north of Steeles Avenue near Reesor Road that they say was done without consulting the natives or doing environmental assessments for a Catholic cemetery.

"We see it as a desecration. It is a total lack of respect for the dead," said Mr. Sanford, director of the Wapiti Alliance of native bands and liaison for the Huron Wendat Nation.

The Huron Wendat had a village on the site for several centuries until the people relocated to Quebec in 1649.

He said the natives haven't forgotten that Jesuit missionaries tried to break their belief that spirits stay behind to watch over the bones of the dead. And they are still trying to heal the wounds created by abuses natives suffered in Catholic-run residential schools.

A lawsuit Mr. Sanford filed on behalf of the Huron Wendat alleges the Ontario Realty Corp. breached provincial environmental rules by not doing a full assessment of the site's heritage and ecology before the land deal.

The ORC is to appear in Provincial Court on Sept. 13 to turn over documents about the swap, said David Donnelley, legal director of Environmental Defence Canada, which is representing the Hurons in the case.

The area was part of a tract expropriated by the province in the 1970s, when an international airport was being planned in Pickering.

In 1999, the ORC traded the Reesor Road site for property the archdiocese owned south of Highway 407. The 407 land was then sold to a developer to build a residential subdivision.

Gordon Milroy, whose family farmed the Reesor Road land for 170 years, can testify to the haste in which the ORC made the deal.

Mr. Milroy had been paying rent to the province after expropriation in the 1970s, but in 1997 he was told by the ORC that he could buy back the land.

After two years of negotiation, he signed a letter of intent. "On May 12, 1999, they called me in, and I thought they had a proposed price. Instead, they told me they were withdrawing the offer because the land was being swapped with the cemetery board," Mr. Milroy said.

His father, Lester, who had the farm next door, had just died. "They sent me a letter of condolence along with an order to be off the land by May 31 because the Catholics were taking over," Mr. Milroy said.

The family had to sell off the furnishings of the century-old home on the land. "That part made me really angry," said Mr. Milroy, who now farms in Cannington.

Mr. Milroy said mounds on the land are clearly Indian burial sites, but they have never been farmed, and a thicket of trees has grown around them.

Murray Johnston, president of the Rouge Valley Foundation, said that although a cemetery sounds more benign than housing, there are major environmental concerns about a burial development of that size in the Rouge River valley.

"The graves are actually cement enclosures. You really create a cement barrier to water flow," Mr. Johnston said.

Environmentalists have expressed concern that chemical fertilizers and pesticides that cemeteries use to tend their grounds will find their way into the river.

But Mr. Johnston said environmental groups have been hamstrung because the sale is complete.

"As far as we are concerned, this has gone through extensive ecological assessment," said Richard Hayes, spokesman for the Catholic Cemeteries of the Archdiocese of Toronto.

He said the organization that develops cemeteries for Catholics has held a number of public hearings over the past three years.

Mr. Hayes said there are easements on the portion of the site that includes the former village and the burial mounds, which require that they not be developed until additional heritage studies are done.

He said the cemetery will be developed in stages over a century and there will be no need to use the disputed area for at least 40 years. He said native groups will be involved in consultations on use of the native site.

The Catholics have "no right to ever disturb the spirits resting in the ground," Mr. Sanford stated before yesterday's ceremony on the land.

He said native groups were not consulted about the cemetery plan.

"I think we have a responsibility to teach future generations who was first here," Mr. Sanford said.