One small step forward — and a challenge to take another

The Manitoba government said this week it had completed the removal of all material and structures that supported the search for the remains of Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran at the Prairie Green Landfill.

The remains of Harris and Myran, Indigenous victims of a serial killer, were found there in February 2025, a few weeks after the search began.

A 2023 feasibility study funded by the federal government and spearheaded by an Indigenous-led committee suggested the search could take up to three years, be extremely dangerous and cost about $184 million. This meant many thought the search should not — or even could not — be done.

Members of the Winnipeg police — including then-chief Danny Smyth previously said a search was “unfeasible,” as did then-Tory premier Heather Stefanson.

They were wrong.

As Thursday’s news release from the Manitoba government stated: “The search was completed and decommissioned in a safe and fiscally responsible manner, with a final cost of $18.4 million.”

Now, we live in a Manitoba where every tax-paying citizen, whether they supported searching the landfill or not, is responsible in one way or another in treating Indigenous women as human beings.

For whatever it is worth, everyone in this province took a step — perhaps a small, seemingly insignificant step but one nonetheless — in reversing the mistreatment of Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people, or what the National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls called a “genocide.”

In spite of the doubts, the odds and the fear, this step has been important and should be recognized.

It’s also important to point out that one step does not a journey make. The search continues for the remains of Ashlee Shingoose, another victim of the man who killed Harris and Myran.

The equipment and material used at Prairie Green have been moved to the Brady Road Landfill, and are being used right now to find Shingoose. There is no planned end date for that search.

“The hope is always that we will find Ashlee long before we get to having to have those (closing the search) conversations,” Premier Wab Kinew said earlier this week.

I can’t tell you how many steps it will take to stop the genocide of Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people.

I’ll start with this: however many steps it took for people in leadership in this country to say it is “unfeasible” to treat Indigenous women as human beings, it will take at least as many to eradicate such racist, divisive, and genocidal ideas.

Every time I witness a positive step, though, there seems to be an equal step in another direction.

In 2024, for example, the governments of Canada and Manitoba partnered to study the value of a “red dress alert” program that could help Canadian institutions and police respond quickly and effectively when an Indigenous woman, girl or two-spirit person goes missing.

A $1.3-million pilot study, headed by the Indigenous-led grassroots group Giganawenimaanaanig, was released in November 2025 and offered ideas about how to deliver the initiative.

Nothing has happened and there’s no promise the alert system will be created as governments focus on “projects of the national interest.”

You know what should be a project of the national interest?

Stopping a genocide.

Like I said: one step ahead, one step back. Or, in this case, paralysis.

As citizens who have searched a landfill know now, this is not the time to be paralyzed by doubt, fear, or the odds.

In other words, it’s time to take another step.

On Tuesday, the sixth annual MMIWG2S+ Walk for Justice will take place. It coincides with Red Dress Day (named after Manitoba artist Jaime Black’s Red Dress Project), the national day of awareness for MMIWG2S people.

The day provides an opportunity for every person in this country to wear red to honour victims of violence and bring awareness to the ongoing violence experienced by Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people.

Thousands of citizens will raise awareness of the disproportionate violence against Indigenous women, support grieving families, and demand action on the 231 calls for justice from the National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls.

There are a few events in Winnipeg, with the largest taking place at 5:30 p.m. at the Oodena Circle at The Forks. It is organized by community activists, such as Cedar Lorraine Clements, organizations, including Changemaker 231, and community partners, like the Free Press.

I will wear red that day as I participate by walking.

I hope you will, too, and in all that you do, every day, help stop the violence against our relatives.

I hope you will take a step. A step for all, together.

niigaan.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca