‘It’s a waiting game right now’

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This article was published 16/07/2023 (784 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Forty-eight hours after receiving paper slips ordering them to stop blocking a Winnipeg landfill, one of which was immediately set on fire by a recipient, protesters sat around a fire in the middle of a road in front of the depot’s main entrance.

“It’s a waiting game right now,” Melissa Robinson said outside the Brady Road landfill, gathered with relatives and other supporters condemning the province’s decision not to search another local landfill for the remains of her cousin Morgan Harris.

“We know they’re coming. They’re not going to allow us to continue to sit here, but… when they come, I expressed to the liaison officer that I spoke to the day (the injunction) was granted, I said: ‘Then, you know what? You guys can come and remove it yourselves. We’re having no part in that.’”

On Friday, Court of King’s Bench Justice Sheldon Lanchbery approved the City of Winnipeg’s application for an injunction. Lanchbery told the downtown courtroom there would be environmental and safety risks if operations were unable to continue at the city-owned depot south of the Perimeter Highway.

The ruling was met with outrage among members of the audience. Despite shouts of anger, the temporary injunction came into effect on July 14 at 6 p.m.

Melissa and George Robinson are among a handful of individuals named on the order. The couple, who was not around the dump when officials arrived with physical orders on Friday evening, has yet to be served individually.

Both of them explicitly asked their lawyer not to accept the injunction of their behalf.

“People need to ask themselves, ‘What if that was their mom?’ What if that was their sister, their cousin, their auntie?’ Would they just sit back and allow this to happen?” Robinson said.

“Everyone deserves a final resting place. I will not allow my family and the generations to come to go and visit a landfill to pay their respects to Morgan.”

Premier Heather Stefanson announced July 5 her government would not support a search of Prairie Green landfill, a privately-owned facility north of Winnipeg, for the remains of Harris and Marcedes Myran.

Stefanson cited worker safety concerns associated with a search and the complexity of the undertaking at-large.

Since then, community members calling for a change of heart have stationed themselves outside a city-owned dump.

Advocates for missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people initially set up a blockade (Camp Morgan) at the landfill and 4R depot late last year. Police initially believed Harris, 39, and Myran, 26, were in south Winnipeg.

Sheila Myran drove to Winnipeg from Long Plain First Nation, where both Harris and Myran were from, on Sunday. Myran began to cry as she spoke about her great niece, who disappeared last year.

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“Being with the people, the supporters, the warriors, everybody that comes here — it’s comforting and it feels right, but also, it’s sad and it’s hard,” she said.

Dozens of people dropped off coffee, meals and firewood in solidarity with the protesters over the weekend.

Visitors stopped by with cardboard and red spraypaint to set-up fresh signs Sunday, despite the ongoing threat of an eviction.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie

Maggie Macintosh
Education reporter

Maggie Macintosh reports on education for the Free Press. Originally from Hamilton, Ont., she first reported for the Free Press in 2017. Read more about Maggie.

Funding for the Free Press education reporter comes from the Government of Canada through the Local Journalism Initiative.

Every piece of reporting Maggie produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.