Demands for landfill search ring out at Portage and Main rally, march to legislature

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This article was published 03/08/2023 (808 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The smell of sage wafted in the air as family members of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls led a round dance that brought hundreds to Portage and Main in support of calls to search local landfills for human remains.

The new federal minister of Crown-Indigenous relations, Gary Anandasangaree, met Thursday morning in Winnipeg with relatives of Morgan Harris, 39, and Marcedes Myran, 26. City police believe the two women are victims of an alleged serial killer and their remains were buried at Prairie Green Landfill, north of the city.

All at the meeting were in agreement a potential landfill search is not a question about money and they will work to bring their loved ones home, Melissa Robinson (Harris’s sister) told the Free Press.

The families gave Anandasangaree a timeline for when they wanted a search to begin, and he said the federal government is going to set a date within the next 90 days, Robinson claimed.

“I promised (Harris’s children) that we’re not going to stop until this work gets done, until their mom comes home, and she lays properly with dignity,” said Robinson. “Somewhere we can go visit her and lay flowers down. She deserves that because she is loved just like all of our women are.”

The minister’s office stated his visit to Winnipeg included meetings with the families, Indigenous leaders and Winnipeg’s mayor.

“(The minister) looks forward to continuing those conversations as we work together to address the elements of the feasibility study,” a spokesperson for Anandasangaree said in an email.

They added the federal government is committed to acting, but cannot do the work alone because of jurisdictional issues. “Until there is co-operation, conversations around timelines and funding remain unresolved.”

The provincial government has refused to support such a search, following a feasibility study by an Indigenous-led committee saying it could take one to three years and cost between $84 million and $184 million.

Committee members said heavy machinery would be used to excavate material from the section where the women’s remains are believed to be located and transported to a conveyor belt, where workers would sort through it by hand.

The report says workers would be supplied with proper protective equipment to mitigate the risk of exposure to toxic materials. The document offers no guarantees of success in recovering potential human remains.

Following Thursday’s rally and dance at the intersection of Portage Avenue and Main Street, hundreds of supporters marched to the Manitoba Legislative Building, chanting “Bring them home” and “Search the landfill.”

“When the landfills get searched, this fight does not end there, because it’s ongoing,” said daughter Cambria Harris.

“We need to let them know that our presence is still here, and so long as they continue to watch those statistics rise and use that against us, our presence will also continue to grow.”

Camp Morgan, located outside the city-run Brady Road landfill at the south end of Winnipeg, has been the site of ongoing protests since December 2022. Some of the protesters who had been blocking road access to the landfill in July have since established Camp Marcedes on the grounds of the downtown Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

“Enough of this garbage being dumped on our loved ones,” said Joseph Munro, from anti-racism grassroots group First Nation Indigenous Warriors.

“Today, we stand here knowing that these landfills will get searched — whether it’s with their help or we will rise up together and search them ourselves.”

The Winnipeg Police Service has said investigators believe the remains of Harris and Myran were inadvertently transported by waste trucks to Prairie Green, in the Rural Municipality of Rosser, in May 2022.

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Partial remains belonging to Rebecca Contois, 24, were found at the Brady Road facility in June 2022.

Police believe Harris, Myran, Contois, and an as-of-yet unidentified victim (temporarily named Buffalo Woman) were slain by an alleged serial killer.

Jeremy Anthony Michael Skibicki is facing four counts of first-degree murder. His trial is scheduled for April.

— with files from The Canadian Press

tessa.adamski@freepress.mb.ca