A hope for long-needed closure

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/06/2024 (485 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Perhaps soon, there will be closure for families in great need of it.

On Tuesday, the provincial government announced its plan to search the Prairie Green landfill for the remains of murdered Indigenous women Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran is well underway. The province’s search effort is comprised of five stages; Premier Wab Kinew announced the government is currently in the second stage.

Permits to conduct the search are in hand and buildings where the material removed from the landfill will be examined are being built.

It must come as a relief, not just to the families of Myran and Harris but to their advocates across the country, who have pressed both the current and former provincial governments to conduct the search. Pressure has been acute on Kinew’s government since it was elected this past fall, as Manitobans wondered whether or not the new premier, despite past statements suggesting a dedication to the search, would ultimately renege.

As it turns out, the province had been doing the early work quietly in the background, under advisement that it keep its plans under wraps during the murder trial of serial killer Jeremy Skibicki, who admitted to killing the two women as well as Rebecca Contois and the unidentified victim known as Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, or Buffalo Woman. That silence no doubt made it frustrating for the many advocates who have persistently demanded the province go ahead with the search, unaware the plans were moving ahead all along.

So, good on the province for following through. The topic of the search has not been without controversy; there are some who believe that, however well-intentioned, the search effort is in the end a misuse of resources. Arguments against conducting it tend to centre around the idea that in a city and province plagued with myriad problems, there are simply better uses for the millions it will cost to conduct the search. Some have suggested it would be better to simply erect a memorial to the victims, possibly near Prairie Green itself.

These criticisms may not be malicious in nature but they are misguided. If we consider ourselves to be civilized, it will not do to insist on doing what is most pragmatic at all times, over what is right. Everyone in support of, or involved with, the search effort knows that even after all the effort is expended, the search may not turn up the women’s remains. It’s possible. They also know that whether the remains are found or not, there is no bringing Myran and Harris back.

It bears repeating sentiments expressed in this space on this issue in the past: we can do better as a society than treat the search for the women’s remains as a budgetary problem, something to be weighed on a spreadsheet’s scales. Marcedes Myran and Morgan Harris were — are — people. Our fellow Manitobans.

Is this a province that leaves the dead consigned to the trash because we value money more than the dignity of our dead? Is that what we would want if something were to happen to a member of our own family? One hopes we can do better than that.

So the search, after much longing for it, is underway. It’s good to hear. It would obviously be best for the families’ closure if the remains are found, so they can be returned to Harris and Myran’s loved ones and given a more dignified rest.

And if the search fails, at least we will know we did all we could, not merely what we thought we should spend.