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A First Nations community in Canada has vowed to take matters into their own hands after Winnipeg police said they would not search a landfill site for the bodies of two murdered Indigenous women.
Marcedes Myran, 26, and Morgan Harris, 39, two of four Indigenous women allegedly murdered by the same man, are believed to be buried at the Prairie Green landfill site.
Both women were of the Long Plain First Nation.
This month family and community members were outraged by the police announcement the site would not be searched, and vowed to search it themselves.
On 7 December Kiera Harris, daughter of Morgan Harris spoke to media in Ottawa and told police: "If you won't search the landfill, then we will."
Lakota MP Leah Gazan, who represents the electorate of Winnipeg Centre, told APTN News that police refusing to search the landfill amounts to a "normalisation of genocide".
Ms Gazan made the comments after taking part in a meeting with city authorities, police, First Nations leaders and families.
"Another three Indigenous women murdered by a serial killer, and police indicate they aren't going to search for their remains in the Brady Landfill. I'm asking the government to provide immediate funding to stop this genocide, and search for the remains of our precious sisters," she said in a statement later.
Police allege that Ms Harris and Ms Myran were killed by Jeremy Skibicki, who was charged in May with the murder of Rebecca Contois, 24, from O-Chi-Chak-Ko-Sipi First Nation, and is also charged with killing a fourth unidentified woman to whom the local Indigenous community have given the name Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reports that Ms Contois's partial remains were found in a northeast Winnipeg back alley on 16 May. Police later searched part of the city's Brady Road landfill, where they discovered more of her remains on 14 June.
Cree/Iroquois/French human rights Journalist Brandi Morin shared a screenshot of racist abuse received by Kiera Harris online, and noted that the killings – and the response to them – were symptomatic of a broader problem in Canada.
"Understand this is so much deeper - it's systemic, it's embedded into the colonized souls of this country," she wrote.
"The 18 year-old grieving daughter of Morgan Harris, murdered by Winnipeg serial killer, is receiving messages like this to her Facebook. We have a sickness."
Studies indicate that around 4,000 First Nations women have been murdered in Canada since 1980.On 14 December Ms Morin reported that volunteers with the daughters of Morgan Harris were blocking the entrance to Brady Landfill after police said they would not search both Brady and Prairie Green landfills.
"Blockaders say they'll search if needed and have support from locals," she wrote.
Police argue that searching City-owned Brady Road for Ms Contois was a different proposition than searching Prairie Green, a privately owned landfill.
While officers were able to pinpoint the general search area at Brady Road and quickly stop trucks from dumping at the site, they only suspected Ms Harris and Ms Myran were buried at Prairie Green one month after they disappeared.
According to CBC, police said it is estimated around 10,000 loads of debris, as well as 1,500 tonnes of animal remains, were deposited at the site since.
Eric Bartelink, a professor of anthropology and director of the human identification laboratory at California State University-Chico, told CBC a search could start with getting an experienced backhoe operator to carefully remove debris, then start to dig through the heavy clay.
Similar searches in Canada have been successful. In August 2021 Ontario police found the remains of Nathaniel Brettell in the Green Lane landfill eight months after he disappeared.
In February 2019, a search of Ottawa's Trail Road landfill led to the discovery of the body of Susan Kublu-Iqqittuq, about six weeks after she was believed to have been killed. 100 people searched the site for 18 days.
Artist Hayat Odo, who lives on Tiohtià:ke land (Montreal) wrote:
"The bodies of two native women have been reported to be currently sitting in a landfill, and the authorities in Winnipeg have decided not to recover them due to it 'not being feasible'. If these two women were white, they would've flipped the enter city to find them."
