Call to search landfill for remains started in Winnipeg. Now, it's coming from across the country
Finding the bodies of 2 Indigenous women is ‘the issue of our times,’ professor says
More than two dozen people roared down the highway from Saskatchewan to Manitoba Wednesday morning to lend their voices to the growing call from across the country to search a Winnipeg-area landfill for the remains of two homicide victims.
Eleanore Sunchild says she's among those travelling with the Redrum Motorcycle Club, an Indigenous group travelling from Saskatoon to Regina, where she said as many 30 people on bikes and in vehicles will head to Winnipeg's city-run Brady Road landfill, where Camp Morgan has been stationed since December.
The camp is named after 39-year-old Morgan Harris whose remains, along with those of 26-year-old Marcedes Myran, are believed to be in the privately run Prairie Green landfill just north of Winnipeg after the women were allegedly killed by the same man last year.
Camp Morgan was set up after Winnipeg Police said they concluded Harris and Myran's remains are in the landfill, but it would not be feasible to search for them. That decision led to a protest movement that has since spread far beyond the local Indigenous voices that sparked it. It intensified last month after the Manitoba government announced it would not support a search.
While the federal government has yet to commit to funding a landfill search, newly minted Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Gary Anandasangaree on Wednesday called the issue "heart-wrenching" and vowed to find a solution the families "feel is just and appropriate."
WATCH | Supporters arrive in Winnipeg:
Sunchild, a lawyer from Thunderchild First Nation in Saskatchewan, said while Harris and Myran are believed to have been killed in Winnipeg, their deaths speak to the larger issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, which affects every community across Canada.
"Those are Indigenous women who come from communities and families, who are loved, and they should be treated with as much respect as any other person," she said over the phone during the journey to Winnipeg.
The #SearchTheLandfill movement has also gotten attention from prominent figures including Inuk singer and writer Tanya Tagaq and actor Mark Ruffalo. Use of the hashtag spiked in mid-July to a reach of more than four million people, data from a social media intelligence tool shows.
For Jorden Myran, seeing the calls to search for her sister's remains grow so dramatically in recent weeks has been moving, as people from across the country learn more about her family's story.
"People are seeing that and realizing what's going on — and we're having a lot more people stand with us and be behind us on this," she said Tuesday at Camp Marcedes, a second encampment named after her sister that was recently set up outside the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg.
Protesters and relatives say they want the women's remains so they can give them a proper burial.
'The issue of our times'
As people from across Canada wait to see whether governments will support a search for Harris and Myran's remains, the issue has become an opportunity for a national moment of reconciliation, one Indigenous studies professor says.
"This is the issue of our times right now," said Jacqueline Romanow, a Métis associate professor in the University of Winnipeg's Indigenous studies department.
"This could be a moment where everyone gets together and basically proves that things have changed."
Decals covering public trash cans across parts of Winnipeg also show just how far the movement has reached, after it caught the attention of an Anishinaabe artist based in Halifax and Toronto.
Raven Davis, who recently completed a residency at the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art in downtown Winnipeg, said they used that opportunity to create a public art installation that would draw attention to the calls for a landfill search.
"It's just trying to garner compassion. We are in a very turbulent time where we're not seeing each other as humans," Davis said in a Zoom interview, adding they also created a Camp Marcedes sign at the encampment.
"The fact that these families are having to protest during a time of grief — immense, profound grief — is atrocious."
Support from across the Prairies
At a gathering in Winnipeg this week of members of the numbered treaties, Chief Elwood Zastre of Wuskwi Sipihk First Nation in Manitoba said the government's inaction on searching for Harris and Myran's remains has caught the attention of his community — and he wasn't the only one.
Kelsey Jacko, chief of Cold Lake First Nations in Alberta, said he took the opportunity while in Winnipeg to visit Camp Morgan at the Brady Road landfill.
"I felt I had to go there," Jacko said. "The family deserves closure and I thought I'd be there to show support."
Shelby Horseman, chief executive officer of Horse Lake First Nation in Alberta, said it was "devastating" to hear Myran's family tell their story as she laid down tobacco at Camp Marcedes recently. It's an issue discussed in her community and beyond.
"It's not only just my community in Alberta, it's everybody who's First Nations. It's kind of a problem that we all suffer," Horseman said.
"It's unfortunate that it keeps happening. Our voices need to be spoken and heard just as much as anybody else."
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With files from Josh Crabb