A cross to bear: The site of vigil set up by family members of a victim near the Prairie Green landfill in Winnipeg, Canada.
| Photo Credit: AFP
A mountain of windswept garbage and lying beneath it, bodies. For years, the remains discarded by a serial killer have languished in a landfill — the latest chapter in a long history of violence against Canada’s Indigenous women.
Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran were raped, killed, dismembered and thrown out with the trash in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Police believe their remains are buried deep inside the Prairie Green landfill. The partial remains of another victim, Rebecca Contois, were found in two places — a garbage bin in the city and in a separate landfill. The body of a fourth, unidentified woman in her 20s — dubbed Buffalo Woman — is still missing.
Their murderer, Jeremy Skibicki, now 37 and linked to white supremacists, confessed in 2022 and has been tried. A verdict is expected next month. But their relatives have been unable to lay them to rest, as the excavations to find their remains have not yet begun.
Little attention
Indigenous women are disproportionately targeted by violence in Canada, and often poorly protected by authorities accused of paying little attention to their plight. Instead, they are thrown “into the trash,” says Elle Harris, the 19-year-old daughter of Morgan Harris.
A member of the Long Plain nation, Ms. Elle Harris is dressed in a traditional skirt, her hair twisted into a long braid.
She says her mother had a difficult life, spending years homeless after losing custody of her five children due to a drug addiction.
“My mom was taken just like that, just like nothing. And I wish I could see her one more time, to talk to her again,” she said. Instead, she and her family are keeping vigil near the Prairie Green landfill, where they have set up teepees, a sacred fire, red dresses and a banner demanding empathy: “What if it was your daughter?”
For months — through the wind-blasted Winnipeg winter — they have taken turns staying in the makeshift camp, seeking, says Ms. Elle Harris, “to prove that we are something, we are not trash, we can’t just be thrown into the garbage.”
It has also formed part of their campaign to pressure authorities to excavate the site, which has remained in use since Skibicki’s confession, with new truckloads of debris regularly arriving to be piled on top of what is already there. The go-ahead for the digging was finally given at the end of 2023, shortly after Winnipeg elected Canada’s first Indigenous provincial leader, Wab Kinew.
But the searchers must sift through tons of garbage and construction rubble, and such an operation involves considerable risks due to the presence of toxic materials such as asbestos, according to independent experts. Ultimately, it could take years and cost tens of millions of dollars.
Morgan Harris’s family has vowed to maintain their vigil until her remains are recovered. Skibicki targeted Indigenous women he met in homeless shelters, prosecutors told his trial, which began in late April. At the time of his arrest, the then-minister of crown-indigenous relations Marc Miller said the case was part of “a legacy of a devastating history” of Canada’s treatment of Indigenous women “that has reverberations today.”
“No one can stand in front of you with confidence to say that this won’t happen again and I think that’s kind of shameful,” he said.
Indigenous women represent about one-fifth of all the women killed in gender-related homicides in Canada — even though they are just five per cent of the female population, according to official figures documenting an 11-year period up to 2021.
