PRINCE RUPERT: A mountain of windblown trash. Bodies beneath it. For years, the remains dumped by a serial killer have languished in a landfill, the latest chapter in a long history. violence against Canada‘S Indigenous Women,
Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myron were raped, murdered, their bodies dismembered and dumped with garbage 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 locations, a garbage can in the city and a separate landfill. The body of a fourth unidentified woman in her 20s, known as the Buffalo woman, is still missing.
His killer, Jeremy Skibicki, now 37 and associated with white supremacists, pleaded guilty in 2022 and is also on trial. A verdict is expected next month.
But his relatives have been unable to bury him, as excavations to find his remains have not yet begun.
Indigenous women in Canada are disproportionately victims of violence, and authorities have been accused of paying little attention to their plight and not providing them with adequate protection.
Instead, they “get thrown in the trash,” said Ellie Harris, Morgan Harris’ 19-year-old daughter.
Ellie, a member of the Long Plains Nation, is wearing a traditional skirt, and her hair is tied into a long ponytail.
She says her mother had a tough life, being homeless for several years after losing custody of her five children due to drug addiction.
“My mother was taken away like it was nothing. And I wish I could see her again, talk to her again,” she told AFP.
Instead, she and her family are keeping vigil near the Prairie Green Landfill, where they have set up a teepee, a sacred fire, red dresses and a banner asking for sympathy: “What if it was your daughter?”
They take turns living in makeshift camps for months in Winnipeg’s windy winter, and Ellie says they “want to prove that we’re special, that we’re not garbage, that we can’t just be thrown in the trash.”
It is part of their campaign to pressure authorities to excavate the site, which has been in use since Skibicki’s confession, with new trucks regularly arriving with debris to be dumped on top of what is already there.
The green light was finally given for digging in late 2023, shortly after Winnipeg elected Canada’s first Indigenous provincial leader, Wab Kinew.
But according to independent experts, searchers will have to sift through tons of garbage and construction debris, and such work also involves considerable risk due to the presence of toxic materials such as asbestos.
Ultimately, this could take years and cost millions of dollars.
Morgan Harris’ family has vowed to continue their vigil until her remains are recovered.
‘Disastrous history’
Prosecutors said Skibicki targeted Indigenous women he met at homeless shelters in the trial, which began in late April. The judge is expected to issue a verdict on July 11.
At the time of the arrest, then-British Minister of Indigenous Relations Marc Miller said the case was part of a “legacy of a devastating history” of the treatment of Indigenous women in Canada “that continues to reverberate today.”
“Nobody can stand before you and say with confidence that this won’t happen again and I think that’s shameful,” he said.
Indigenous women make up a disproportionate number of victims of femicide in Canada.
They account for nearly a fifth of all women killed in gender-related killings in the country, according to official data covering an 11-year period up to 2021, although they make up only five percent of the female population.
That year in particular, the rate of gender-related killings of Indigenous victims was three times higher than the rate of killings of girls and women overall, the report said.
“Canada is seen as a country that supports rights,” said Hilda Anderson-Pirz, an activist who has worked for Indigenous women for years.
But when “we are being disposed of like garbage in a landfill, it’s clear there is something very wrong with this country.”
In 2019, a national commission went so far as to call the thousands of murders and disappearances of First Nations women over the past few years a “genocide.”
The Commission concluded that these people, isolated, marginalised and deeply affected by generational trauma, face disproportionate violence “due to State actions and inactions rooted in colonialism and colonial ideologies based on assumptions of superiority”.
This conclusion is shared by some of the families of Skibicki’s victims.
Marcedes Myron’s young children don’t understand why she’s in a landfill, acknowledged their great-aunt Donna Bartlett, who is raising them in their small, unkempt home on the outskirts of Winnipeg.
She was a kind, cheerful girl who loved to joke around, Marcedes, 66, recalls.
She laments the reluctance of authorities to search the landfill.
“If (the women) were white, they would do it right away,” she says.
,highway of tears,
Further west, in British India ColombiaIt’s a stretch of road hundreds of miles long that’s known as the “Highway of Tears.” Activists say it’s a stark example of the many ways Canada has failed Indigenous women.
The nature here is amazing – snow-capped mountains, huge trees, the winding Skeena River, waterfalls and abundant wildlife such as foxes, bears and eagles.
But there is an incongruous sight along the highway: red dresses that symbolize the missing women, faded photographs of young girls with bright smiles, messages promising a reward for anyone who provides clues about those girls.
Since the 1960s, more than 50 women and a few men have disappeared along the 450-mile (725-kilometer) highway that links Prince Rupert, on Alaska’s near Pacific coast, to Prince George.
All are believed to be young and local. Many disappeared while hitchhiking or walking home on Highway 16. No community in the region was spared.
Tamara Chipman, a member of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation, was driving to Prince Rupert to visit friends when she was last seen asking for a lift on September 21, 2005. She was 22 years old and the mother of a young boy.
Her aunt, Gladys Radeck, described a flamboyant young woman who “loved fast boats and fishing as well as life”, living in an area plagued by social disruption and drug addiction.
In these isolated and poor communities, connected by a single highway through dense forest, with no proper telephone network or public transport, many young people are forced to hitchhike to get around.
They often meet temporary workers who have come for jobs in the local mines: mainly well-paid, single men.
Like most disappearances along the route, Chipman’s case was never explained.
When Lana Derrick went missing from the area 25 years ago, “initially we had some challenges getting the cooperation of the RCMP to take the case seriously,” says her cousin Wanda Good, referring to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
It has been observed by many families that efforts to locate women stigmatized as drug addicts, prostitutes or alcoholics may be mediocre at best.
In many cases, families say they organized the first searches themselves for missing loved ones and witnesses.
The head of the R.C.M.P. admitted that National In 2018, the commission said that, for many Indigenous families, “the RCMP was not the police service it should have been during this terrifying time in their lives.”
Studies show that the mistrust between police and Indigenous people is deeply rooted. It dates back decades to when police were used as the armed wing of Canadian governments as they enforced a policy of forced assimilation on the country’s first peoples.
At the RCMP’s British Columbia headquarters on the outskirts of Vancouver, Constable Wayne Cleary, a veteran homicide investigator, attempts to explain the tragedy of the Highway of Tears.
“The northern regions are very isolated. Some of the activities these women engage in involve not only local women but other women, making themselves available to men who prey on women,” he says.
He rejected allegations of laxity in the investigation, but acknowledged that, “in the past, there may not have been communication.”
‘Never stop watching’
Clary is part of the E-Pana unit, which was created in 2005, 30 years after the disappearances, to “determine whether a serial killer or killers were responsible.”
The unit’s list includes eighteen women, 13 murders and five missing persons cases from 1969 to 2006. No connection has been established between these cases so far.
Investigations are still ongoing, but new murders are not handled by the specialized unit. The last missing person report was last November, of Chelsea Qua, a 29-year-old Indigenous woman who went missing after leaving her home on the Saik’uj First Nation.
Good said progress has been made in recent years: Police now listen more to families, and new relay antennas for mobile communications have been installed on the streets.
“We are moving forward, but very slowly,” she says.
But Radek, 69, believes it is a collective tragedy that the country is refusing to confront.
Speaking slowly and seriously, her voice sometimes rising in anger, she describes how she began traveling around the country “to tell the stories of all the women whose fates have been broken, to be a voice for those families because they were silenced.”
Her dilapidated van is filled with photos of missing people. As she travels through local villages along the Highway of Tears, locals often stop her to talk.
Her fight now takes her to conferences and demonstrations across Canada, where she strives to raise awareness of the plight of women.
“I’ll never stop looking,” she says.
Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myron were raped, murdered, their bodies dismembered and dumped with garbage 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 locations, a garbage can in the city and a separate landfill. The body of a fourth unidentified woman in her 20s, known as the Buffalo woman, is still missing.
His killer, Jeremy Skibicki, now 37 and associated with white supremacists, pleaded guilty in 2022 and is also on trial. A verdict is expected next month.
But his relatives have been unable to bury him, as excavations to find his remains have not yet begun.
Indigenous women in Canada are disproportionately victims of violence, and authorities have been accused of paying little attention to their plight and not providing them with adequate protection.
Instead, they “get thrown in the trash,” said Ellie Harris, Morgan Harris’ 19-year-old daughter.
Ellie, a member of the Long Plains Nation, is wearing a traditional skirt, and her hair is tied into a long ponytail.
She says her mother had a tough life, being homeless for several years after losing custody of her five children due to drug addiction.
“My mother was taken away like it was nothing. And I wish I could see her again, talk to her again,” she told AFP.
Instead, she and her family are keeping vigil near the Prairie Green Landfill, where they have set up a teepee, a sacred fire, red dresses and a banner asking for sympathy: “What if it was your daughter?”
They take turns living in makeshift camps for months in Winnipeg’s windy winter, and Ellie says they “want to prove that we’re special, that we’re not garbage, that we can’t just be thrown in the trash.”
It is part of their campaign to pressure authorities to excavate the site, which has been in use since Skibicki’s confession, with new trucks regularly arriving with debris to be dumped on top of what is already there.
The green light was finally given for digging in late 2023, shortly after Winnipeg elected Canada’s first Indigenous provincial leader, Wab Kinew.
But according to independent experts, searchers will have to sift through tons of garbage and construction debris, and such work also involves considerable risk due to the presence of toxic materials such as asbestos.
Ultimately, this could take years and cost millions of dollars.
Morgan Harris’ family has vowed to continue their vigil until her remains are recovered.
‘Disastrous history’
Prosecutors said Skibicki targeted Indigenous women he met at homeless shelters in the trial, which began in late April. The judge is expected to issue a verdict on July 11.
At the time of the arrest, then-British Minister of Indigenous Relations Marc Miller said the case was part of a “legacy of a devastating history” of the treatment of Indigenous women in Canada “that continues to reverberate today.”
“Nobody can stand before you and say with confidence that this won’t happen again and I think that’s shameful,” he said.
Indigenous women make up a disproportionate number of victims of femicide in Canada.
They account for nearly a fifth of all women killed in gender-related killings in the country, according to official data covering an 11-year period up to 2021, although they make up only five percent of the female population.
That year in particular, the rate of gender-related killings of Indigenous victims was three times higher than the rate of killings of girls and women overall, the report said.
“Canada is seen as a country that supports rights,” said Hilda Anderson-Pirz, an activist who has worked for Indigenous women for years.
But when “we are being disposed of like garbage in a landfill, it’s clear there is something very wrong with this country.”
In 2019, a national commission went so far as to call the thousands of murders and disappearances of First Nations women over the past few years a “genocide.”
The Commission concluded that these people, isolated, marginalised and deeply affected by generational trauma, face disproportionate violence “due to State actions and inactions rooted in colonialism and colonial ideologies based on assumptions of superiority”.
This conclusion is shared by some of the families of Skibicki’s victims.
Marcedes Myron’s young children don’t understand why she’s in a landfill, acknowledged their great-aunt Donna Bartlett, who is raising them in their small, unkempt home on the outskirts of Winnipeg.
She was a kind, cheerful girl who loved to joke around, Marcedes, 66, recalls.
She laments the reluctance of authorities to search the landfill.
“If (the women) were white, they would do it right away,” she says.
,highway of tears,
Further west, in British India ColombiaIt’s a stretch of road hundreds of miles long that’s known as the “Highway of Tears.” Activists say it’s a stark example of the many ways Canada has failed Indigenous women.
The nature here is amazing – snow-capped mountains, huge trees, the winding Skeena River, waterfalls and abundant wildlife such as foxes, bears and eagles.
But there is an incongruous sight along the highway: red dresses that symbolize the missing women, faded photographs of young girls with bright smiles, messages promising a reward for anyone who provides clues about those girls.
Since the 1960s, more than 50 women and a few men have disappeared along the 450-mile (725-kilometer) highway that links Prince Rupert, on Alaska’s near Pacific coast, to Prince George.
All are believed to be young and local. Many disappeared while hitchhiking or walking home on Highway 16. No community in the region was spared.
Tamara Chipman, a member of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation, was driving to Prince Rupert to visit friends when she was last seen asking for a lift on September 21, 2005. She was 22 years old and the mother of a young boy.
Her aunt, Gladys Radeck, described a flamboyant young woman who “loved fast boats and fishing as well as life”, living in an area plagued by social disruption and drug addiction.
In these isolated and poor communities, connected by a single highway through dense forest, with no proper telephone network or public transport, many young people are forced to hitchhike to get around.
They often meet temporary workers who have come for jobs in the local mines: mainly well-paid, single men.
Like most disappearances along the route, Chipman’s case was never explained.
When Lana Derrick went missing from the area 25 years ago, “initially we had some challenges getting the cooperation of the RCMP to take the case seriously,” says her cousin Wanda Good, referring to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
It has been observed by many families that efforts to locate women stigmatized as drug addicts, prostitutes or alcoholics may be mediocre at best.
In many cases, families say they organized the first searches themselves for missing loved ones and witnesses.
The head of the R.C.M.P. admitted that National In 2018, the commission said that, for many Indigenous families, “the RCMP was not the police service it should have been during this terrifying time in their lives.”
Studies show that the mistrust between police and Indigenous people is deeply rooted. It dates back decades to when police were used as the armed wing of Canadian governments as they enforced a policy of forced assimilation on the country’s first peoples.
At the RCMP’s British Columbia headquarters on the outskirts of Vancouver, Constable Wayne Cleary, a veteran homicide investigator, attempts to explain the tragedy of the Highway of Tears.
“The northern regions are very isolated. Some of the activities these women engage in involve not only local women but other women, making themselves available to men who prey on women,” he says.
He rejected allegations of laxity in the investigation, but acknowledged that, “in the past, there may not have been communication.”
‘Never stop watching’
Clary is part of the E-Pana unit, which was created in 2005, 30 years after the disappearances, to “determine whether a serial killer or killers were responsible.”
The unit’s list includes eighteen women, 13 murders and five missing persons cases from 1969 to 2006. No connection has been established between these cases so far.
Investigations are still ongoing, but new murders are not handled by the specialized unit. The last missing person report was last November, of Chelsea Qua, a 29-year-old Indigenous woman who went missing after leaving her home on the Saik’uj First Nation.
Good said progress has been made in recent years: Police now listen more to families, and new relay antennas for mobile communications have been installed on the streets.
“We are moving forward, but very slowly,” she says.
But Radek, 69, believes it is a collective tragedy that the country is refusing to confront.
Speaking slowly and seriously, her voice sometimes rising in anger, she describes how she began traveling around the country “to tell the stories of all the women whose fates have been broken, to be a voice for those families because they were silenced.”
Her dilapidated van is filled with photos of missing people. As she travels through local villages along the Highway of Tears, locals often stop her to talk.
Her fight now takes her to conferences and demonstrations across Canada, where she strives to raise awareness of the plight of women.
“I’ll never stop looking,” she says.
