Families of the murdered and disappeared face trauma, threats and obstacles in the search for their loved ones

Published by Brent Patterson on March 27, 2025March 27, 2025

Photo: Elle Harris, daughter of Morgan Harris, speaks at a “search the landfill” rally on Parliament Hill, September 18, 2023. Photo by Brent Patterson.

Three years ago, Morgan Harris, Marcedes Myran, Rebecca Contois and Ashlee Shingoose were murdered in the city of Winnipeg.

The four Indigenous women were killed between March 15 and May 15, 2022. The killer reportedly placed their bodies in garbage bins that were then taken to two different landfills in the city, the Brady Road landfill and the Prairie Green landfill.

At that time, the Winnipeg Police Service said they believed the remains of Harris and Myran were transported to the Prairie Green landfill. Soon after, the police found the partial remains of Contois at the Brady Road landfill.

On March 26 of this year, the police identified Shingoose as the fourth victim and said her remains are likely at the Brady Road landfill.

Blockades and protests demand “search the landfill”

Back in December 2022, the Winnipeg Police Service announced that they would not search the Prairie Green landfill for the remains of Harris and Myran.

Multiple actions by family members and the community followed, including on December 11, 2022 (a blockade at the Brady landfill and a smaller protest at the Prairie Green landfill), July 17, 2023 (a vigil on Parliament Hill in Ottawa), July 18, 2023 (Camp Marcedes was set up at the Canadian Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg), July 26, 2023 (a protest at the Winnipeg Police Service headquarters), August 4, 2023 (rallies across the country), and September 18, 2023 (more rallies across the country).

Video still: “Group blockades entrance to Winnipeg’s Brady Road landfill to call for immediate search”, December 11, 2022.

Then on October 4, 2023, Wab Kinew was elected the premier of the province of Manitoba promising that the landfills would be searched.

That search did not begin until December 2, 2024. By March 7, 2025, remains found nine days earlier were identified as belonging to Harris. By March 17, 2025, a second set of remains were identified as belonging to Myran.

After the remains of her mother were found, Elle Harris directed her comments to the authorities who had refused to search: “To every one of you that said ‘no’, to every one of you that didn’t believe in us, do better.” Myran’s sister Jorden added: “They didn’t deserve to sit in that landfill for as long as they did.”

A global problem

Peace Brigades International-Canada draws links with “las cuchas” (the mothers) who for decades have called for a search of those disappeared at a garbage dump in the city of Medellin, Colombia, as well as the thousand people in “aquafosas” (water graves) dumped in the estuary in Buenaventura, Colombia; the families who searched a garbage dump in Mexico City without the support or protection of the state; environmental defender Lesbia Janeth Urquia whose body was left in a garbage dump in Marcala, Honduras; the 42 murdered women left in a garbage dump in Nairobi, Kenya; and the tens of thousands of forcibly disappeared people in multiple countries (including the Indigenous children who died at residential schools and the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada) whose whereabouts continue to be unknown.

Photo: PBI-Mexico accompanies a search in Ciudad Juarez, March 2022.

State violence in Canada

Estimates suggest that around 4,000 Indigenous women and girls and 600 Indigenous men and boys have gone missing or been murdered in Canada between 1956 and 2016.

More than 10 years ago, Human Rights Watch reported that they heard disturbing allegations of rape and sexual assault by Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers. Human Rights Watch has also stated: “Human Rights Watch researchers were struck by the fear expressed by women they interviewed. The women’s reactions were comparable to those Human Rights Watch has found in post-conflict or post-transition countries, where security forces have played an integral role in government abuses and enforcement of authoritarian policies.”

And more than 20 years ago, Amnesty International described a context in which Indigenous women are “over-policed” and “under-protected” in Canada.

Most recently, on February 18, 2025, Wet’suwet’en land defender Sleydo’ (Molly Wickham) commented: “My hope is that this [abuse of process] decision will signal to the RCMP that they can no longer violate their own laws, and they cannot act with impunity, C-IRG [Community-Industry Response Group] members will not be sentenced for breaking their own laws, much like when they murder our Indigenous men and women in their custody, when they go missing, and they do so with impunity.”

The beginnings of a critical comparative analysis

There are similarities and differences:

– in Colombia and Mexico, for instance, the families who search for their loved ones face death threats from organized crime and paramilitary groups that do not want the disappeared found, while in Canada families faced a court injunction and a police intervention for blocking more garbage being dumped on their loved ones;

– the state, army, police and intelligence services have varying degrees of involvement in the disappearances, and may be blocking the recovery of remains to varying degrees; in Canada, the families were more quickly criminalized, than supported; 

– racism, classism, misogyny can play a role both in the disappearances, as well as in the prioritization of the recovery of the remains of those who have been disappeared;

– economic interests (such as the dredging of the estuary to facilitate a deep-water shipping port in Buenaventura, Colombia) or costs (as in searching the landfills in Winnipeg, Canada) can play a role in the state not searching for the murdered and disappeared;

– the state intersects in different ways, for instance Colombia has passed a law protecting women searchers, Mexico does not provide protection to families searching for the missing, the Canadian province of Manitoba first spoke against searching the landfills, then provided the funding needed for the searches.

We continue to follow this.