When a search for two slain Indigenous women begins at a Winnipeg-area landfill, a healing lodge nearby will provide space for their families to gather, access supports and wait for updates.
Donna Bartlett feels comforted knowing she will be on site in a comfortable, private space while workers look for her granddaughter, Marcedes Myran, and Morgan Harris.
“It’s staying close to my girl,” she said Tuesday. “This way, I can stay close and kind of keep an eye and watch.”
MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS
The new healing lodge, meant for victims’ families during the search for the slain women at Prairie Green Landfill.
Bartlett envisions using the lodge’s kitchen to make food for searchers to sustain and thank them.
Harris’ cousin, Melissa Robinson, said it’s essential family members and elders are nearby while part of the landfill is searched. She welcomed the home-like setting of the lodge.
“It’s super-important to us,” she said. “When you look at it, it’s going to be home for the next little while for us.”
The 1,800-square foot, ready-to-move building was delivered to the privately owned Prairie Green Landfill late last week, as site preparations and detailed search planning continued.
The lodge is some distance from the section of the landfill where the remains of Harris, 39, and Myran, 26, are believed to be buried.
Workers are expected to begin excavating and searching material this fall. The landfill is just north of Winnipeg, in the Rural Municipality of Rosser.
“The search just needs to be done… to bring my cousin home,” Robinson said.
The families are turning more of their focus to the search after serial killer and self-proclaimed white supremacist Jeremy Skibicki was convicted of first-degree murder July 11 in the deaths of four Indigenous women — Harris, Myran, Rebecca Contois and an unidentified victim who was named Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, or Buffalo Woman, by the Indigenous community.
“I’m just looking forward to finding my girl,” Bartlett said. “It’s going to be hard, but it’s going to get done.”
“It’s super-important to us. When you look at it, it’s going to be home for the next little while for us.”–Melissa Robinson
The Crown told court Skibicki preyed on women at downtown shelters and acted out of hatred and a drive to “fulfil his deviant sexual urges” when he carried out the slayings in 2022.
Skibicki, 37, admitted to killing the women but argued he has schizophrenia and should be found not criminally responsible.
The Manitoba and federal governments are each contributing $20 million to the search at Prairie Green. The province has taken over the lead after an Indigenous-led committee was forced to conduct its own feasibility study with federal funding.
The search is in its second of up to five stages. Stage 2 includes an engineering assessment to identify a targeted search zone, where the remains are likely to be located within an area the size of about four football fields and 10 metres deep.
Health and safety plans are also being drawn up. Officials have said potential threats, such as asbestos and toxic chemicals, can be mitigated.
Temporary structures, such as the healing lodge and a covered search facility, are being moved to or set up at the site.
The lodge will have communal and private spaces, and bedrooms, when completed. Utilities still have to be hooked up. Foundation work is expected to be completed in the coming weeks, a provincial spokesperson said.
Project manager Amna Mackin said at a June 20 news conference that the wheelchair-accessible lodge will have Indigenous art and design.
She said magenta red shingles were selected to be symbolic of the red dress, which has become a symbol of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada.
Victims of convicted serial killer Jeremy Skibicki (left to right): Morgan Beatrice Harris, Marcedes Myran, Rebecca Contois.
A rendering showed a wooden deck in front of the lodge and the surrounding area landscaped with trees and shrubs.
The province said the space will provide culturally appropriate mental health services and traditional ceremonial supports.
Stage 2 took another step forward June 27, when a pilot test excavation was conducted in a separate area of Prairie Green.
“During the pilot test, materials from a small test area in a comparable section of the landfill were excavated to provide better information about the type and conditions of materials we will be searching through,” a provincial spokesperson wrote in an email.
The spokesperson said searchers are expected to be hired and trained early this fall, after a detailed search plan is finalized.
Stage 3 will remove layers of waste above the targeted zone this fall. Premier Wab Kinew has said the women’s remains are believed to be closer to the middle of the landfill section.
In Stage 4, material from the targeted zone will be excavated using heavy equipment and moved by truck to a the search facility. Material will be arranged in lines and analyzed by workers equipped with rakes and other tools.
The search could move to a fifth stage if no remains, or only partial remains, are found. Officials would decide whether to dig deeper or search the previously removed upper layers.
Mackin has said the targeted search area could be narrowed if clues, such as dated receipts, are found. Officials believe Harris and Myran’s remains were deposited at Prairie Green on May 16, 2022, after a truck collected the contents of a garbage bin on Henderson Highway.
MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS
The 1,800-square foot, ready-to-move building was delivered to the privately owned Prairie Green Landfill late last week, as site preparations and detailed search planning continued.
Harris’ daughter, Cambria Harris, and Robinson said receipts found during the pilot search were legible.
“With the results we’re getting right now from our pilot test, it’s looking really promising,” Cambria Harris said at a July 11 news conference. “They’re able to read the receipts, so that makes it easier to break down timelines, that makes it easier to break down the location of where they might be.”
Remains belonging to Contois, 24, were recovered from a North Kildonan garbage bin and the Brady Road landfill during a search by Winnipeg police.
Robinson is among those advocating for a wider search of the Brady Road site for other missing or murdered women.
The location of Buffalo Woman’s remains is not known.
chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca
Chris Kitching
Reporter
Chris Kitching is a general assignment reporter at the Free Press. He began his newspaper career in 2001, with stops in Winnipeg, Toronto and London, England, along the way. After returning to Winnipeg, he joined the Free Press in 2021, and now covers a little bit of everything for the newspaper. Read more about Chris.
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