On Winnipeg’s north end streets, dozens of people don bright pink reflective vests, each emblazoned with the words “helping is healing.”

The newly formed group, Morgan’s Warriors, are out on this summer night with the goal to help people living on the streets — handing out food and water, picking up discarded needles and offering harm reduction support.

Before setting off on their first foot patrol, the Indigenous women leading the group smudged the vests with the smoke of burning sage. The goal is to make themselves a beacon of love and safety in an environment where women have been preyed upon — in the epicenter of the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIWG2S+).

“If there was a patrol group out there that could have helped our vulnerable women then maybe we wouldn’t be in the situation we are in now,” said Melissa Robinson.

Robinson is the cousin of Morgan Harris, the namesake of this patrol group. Morgan is one of the women targeted by a “racially-motivated” serial killer after they met at a Winnipeg homeless shelter, the same way he preyed on his other victims. 

After a harrowing trial, and as the families brace for sentencing later this month, the Indigenous community continues to come together in the wake of this horrific tragedy. They are now awaiting the search of a landfill where the bodies of Harris and other women are believed to be buried — something that came to be only after ongoing tireless advocacy from people who camped at the site.

In recent months, this push has shifted into community healing, which is exemplified by Morgan’s Warriors. Since its first patrol, the group has since gone through the inner city and other neighbourhoods, downtown and along the riverbanks.

Robinson said that this is a way to help their family heal from the loss of Morgan by helping others. “We are the group that will lead with our hearts … we’re there for people to show them that we care.”

‘I didn’t want to let it break me’

Harris, 39, was a mother and a member of Long Plain First Nation. She lost her children to the child welfare system while struggling with addiction and mental health issues that spiraled out of her control. 

When she went missing in May 2022, the Bear Clan Patrol and others searched for her, postering the Main Street area that she frequented with signs that she was missing, said Robinson.

Main Street is notorious for its run-down hotels that shelter the poorest of the poor, as well as its residents who struggle with addiction. Many are Indigenous — survivors of the trauma of residential schools, the Sixties Scoop, and the foster care system.

“Everyone knows who everyone is,” said Harris’s cousin Robinson about the area, where the unhoused have a sense of community and know each other by name. 

It’s the area where Harris frequented shelters and soup kitchens. Robinson estimates that Harris lived there for the last 15 years of her life.

“No one had seen her,” she told Ricochet and IndigiNews. “We knew it wasn’t good because she never strayed out of that area.”

In addition to Harris, Skibicki was also convicted last month for the first degree murders of Marcedes Myran, 26, Rebecca Contois, 24, and Mashkode Bizhiki’Ikwe, also known as Buffalo Woman. 

The identity of Buffalo Woman remains an unsolved mystery. She was given this name through a ceremony by Indigenous Elders.

After a traumatic and gruesome six-week, 12-person jury trial, the verdict was orally delivered by Court of King’s Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal at the Manitoba Law Courts, with a sentencing hearing confirmed for August 28.

Outside the Brady Landfill in Winnipeg, where it is believed the remains of the women were dumped, family and friends had set up camp, which they named Camp Morgan, calling for justice and healing.

In an interview inside Camp Morgan, Robinson recalled how she saw Morgan “deteriorate over the years.” Eventually she saw her cousin in a psychosis, unable to recognize family. “She was a fun loving, very dedicated mother; she would have stood up to any man because she was fierce … she took no shit from anybody. I think that runs in our genes, looking at how her daughters are,” she said.

Elle Harris, her youngest daughter, feels proud that she did not have to give up school while court proceedings happened. She graduated from Argyle Alternative High School in June. 

“Probably with everything going on, I didn’t want to let it break me. I wanted to continue on with my journey,” she said.

At her graduation, Elle received an award from Bernadette Smith, the older sister of Claudette Osborne-Tyo, 21, the Cree mother of four who vanished in 2008, last seen off of Main Street at Selkirk Avenue and King Street in Winnipeg. Smith is also the MLA for Point Douglas, where Argyle High School is located. 

The award is in memory of Claudette, and recognized Elle’s commitment to social justice through her involvement with pushing for a landfill search for her mom.  

Elle is enrolling in Indigenous studies courses at the University of Winnipeg. 

“I am 20 years old, still trying to figure out my life, and only just getting my life back. So I still have a ways to go to figure out what I want,” she said. 

Her aunt Melissa Robinson, who was with Bear Clan Patrol for seven years, and at one point a lead coordinator, is now mentoring Elle to lead Morgan’s Warriors.

Crimes driven by ‘homicidal necrophilia’ and white supremacist beliefs

After repeated and historical failures in Canada to get criminal convictions for murderers of Indigenous women, girls and gender diverse people, Skibicki’s guilty verdict for first degree murder has been described as a “victory” or “milestone” for Indigenous Peoples.  

However, Crown prosecutors did not credit the Indigenous community’s advocacy as having an influence on the case’s outcome. 

“Working with the police and authorizing charges, that process is separate from all of the other advocacy that went on in relation to the landfill searches… Those aren’t really our domain,” Crown prosecutor Chris Vanderhooft explained in a scrum outside the court. “Our focus has to remain on the prosecution, which it did.”

Skibicki’s defense argued for him to be found not criminally responsible, on the grounds of his claim to being schizophrenic, which Justice Joyal described as “fabricated.” 

Justice Joyal found that his crimes were driven by “homicidal necrophilia,” a fetish for having sex with dead victims, as well as his strong white supremacist beliefs.

“It was apparent from his confession to the police, that the accused was a man who purely expressed racist views,” Joyal told a packed courtroom. “Indeed, it was the Crown’s position that the accused’s actions were in-part racially motivated.”

The prosecutors said that the ruling relied on key evidence from the police interrogation video where Skibicki confessed to the killings. 

“The statement was really the starting piece. It really helped to prove the case that the Crown had to prove,” said Vanderhooft.

Now that the Skibicki trial is over, there’s been some weight lifted off the shoulders of the family members.

“I’m feeling really great. I’m happy about the decision. I was really worried,” said Donna Bartlett, grandmother of Marcedes Myran outside of the Winnipeg courts. It’s been hard but it’s good he got convicted of murder. Next step is to bring my girl home.”

Growing calls to search the landfill

The families have been calling for a search of the Prairie Green Landfill, and now the Brady Landfill, for almost two years. The shutdown of roads for marches, or teepees and encampments set up on the Manitoba Legislature grounds, have become regular events in the city.

“Right now I know she’s looking down on us and I believe she has a sense of relief … but at the same time, it won’t bring her back,” said Jeremy Contois, Rebecca’s older brother. “It’s been a difficult two years.” 

Each time he attended the trial he went through anxiety stemming from hearing the gruesome details and reliving the trauma of losing Rebecca.

“Why did he have to do it?” he said. “I wish we knew that, even though [Skibicki] confessed, but he really didn’t specify why.”

Contois described his sister as “a loving mother, loving sister, daughter, a friend.” They had just celebrated a birthday with her two days before news of her body parts being found in a dumpster and the rest were recovered at Brady Road Landfill.

Tanya’s aunt, Sue Caribou, spoke to the media outside the courts in Winnipeg after last month’s verdict. She was there to support the families. 

“All the beautiful women that are left at the landfill need to be brought home to their loved ones, to have a proper burial,” she said. “Nobody belongs in no dump.” 

A residential school survivor herself, Caribou compared the genocidal indignity to children who died at residential schools due to violence and neglect, whose bodies were buried in unmarked graves on school grounds. 

Caribou went to Guy Hill, a Catholic-run residential “school” near The Pas, Manitoba, where 241 anomalies were found using ground penetrating radar last year. 

Winnipeg has the highest population of Indigenous people living in an urban setting in Canada. At 90,995, Indigenous people living in Winnipeg account for 12.5 per cent of all city residents, according to Statistics Canada.

Despite its longstanding reputation for anti-Indigenous racism, this urban Indigenous community is a vibrant one where advocates are born and community activism has thrived in waves through the generations.

Setting up camp outside the landfill

In the freezing-cold winter of 2022, the Harris family called up a group named the First Nations Indigenous Warriors to help them start an encampment outside of Brady Road Landfill, named after Morgan. 

This is the dump where Rebecca Contois’s partial remains were recovered. Another missing Indigenous woman, Tanya Jane Nepinak, is believed to be buried under 12 years of compacted waste, according to her aunt, Sue Caribou.

At first, Camp Morgan was only a makeshift shelter of noisy tarp wrapped around a summer gazebo, with a sacred fire continuously burning several snow-crunching-steps away outside the structure.

The camp started following a rally outside Winnipeg’s City Hall, while city councillors met inside. And after the Winnipeg Police Service announced their refusal to search the Prairie Green Landfill to recover Harris and Myran. 

Manitoba’s premier at the time, Heather Stefanson, gave initial condolences but later refused to support a search for the women, claiming in a statement it would potentially put provincial workers in danger without any “guarantee” of success. She even ran her re-election campaign in 2023 on a promise to not search the landfill.

This earned her the nickname “Heartless Heather” by advocates and families whose pleas for a landfill search were rejected. They supported Wab Kinew, an Anishinaabe man, who was ultimately elected premier in 2023.

Stefanson’s refusal, and then the Kinew government’s slow pace to approve the landfill search, have only added fuel to the sacred fire that would keep Camp Morgan going after enduring two cold prairie winters.

Last year, a barricade went up on the road leading to the Brady Landfill because the government and police were still not responding to calls to search for the women.

“Since the blockade, July of last year is when things really blew up, the support has always been national, but then it really caught the eyes of everyone… that’s when the UN was involved,” said Melissa Robinson. “It’s only gotten bigger since we’ve gotten louder.”

Robinson and five others were named on an injunction to dismantle the road block, and as the deadline passed, their cause increasingly drew international attention.

The hashtag #SearchTheLandfill gained momentum, inspiring solidarity marches, rallies and protests that were held nationwide. Some traveled to join Camp Morgan. 

But as Camp Morgan dismantled the road blockade, and kept the encampment off the side of the road, they decided to help Marcedes Myran’s family to start Camp Marcedes. 

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) in Winnipeg welcomed the Myrans and others to set up their encampment behind the CMHR building and near the bank of the Red River.

Coals from Camp Morgan’s sacred fire were moved to Camp Marcedes where a new sacred fire began. 

At a rally last August outside the CMHR, Marcedes’ sister Jorden Myran was emotional as she spoke. 

“Marcedes was a very powerful, outgoing woman who loved her children immensely, our favourite place to venture when we were kids was, the Forks,” she said before pausing to catch her breath and wipe a tear. 

She referred to the area where the museum and Camp Marcedes sat, an ancient gathering place for Indigenous Peoples where the Red and Assiniboine Rivers converge.

Camp Marcedes stood for nearly 10 months welcoming passersby to drop tobacco into the fire as an offering to the spirits of the murdered women. It disbanded in May 2024.

The sacred fire continues to burn

Outside Brady Landfill, the sacred fire has continued to burn for more than 600 days, even after the guilty verdict.

“It’s been made known to the City that they could never come onto these grounds and dismantle anything,” said Robinson. “Our long house, our wigwam is sacred, the grounds here are sacred, they’ve been blessed by many Elders… even the red dresses along the fence going into Brady, those have all been smudged.” 

Her family wants Camp Morgan to stay permanently, or at least until the bodies of Morgan and Marcedes have been recovered from Prairie Green landfill.

They also want a search for Tanya Nepinak to be revived at the Brady Landfill. 

“[The province] did ask us if we wanted to be involved with that part of the search. That’s something for other people to do — you should never have to help search for your loved one,” said Robinson. 

In July, a newly built healing lodge was brought to the privately-owned Prairie Green Landfill, where the Harris and Myran families will gather as the search happens. The 1,800-square foot, ready-to-move building was delivered to the landfill. It is some distance from the section of the landfill where the remains of Harris and Myran are believed to be buried.

On June 27, a pilot test program search, described as “stage two,” was done in a section of the landfill, away from the parts that have been shut down and currently waiting to be searched. 

In an email, a spokesperson for the Manitoba government explained that testing was underway and materials were being excavated to provide experts with clear information before the search begins. Recruiting and training searchers is set to begin in early fall, once the detailed search plan gets finalized.

A feasibility study on the landfill search, which outlined the steps and resources required, was completed last year. 

Cambria Harris and George Robinson are co-chairs of the oversight committee, which has been meeting bi-weekly with the province and Premier Wab Kinew to organize the landfill search.

“It was Prairie Green who stepped up and closed those cells,” said George Robinson, Melissa’s husband. He said he will be on-the-ground at Prairie Green supervising the workers and ensuring that no short-cuts are taken.

Melissa says the families have not forgotten that Winnipeg Police refused to search. 

“Winnipeg Police did not want to do that work and here we are now, doing it when they said it could not have been done, so shame on them,” Melissa said, adding that she’s lost all trust in the police.

Cambria Harris said she feels the same. “The decisions that were made previously were really bad. When even the premier of Manitoba calls you and tells your family that you were right, and you were right from the very beginning,” she said. 

Melissa says they believe that there could be more bodies in Winnipeg’s two landfills.

“We have so many women that have vanished, where are they?” she said. “Once they start that work, what are they going to find?”

State surveillance and distrust of police 

Even after the landfill search was announced by Manitoba’s premier in February 2024, Camp Morgan has continued to stand. And it will remain standing, says Redhorse, a Blackfoot firekeeper originally from Calgary.

“Some of the stuff I have been hearing is like, ‘when are we leaving?’ We’re not going anywhere,” he said.

Redhorse has been tending to the sacred fire since last summer. “Once I started connecting with who I was in the Indigenous identity, it felt like the right path and I just felt called here,” he said.

As a result of their commitments to keeping the sacred fire going 24/7, both Redhorse and Tre Delaronde, who kept the fire throughout the first winter, have had their share of interactions with the Winnipeg Police, who often show up to harass the camp.

Danny Smyth, Chief of the Winnipeg Police, has been critical of Camp Morgan participants, such as Delaronde, who he has written about online. “Tre Delaronde has been a constant presence at the protests. His conduct at the protest sight [sic], and on social media has been aggressive, and at times militant… At the time of his arrest, he was wearing a ballistic vest and military-like fatigues,” wrote Smyth.

Smyth has been critical of people like Delaronde for wearing camouflage — clothing that’s commonly worn by Indigenous peoples within resistance movements, including the First Nations Indigenous Warriors (FNIW), a Winnipeg-based group that’s been supporting the families.

A mistrust of the Winnipeg Police Service was solidified after they refused to search Prairie Green landfill in December 2022, according to a statement from the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs. The Chiefs also called for police chief Smyth’s resignation.

Winnipeg Police have been pressuring the Harris family to meet with them.

“I have extended an offer, through superintendent Bonnie Emerson, to meet with you and discuss the challenges that were encountered during the investigation. That offer still stands,” wrote Smyth in 2022 to a number of First Nations chiefs organizations in a message meant for the Harris family.

But the family says they saw no point in meeting if they were not going to conduct a search.

Melissa Robinson recalled how, after the release of Smyth’s letter, her family was accosted by police at the Winnipeg Richardson International Airport.

She said that the police were waiting on the other side of airport security and “held up” their plane. One of the officers was Emerson, in charge of community relations for the police, and a Sandy Bay First Nation band member.

Police wanted to show the family a laptop presentation to explain why the landfill can’t be searched, she said.

“They told us at the very beginning, stopped us at the airport when we were going to Ottawa, wanted to show us a PowerPoint on why it couldn’t be searched. Well, here we are now getting ready to search,” said Robinson. 

Recently, she was followed by an unmarked police car from downtown to her home.

“They followed me all the way down my street, then I turned into my back lane and they just kept going, probably to try to intimidate me, right? I don’t get intimidated very easily so they’ll have to try harder,” said Robinson.

These incidents are why the Harris family does not want police involved when Morgan’s Warriors does outreach street patrols, nor at the upcoming landfill search.

Winnipeg Police declined Ricochet’s request for an interview. An email response from Constable Danni McKinnon states that Morgan’s Warriors is a “welcomed” resource, whether or not it is involved with police. 

Seeking accountability with another inquiry

Chiefs at an Assembly of First Nations meeting in Montreal last month unanimously passed a resolution for an independent inquiry looking into how the Winnipeg Police handled the deaths of the four women, and how the province responded to calls for Prairie Green to be searched. 

Morgan Harris’s family was there.

“Right now, we can only go on speculation, but with an inquiry they can get all the notes, the emails, the phone calls, all the recordings they have… you can get all the evidence from the Crown,” said George Robinson, Melissa’s husband.

They do not want to see another family have to fight as long and hard as they did for a landfill search. 

“Our lives have been put on hold for all of this, but I wouldn’t change any of it, I feel like we had to in order to get as far as we have,” said Melissa Robinson. 

The couple foresees that an inquiry would reveal racial biases. 

“It’s continued racism against us, they don’t see us as equal, so Indigenous people here in our city are not equal to the other race,” Melissa said.

At a July 17 meeting at the Government House of Manitoba, beside the legislative building, national chief Cindy Woodhouse-Nepinak gave Manitoba lieutenant governor Anita Neville a letter asking her to “exercise her authority” by enacting the Manitoba Evidence Act to establish an Indigenous-led commission to carry out the inquiry. 

“We had a long discussion on the issue,” said Woodhouse-Nepinak. She said that Neville told her that she holds the MMIWG2S+ issue “very near and dear to her heart.” 

“I want to believe her, and I want to work with her and find a common path on moving forward,” said Woodhouse-Nepinak, who expects a response letter from Neville.

Past inquiries and commissions of concerns to Indigenous Peoples have been done with a lack of action on recommendations for change.

The Aboriginal Justice Inquiry formed in 1988 after the police shooting death of an unarmed Oji-Cree man, J.J. Harper, in Winnipeg’s Weston neighbourhood. The 1991 report revealed deep systemic racism within the justice system.

In 1992, the Royal Commission of Aboriginal Peoples launched after the 1990 Kanehsatà:ke Resistance, or “Oka Crisis.” The Kanyen’kehà:ka were protecting a burial ground from a golf course expansion by the town of Oka in Quebec. In 1996, the RCAP released volumes of reports.

From 2008 to 2015 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission gathered testimonies from more than 6,000 survivors of Indian Residential Schools. A 2023 report by the Yellowhead Institute found that only 13 out of 94 calls to action from the TRC report have ever been fulfilled, and zero have been checked.

The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls was called after the death of Tina Fontaine, 15, from Sagkeeng Anicinabe Nation, who was pulled out of Winnipeg’s Red River. Raymond Cormier was charged with second degree murder. He was acquitted by jury, and Crown prosecutors did not appeal. 

Despite little results from past inquiries and commissions, the Harris family is hopeful that a new inquiry can be a catalyst towards change.

As the AFN resolution for an inquiry only mentioned Contois, Myran, Harris and Buffalo Woman, some want to see it broadened.

“I would like to ask that the scope of this commission include earlier investigations that may or may not have been as thorough as should have been,” said Derek Nepinak, chief of the Minegozhiibe Anishinabe, at a July 11 media conference in Montreal.

Police told Tanya’s family that they would search for her at Brady Landfill for a month, but it ended after six days.

“Include what happened to Tanya Nepinak… our extended family deserves answers too,” said Nepinak.

Manitoba-wide impact statements

Because the highly-publicized details of the women’s deaths have had far-reaching effects, the court will consider impact statements from across Manitoba.

“Communities that often do not have a voice, have not had a voice in justice,” said MMIWG2S+ advocate Sandra Delaronde. “This ongoing tragedy impacts us all.”

Delaronde is with the Giganawenimaanaanig MMIWG2S+ Implementation Committee, which is traveling around Manitoba to gather statements, and has been bringing those voices forward in the sentencing process. 

“The failure to act on previous inquiries has resulted in an increase in violence and murders against Indigenous women and girls,” she said. 

“The lives of Indigenous women matter. They are valued.”

Victim impact statements will be heard at Skibicki’s sentencing hearing on August 28.

“I’ve got a lot of words to say, and I’m going to say them loud and clear when that court day comes,” said Morgan Harris’s daughter Cambria. 

“I’m going to look him right in the eyes and tell him he’s a monster.”