The Province of Manitoba is committing to search for the remains of Ashlee Shingoose — who was previously unidentified and named Maskode Bizhiki’ikwe (Buffalo Woman) — in hopes that her family can finally bring her home.

After the woman’s identity was revealed at a press conference last week, the room erupted in cheers when the premier vowed to enact a probe of the Brady Road landfill where the body of Tanya Nepinak is also believed to be located. 

It’s the second “Winnipeg” landfill that Indigenous families have demanded be searched for their missing and murdered loved ones as they seek closure and justice.

Shingoose’s family spent three years wondering where their loved one was after the Anishininiw (Oji-Cree) mother of three went missing in 2022. During a press conference held by the Winnipeg Police Service on Wednesday, the Chief of their community read out text messages from Shingoose’s parents. 

“Please start the search as soon as possible,” said Ashlee’s mom Theresa Shingoose in the message that was read aloud by Raymond Flett of St. Theresa Point Anishininew Nation. 

Flett got emotional and paused for a moment to compose himself before continuing to read the next text from Ashlee’s father, Albert Shingoose. The Shingooses were unable to join in-person, but watched virtually, because their plane was unable to land due to the weather.

“It’s been a long time, waiting. I need to bring her home, I need that closure, it’s been too long, enough,” he said. 

“Search the landfill as soon as possible. I know it will take time and (it’s) going to get harder. This new update, it takes me back. It’s hard reliving the hurt.”

‘I can promise you that we are going to try’

Along with the province, the City of Winnipeg and the federal government announced support for a search of the Brady Road landfill. The news came after a search of the Prairie Green landfill resulted in finding the remains of Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran, both of Long Plain First Nation, earlier in March.

Both of those women, as well as Shingoose, were victims of a serial murderer who was charged in their deaths and is now serving a life sentence in prison. The body of his fourth victim, Rebecca Contois, was found in 2022, which led to police nabbing their killer — a man who held white supremacist beliefs and targeted Indigenous women.

On March 26 — in a room filled with police officers, politicians, advocates, media, and family members of missing and murdered Indigenous Peoples — Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew made a vow to the Shingoose family. 

“I want to say to Ashlee’s parents, to her mom and dad, who I had a chance to speak with briefly yesterday, I promise you that we are going to search the Brady landfill, for your daughter,” said Kinew, who later shared a song at the family’s request.

“I cannot promise you that we will bring her home, but I can promise you that we are going to try.”

The news was emotional for Sue Caribou to hear, as her niece Tanya is thought to be at the Brady landfill, but was never found after a failed, six-day landfill search by the Winnipeg Police Service in 2012. Upon hearing that the landfill would be searched again, Caribou left the room sobbing. 

More recently, calls to revisit a landfill search for Tanya have been renewed by Caribou and the broader community in “Winnipeg.”  

One reporter asked whether the search would continue for Tanya.

Grand Chief Kyra Wilson of the Assembly of Manitoba Chief got up to the podium and acknowledged that Tanya’s family was watching a live-feed and were also in the room. 

“Of course this is a conversation that we do need to have, and what I will say today is that we hear a strong message that we don’t leave anybody behind,” Wilson said.

The next day, after Ashlee’s parents landed in “Winnipeg,” they spoke directly to reporters about their daughter being identified. 

“We looked at each other and we cried. It was a happy, happy cry,” Albert said at the press conference on Thursday. He then urged people to use their voices and ask for the search at Brady to begin immediately.

“The landfill, it’s not the burial ground for anybody. We’re not garbage. Nobody is garbage.”

Meanwhile, Ashlee’s mother spoke about how the family has been coping.

“It’s too hard to lose your daughter not knowing where she is,” Ashlee’s mother Theresa said.  

“What kept me going is, I do my sweats in the lodge, and this is what carried my prayers.” 

Carrying the name Buffalo Woman

Shingoose, 31, was not identified in the case at first, only being known by police as “Jane Doe.”

Tobi Jolly, who described herself to the press conference audience on Wednesday as “a helper in the community,” said the use of this impersonal name “weighed on my mind and heart.”

“I didn’t know what to do with that feeling, so I brought that to people much more knowledgeable than myself, to speak to my emotional struggle and asked the question: ‘What should we call her?’” Jolly said.

Jolly turned to Thelma Morrisseau, an Elder who works with the MMIWG2S+ Implementation Committee, also known as Gganwenimaanaanig – Anishinaabemowin for “We take care of them all.”

Morrisseau, who follows the Midewiwin Lodge teachings, told a story about her teacher Noozhequay also known as Mary Roberts, of Roseau River Anishinabe First Nation, who was a fourth degree Mide’ Ikwe.  

Before she passed in 2002, Noozhequay went on her last fast out on the land. On the third night of the vision quest, a “grandma buffalo spirit,” came to her with a message.

“What she saw about us and how we were walking in creation. She saw our pain, she saw our sorrow, and she saw that we were not walking with our head up,” Morrisseau said.

The name of that spirit was Maskode Bizhiki’kwe, Buffalo Woman. She instructed Noozhequay to pass that namesake onto other women who didn’t yet have the opportunity to get a spirit name early on in life, as it is the tradition for Anishinaabe babies to get their spirit name.

The importance of having a spiritual name given through ceremony is so that people will have a sense of cultural identity, so that one could be recognized by others in the Spirit World.

“Our community, women, grandmothers, we sat and we talked and we said that she needs to have a name. She needs to be recognized, because she’s important,” she said.

“In order for her spirit to rest in that beautiful place we all go, when we walk out and dance out that Western door, she needed that name, so that’s the name the community prayed about, asked the spirits to help us do that work.”

When Ashlee’s parents spoke to reporters on Thursday, Albert handed Morrisseau tobacco and red cloth, thanking her for bestowing their daughter with the Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe name.

“I knew at some point that Ashlee was Buffalo Woman,” said Albert. 

For the last couple years, the only clue to Buffalo Woman’s identity was a reversible Baby Phat jacket, which was a popular clothing item in the early 2000s.  

DNA was found on the coat that was recovered from Skibicki’s home by the Winnipeg Police. They released photos of it, asking the public to share tips that could identify who the jacket belonged to.

On one of his trips to look for Ashlee in Winnipeg, Albert went to Camp Morgan where he met George and Melissa Robinson, who had been pushing for a landfill search to find Melissa’s cousin Morgan Harris, Marcedes Myran and Buffalo Woman. 

The Robinsons told Albert that they had been distributing posters with photos of the Baby Phat jacket.

“During our search for information after December 1, 2022, we showed a picture of the jacket to many people on the street and homeless shelters,” wrote George in an August 28, 2024 Facebook status, the same day murderer Jeremy Skibicki was sentenced. 

“Many on the street recognized the jacket,” he wrote.

George showed shelter workers photos of missing women who he thought could be Buffalo Woman. One of the staff pointed at Ashlee’s photo because she looked familiar as being the one who wore the Baby Phat coat. 

“This worker specifically remembered the jacket because of its name, Baby Phat,” wrote George. 

He shared this tip with the Winnipeg Police missing persons unit and Crown attorneys.

But then investigators ruled out Ashlee as being Buffalo Woman, because they could not match DNA found on the coat to her. 

However, the community continued to suspect that something was amiss and that Buffalo Woman was actually Ashlee Shingoose, and that the jacket did belong to her.

“I wish I could see that (shelter worker). I wish he could come and see me and my family, who knew her from that jacket. That’s how I knew that Buffalo Woman was Ashlee,” Albert told Ricochet on Thursday.

Investigators had to find another way to link Ashlee to Skibicki, as the previously unidentified victim known as Buffalo Woman.

“The Baby Phat jacket was basically a dead end,” said Cam Mackid, deputy chief and superintendent of investigations. 

“Unfortunately, we put a lot of stock into it because we knew she was wearing it. But in the end the DNA that we took off wasn’t actually Shingoose.”

He explained to reporters on Wednesday that more than one person would have worn the coat and left their DNA on it. 

He called the investigation “one of the most complex investigations” in the history of the Winnipeg Police Service.

“I can tell you that with Skibicki’s initial arrest… until as recently as this week, we have never stopped in our efforts to identify Buffalo Woman,“ Mackid said.

The process of identifying Ashlee Shingoose

The WPS scoured through over 7,500 hours of surveillance video and found evidence of Skibicki with Morgan Harris, Marcedes Myran and Rebecca Contois before he murdered them, the investigator explained. 

Specific clothing items the women wore in the videos were linked to exhibits which were seized for the investigation. Video included Skibicki disposing of the bodies of Myran, Contois and Harris. 

Police conducted about 60 interviews with friends, family and acquaintances to investigate Skibicki as far back as his childhood. Over 560,000 digital artifacts from Skibicki’s electronic devices revealed “key pieces of evidence” which established timelines of the women’s murders. 

Mackid added that out of a seizure of over 5,000 physical exhibits, 130 were submitted to the RCMP lab for forensic examination.

How investigators chose which exhibits to test for DNA, was determined by information from interviews with Skibicki and surveillance video. 

During a post-conviction interview with Skibicki in December 2024, new information was revealed that Buffalo Woman’s remains were taken to the Brady Landfill in March 2022. 

In that same interview, Skibicki described a pair of pants that Ashlee was wearing at the time. 

This led investigators to test the pants for DNA, which then resulted in a positive DNA match to Ashlee, after they visited her family to swab them for DNA. Results came back from the RCMP lab on March 11 and March 24.

“The initial decision not to search for the remains of Morgan Harris, Marcedes Myran has significant impact on families and the community,” said Chief of Police Gene Bowers. 

“We have had time for reflection, almost nearly three years, while we cannot undo the past, we can learn from it, today, we know what needs to be done.”

WPS homicide detective Sgt. Mike MacDonald had visited St Theresa Point to share the discovery with Shingoose’s parents on Tuesday.

Right away Theresa Shingoose told her grandson about his mom so that he wouldn’t hear about it from anyone else at school.

“I wanted to be there for him, right away he started crying. He went to his room, closed the door, and I could hear him crying inside the room, so I went in, and he said, ‘I want to be alone.’”

She said that Ashlee and her kids left St. Theresa Point, because of a housing shortage.

The 2021 Statistics Canada census found that over one in six (17.1 per cent) of Indigenous Peoples lived in crowded housing, which was about double in comparison to non-Indigenous people (9.4 per cent).

To prevent systemic violence against women, girls and gender diverse people, the 231 Calls to Justice in the MMIWG National Inquiry Final Report recommended that government and institutions recognize housing as a human right and to provide more suitable housing. 

“We had no place at our home, she wanted to watch her kids the best way she knows how,” Theresa said.

“I kind of noticed that she was talking to, I would say the wrong kind of friends. And she started taking drugs and drinking. Then she lost her kids, they were sent to my home for me to look after.”

Morrisseau, now an advocate and spiritual support for the Shingoose family, recognized that women should not have to leave their communities where their support systems are.

“Leadership has to hear the voices of the community and what they need in order so their family, their loved ones, don’t have to leave the community because they don’t have the place to live,” Morrisseau said.

Her parents remembered her as being very quiet, loving and caring. “She would never talk back to me,” Theresa said.

“She would do anything to help other people,” added Albert. 

Raymond Flett, chief of St. Theresa Point Anishininew Nation, recalled being principal at the community high school when Ashlee was younger.

“I used to see her in the hallway happy with her friends,” he said.

“That’s how I want to remember her, the positive memories that we have of her.”

Editor’s note: This is a corrected story. A previous version said a past search of the Brady landfill happened in 2011. In fact it was 2012. We apologize for the error.

Crystal Greene is the BIPOC Investigating Canada fellow for Ricochet, IndigiNews and Pivot Media, with support from Canadian Race Relations Foundation and Journalists for Human Rights.