A memorial with photos of Morgan Harris attached is shown as family and friends gather at a vigil in Winnipeg, in December, 2022.JOHN WOODS/The Canadian Press
Morgan Harris has, finally, come home. The Indigenous woman was one of four murdered by a serial killer and her body lay nearly three years in a dump near Winnipeg. For a time, it looked as though this indignity would be eternal. Police ducked calls to search the landfill and the provincial government used the situation to score political points.
This was a betrayal. It was insult piled upon grief for her family, which is understandably in no mood to forgive.
A change of government finally led to a search. And remains found recently were identified last week as belonging to Ms. Harris. Other remains have also been unearthed at the site but not yet identified. The family of Marcedes Myran, another of the killer’s victims, is hoping this will turn out to be their daughter.
Finding these women is a crucial step in their families’ recovery. It’s also a small step along Canada’s road toward reconciliation with Indigenous people, and one that should never have taken this long.
Jeremy Skibicki was sentenced last year to life in prison for murdering Ms. Harris and Ms. Myran, along with Rebecca Contois and another woman who has not been identified. He targeted women in homeless shelters, lured them to his apartment, assaulted them, killed them and defiled their bodies, which he then dumped in the garbage.
After arresting him, in May of 2022, Winnipeg police kept secret their conclusion that Ms. Harris and Ms. Myran had ended up in the Prairie Green landfill, north of Winnipeg. They allowed the families to keep hoping for months their loved ones were alive, to go on searching for them.
Police later responded to graffiti critical of their inaction by referring it to their major crimes unit.
Once police acknowledged they thought the bodies were at Prairie Green, they refused to look for them, claiming dangerous material such as asbestos made it too risky. But police are not the ones trained to assess such risks.
The police claim was then taken up by the Progressive Conservative government of Heather Stefanson, which argued it would be irresponsibly dangerous to search the landfill. A worst-case cost estimate – $184-million if the search took three years – was treated as gospel. Doing the right thing for these families was crassly weighed against what else that money could buy.
The Tories turned the families’ pain into an ugly wedge issue during a 2023 provincial election, insisting they were doing the right thing by doing nothing. In the last days of the campaign they even paid for large billboards touting the supposed virtue of not undertaking the search.
These families were treated callously by the police and cynically by the government.
It’s easy to say the right words when it comes to reconciliation. The actual work is harder, and it centres on respect. Reconciliation is made more difficult by torching trust with the Indigenous community. It requires humility. It requires empathy.
Canadians have to see the pain and suffering of Indigenous people as being important. When the families of these women were crying out for justice, police and government made it clear that their loved ones didn’t matter.
Only after Wab Kinew led the NDP to victory in that 2023 election, having promised to search the landfill, did the necessary work begin. While excavation continues, the search has so far been much faster and cheaper than forecast. And even if it does drag on it would still have been the right thing to do.
In the Manitoba legislature last week, current Tory Leader Wayne Ewasko admitted as much, saying his party had “lost our way in regards to empathy and also lost our way in regards to closure being brought forward to the families of the victims.”
It can be too easy for other Canadians to look away from the suffering of Indigenous people. But their reality – a shorter life span, far too many of them in prison, urban homelessness and dozens of reserves with boil-water advisories – is a stain on the nation. Ignoring it just compounds this.
True reconciliation may take decades, though there will be moments along the way that show progress is being made. Recognizing the importance of searching the landfill was one such marker. Finding Morgan Harris, and giving back the dignity she deserved by returning her to her family, was another.