A lit birthday cake glints through my phone screen, bearing a message of celebration: “HAPPY 40 MILLION FNIW [First Nation Indigenous Warriors] #SEARCHTHELANDFILLS.” 

 

The cake, posted by Winnipeg woman Cambria Harris (pictured), refers to the announcement on Mar. 24 that the Manitoba and federal governments will invest a joint $40 million to search a landfill near Winnipeg for the remains of two Indigenous women believed to be there—one of them being Harris’s mother.

 

Morgan Harris, 39, and Marcedes Myran, 26, were two of four women—all Indigenous—slain by admitted serial killer, Jeremy Skibicki, 37, who faces first-degree murder charges on all four counts. His trial began in May and is ongoing. He pleads not guilty by way of mental illness, which the prosecution attempts to prove is fabricated. 

 

For families of the victims, it has already been a long road. The killings took place between March and May of 2022. On May 18 of that year, police arrested Skibicki in connection with the death of the woman later identified as Rebecca Contois.

 

Skibicki, already in custody, was charged with first-degree murder on Dec. 1, 2022 for the deaths of Harris, Myran, and a third unidentified woman who the community later named Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, or Buffalo Woman. 

 

 

“Everything I’m doing right now is for my mother, all missing and murdered Indigenous women.… I’m doing it for my daughter, I’m doing it for the next generations that come after this.” – Morgan Harris

 

 

Then-21-year-old Cambria, along with younger sister Kera, travelled to Ottawa days later to hold a news conference, where they demanded a search of the Prairie Green landfill north of Winnipeg. They met with Prime Minister Trudeau where Cambria “called him out” and advocated for a search.

 

“Everything I’m doing right now is for my mother, all missing and murdered Indigenous women.… I’m doing it for my daughter, I’m doing it for the next generations that come after this,” said Harris in a CBC interview. 

 

 

 

 

What followed was months of gruelling bureaucratic and political (read: racist) processes that forced Harris into a position of advocacy. Through encampments, blockades, protests, news conferences, and interviews, the community called on the government to search the landfills, asserting, “We are not trash.”

 

The long delays were partially due to feasibility studies that were mandated—studies that Grand Chief Cathy Merrick of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs implied were unnecessary. “Even that is historic that we were asked to produce a document to search the landfill for our loved ones,” she told CTV News at a press conference following the announcement. “There has been other searches of landfills for other people. They were never asked to produce a feasibility study to see how worthwhile or how costly it would be to search the landfills.”

 

On Oct. 16, 2023, Harris posted a poem she wrote on Instagram. Part of it reads “No landfill is a grave/ It’s been done before/ Why is it different for indigenous/ Why do you close the door.” 

 

The amount of time the families have spent waiting for action to be taken is unacceptable. 

 

 

The process of seeking justice is another trauma that the families must endure. 

 

 

The provincial and federal governments are providing funding for the families to access mental health support during the trial and landfill search. It seems ironic to be bound up in a system that causes harm and support simultaneously. The process of seeking justice is another trauma that the families must endure. 

 

Yet, time passes, and their loved ones are still gone. Morgan Harris will forever be 39. Marcedes Myran will forever be 26. Their families eat from a birthday cake that celebrates the possibility of their loved ones finally being brought home. The families should not have been separated to begin with. They should have been celebrating birthdays and milestones together for years to come.

 

I too have prematurely lost a parent, and the agony of mourning is made more difficult when part of that trauma is bound up in government neglect. As feminists, the pathway to healing necessarily politicizes personal loss as a collective struggle. For Cambria, this is apparent in her activism.

 

A cake with a happy message still tastes of melancholy when one considers the context. 

 

What will it take for the federal government to finally take action on the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit People? The answer should never be “another study.”

 

 

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