Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs says that a feasibility study on the Prairie Green landfill search should be ready in 4 to 6 weeks
After the body of a First Nations woman was found at the Brady Road landfill this week, Indigenous advocates and groups are calling again for a search for human remains in Winnipeg-area landfills.
Police say that on Monday afternoon, workers at the south Winnipeg landfill found the body of Linda Mary Beardy, a 33-year-old woman from Lake St. Martin First Nation.
In an interview on Tuesday, Cindy Woodhouse, the regional chief for Manitoba with the Assembly of First Nations, said, “Many people call it a graveyard, and we keep putting trash there.” This was right after police announced the discovery at Brady Road.
“We know it’s a cemetery. And there are a lot of other women who have gone missing. Where do they live?”
Police said Tuesday that work at the Brady Road landfill has stopped so that investigators can do their jobs.
During protests and calls for a site-wide search for the bodies of missing people in December and January, the dump was closed for a few weeks. That happened after police announced more charges against a man already accused of killing Rebecca Contois, whose body parts were found on Brady Road in June of last year.
At the beginning of December, police said they think the bodies of Morgan Harris and Marceles Myran, two other First Nations women Jeremy Skibicki is accused of killing, were taken to the Prairie Green landfill north of Winnipeg.
The remains of a fourth woman, who hasn’t been named yet but who people in the area call “Buffalo Woman” or “Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe,” are unknown. Skibicki has also been charged with murder in her death.
Tuesday, police said they have no reason to think Beardy’s death is linked to any other crimes. They said that even though her death seems strange, it is not yet being called a murder.
Morgan Harris’s daughter, Cambria Harris, is very upset with the police for not searching the Prairie Green landfill right away for her mother’s body.
Last year, police said it wasn’t possible because they didn’t know for sure where the body was dumped until more than a month after it’s thought to have happened.
Cambria Harris said in an interview on Tuesday, “When you say you’re not going to search the landfill, you send the message that it’s OK to dump people or Indigenous women like trash.”
Harris says that because she is an Indigenous woman, she feels like she has a target on her back.
“It’s heartbreaking because people take advantage of that, and they take advantage of the weak and the minority,” she said.
In February, the federal government gave $500,000 for a study to see if it would be possible to search the Priarie Green landfill.
The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs said Tuesday that the study should be done in four to six weeks. They are confident that the study will say that the search and recovery efforts are possible.
Once that search is under way, the group said in a news release, “we can then focus on the Brady landfill.”
In an interview on Tuesday, AMC Grand Chief Cathy Merrick said that she wants the federal government to help with a thorough search of that dump.
Jerry Daniels, the Grand Chief of the Southern Chiefs’ Organization, said that he asked for the Brady Road landfill to be called an active crime scene back in December.
Daniels said in a news release that the news that Beardy’s body was found there shows that much more needs to be done to protect Indigenous women.
Woodhouse of the AFN says that now is the time for all levels of government to act on the many suggestions made by the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in 2019.
She said, “There have been calls for justice.” “We need to start putting them into action so that we can help our women and stop ending up in landfills.”