Dear Editor,
In March 2025, the remains of two Indigenous women – Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran – who were murdered in 2022 by Jeremy Skibicki, a serial killer, were found after a search of a landfill in the Canadian province of Manitoba.
Their murders had gone undetected for months until a man looking for scrap metal in a bin outside Jeremy Skibicki’s apartment found partial human remains, identified as belonging to a third Indigenous woman, Rebecca Contois.
Manitoba Police and authorities suspected that Skibicki had deposited the remains of his victims in garbage bins, which then were dumped into the Prairie Green Landfill, north of the city of Winnipeg,
The RCMP and the provincial government initially declined to search the landfill for the remains of the women, and a federal government study concluded that a search could take three years and cost up to CAD 184 million (USD 128 million).
The families of the murdered women never gave up calling for the landfill to be searched.
In October 2023, Wabanakwut “Wab” Kinew from the Ojibways of Onigaming First Nation in Northwestern Ontario was elected as the 25th premier of Manitoba. Wab Kinew, pledged CAD 20 million for a search of the landfill that began in December 2024. The funds were matched by the federal government. In late February 2025, search crews recovered human remains, later identified as those of Ms Harris and Ms Myran. Their bodies were returned to their families for burial.
In March 2025, the Manitoba Progressive Conservatives (PC), who had rejected a landfill search when they formed government, issued a formal apology in the legislature to the families.
“Our government erred. It’s as simple as that,” said interim PC Leader Wayne Ewasko. Premier Kinew has said that “many Canadians always understood that this was the right thing to do to search the landfill”. “But now, we can also say with confidence, that this was also the realistic and reasonable thing to do,” Wayne Ewasko added.
Editor, the Indigenous women, Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran, did not die while traveling in a State-owned and run ferry. They died at the hands of a psychopath.
But the Premier of Manitoba understood that their lives were sacred. Excavators and people worked in the winter months (December 2024-February 2025) to dig up and examine hundreds or thousands of tons of garbage – ‘a needle in a haystack’ – to retrieve the bones of the two Indigenous women, Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran.
Editor, please let us not have to await a change of government for the MV Barima to be raised, and for the remains of the precious souls inside to be returned to their loved ones for dignified burial, and for our nation to begin healing.