Winnipeg: A daughter's quest to find her mother's remains

Police believe the remains of four indigenous women murdered by a serial killer were dumped in a landfill. But officials have yet to recover their bodies, leaving it up to the victims' family members to keep the search alive, reports Brandi Morin.

A makeshift barricade of tyres and scraps of white-painted fence lays across a paved road leading to the Brady Landfill on the outskirts of the Canadian city of Winnipeg.

Mohawk warrior flags, which feature the face of an indigenous man superimposed on a yellow sunburst on a red background, wave in the wind. Indigenous blockaders dressed in camouflage gear stand guard nearby, keeping people from entering.

They have been standing sentry for weeks, in protest, after police announced they believe the bodies of indigenous women murdered by a serial killer may be buried there.

Behind their barrier is 22-year-old Cambria Harris. And she will stop at nothing to find her mother's body.

Last December, Winnipeg police told Cambria and other family members that her mother Morgan Harris, 39, of Long Plain First Nation had allegedly been murdered by a man they accuse of being a serial killer.

Police claim Jeremy Skibicki killed four women, including Harris, and dumped their bodies in two different landfills over a three-month span in the spring of 2022.

All the women were indigenous. None of their bodies have been recovered.

He is charged with first degree murder in the deaths of Harris; Marcedes Myran, 26, also of Long Plain First Nation; Rebecca Contois, 24, of O-Chi-Chak-Ko-Sipi First Nation; and an unknown woman who was given the ceremonial name of Buffalo Woman by indigenous elders.

In the months before hearing the devastating news of her mother's death, Cambria was on another desperate search - looking for her missing mother on the streets, homeless shelters and other places where Morgan would hang out.

The moment she learned of her mother's fate on a December day at police headquarters, was "heartbreaking", she said.

Her mother's cousin Kirstin Witwicki grew up with Morgan Harris on the north side of Winnipeg but the cousins drifted apart when Morgan became addicted to drugs.

"Addictions are just people trying to turn off the pain," she told the BBC. But still, Harris was "fearless, someone who spoke her mind".

"She was tiny but tough. And I think whatever this man did to her, she must have fought. She did not go down without a fight. I know that in my soul. But that's the hard part, I try not to think about what she was thinking."

That toughness has been passed onto Cambria, who has been fighting to have her mother's body and the bodies of other victims recovered from the landfills where they were buried.

When police told Cambria that they had no plans to search the Prairie Green Landfill where the remains of her and Marcedes Myran are believed to be, Cambria said she "screamed right at the homicide investigators", she told the BBC from her home in Winnipeg in May.

"What if your mother or your loved one ended up in a landfill and you were told that they would not search for your loved one and that they're going to be there for time immemorial? There's a chance that my mother's bones are still there," she said.

Police told her too much time had passed and a search was "unfeasible".

After police initially declined to search the landfill, and under pressure from the families and their supporters, the federal government funded a study to determine if a search would indeed be possible. It concluded that a search could take up to three years, cost up to C$184 million ($134m, £109m), and workers would be exposed to hazardous chemicals.

Earlier this month, the premier of the province of Manitoba, Heather Stefanson, met with relatives of the victims, including Cambria, and told them the province wouldn't support a landfill search.

It would put workers in danger with no assurances of a result, she said.

The decision was met with anger by the families, supporters and indigenous leaders.

"Why aren't we looking and what does it come down to? To a price tag and not the price of indigenous women's lives being stolen," Cambria said.

Beyond the pain felt by the families of the murdered women, the issue has touched a raw nerve in the city and beyond.

Canada has long faced a crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. According to the RCMP, indigenous women make up 10% of the population of missing women in Canada, and 16% of female homicides. Indigenous women make up about 4% of the female population in Canada.

While the issue is nationwide, it has touched Winnipeg - a city of some one million in the heart of the Canadian prairies - deeply.

The city gets its name from the Cree words "Win," (muddy) and "nipee," water, and the Red River winds its way through it.

In 2014, the body of 15-year-old Tina Fontaine, of Sagkeeng First Nation, was pulled from the river near the Alexander Docks adjacent to the city's centre.

The murder of the young teenager was a tipping point in Canada, leading to calls that eventually helped launch a national inquiry into violence against indigenous women and girls.

Cambria was one of thousands who took to the streets in protest. She was 14 at the time.

In 2019, the national inquiry concluded these women were victims of a "Canadian genocide" driven by "state actions and inactions rooted in colonialism and colonial ideologies".

Nahanni Fontaine, of Sagkeeng First Nation, and a provincial politician with the left-leaning New Democratic Party, says the killings of the four women and the fight over the search for their bodies is another cultural turning point.

"In a perfect world, they would've started immediately and just gave it their all," said Fontaine, who is not related to Tina Fontaine.

Cambria was born and raised in Winnipeg where she lived with her mother - who was "always there" and three younger siblings, "always being surrounded by family", until she was six.

Then, one weekend, her world dramatically shifted.

She came home from a sleepover and found it surrounded by police, with her belongings, and those of one of her sisters, in garbage bags.

The siblings were taken away by child services.

Cambria doesn't know why they were taken, she was never given a specific reason, but thinks it was most likely due to her mother's growing drug addiction. She was scared that day and not allowed to see her mother.

"You're being told to stay in the car and that you're going for a long sleepover, which ends up being 10 plus years and lasting all the way until you're 18."

Cambria was placed in the care of her maternal aunt, Crystal, along with her sister. Cambria and her siblings kept in regular contact with their mother until she ended up on the streets.

Like many indigenous families, Cambria says the pain that afflicted her family took hold generations ago.

Her great-grandparents left the Long Plain First Nation in the late 1800s due to insufficient food rations provided by the federal authorities and ended up living in the Macgregor landfill north of Winnipeg in a rundown shack.

Now, her own mother's body lies somewhere in another landfill.

Her grandmother was sent to a residential school - institutions where many suffered physical, emotional and sexual abuse and children were often housed in poorly built, poorly heated, and unsanitary facilities.

The family trauma was handed down through generations, says Cambria, including to her mother.

In her teenage years, Cambria herself struggled.

"I was really angry for a long time, I won't lie, I wasn't the greatest kid either," she said. "But I got sick of running away from my problems and I started facing them head on."

At 18 Cambria gave birth to her daughter Willow, now three, and went on to graduate high school.

Now, she has turned her attention to finding justice for her mother and the other three women, and bringing them home.

"I turned my grief and my anger into something beautiful," she said.

The fight is not over.

The federal government told the BBC that they are still considering whether they will fund a search.

A blockade erected in support of a search outside one city landfill was torn down 18 July, after a court granted Winnipeg an injunction to remove the barricade over safety concerns.

Another camp has since gone up outside the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg.

For Cambria, there is no question about keeping pressure on authorities to search for her mother's and the other victims' remains.

"They're telling me that my mother's dead, but where? Well, if she has been murdered, she needs to be retrieved," she said.

"And so does Marcedes Myran because this landfill is essentially a giant burial site, an unmarked grave at that."