File Photo (Image Credit: The Canadian Press)

By James Peters

Two and Out

PETERS: Landfill search for Indigenous women’s remains worth an honest effort

Dec 9, 2022 | 10:35 AM

THE FRAUGHT RELATIONSHIP between Canada’s Indigenous people and this nation’s police reached another new low this week.

Winnipeg’s police service revealed that the remains of two of the four victims of an alleged serial killer — both Indigenous women — are believed to be in a landfill just outside of Winnipeg.

However, the department has decided the job of searching the landfill to actually find those remains and return them to their families is just too onerous.

In fact, Winnipeg Police made that decision in June, but are only speaking publicly about it now.

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It’s very difficult for settler governments and law enforcement agencies to be received in good faith when time and time again, they offer no respect to the final resting places of Indigenous people.

For the families of Marcedes Myran and Morgan Beatrice Harris, this is infuriating. Those women’s bodies are being treated like literal garbage, left to lie in a trash heap.

For the wider Indigenous community, it must evoke painful feelings that little has changed since the days of residential schools, a time when Indigenous graves were not treated with any dignity either.

Not important enough for proper documentation, not important enough for actual grave markings, not important enough to tell the families.

Defenders of the police will point to the logistical nightmare of searching a massive city landfill with no starting point, no frame of reference.

Yes, it will be difficult.

Think of how many times, though, we have sent divers into deep, dark, cold bodies of water to find and retrieve human remains, all under the principle that every human being deserves a proper resting place upon passing from this life.

In this case, to not even offer an attempt is completely unacceptable.

And if the police don’t want to do it, there will be plenty of volunteers who will.

Plenty of people out there who think a supposedly impossible task is at least worth an honest effort and not just another shrug of the shoulders.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or Pattison Media.