Hymie Rubenstein is editor of REAL Indigenous Report and a retired professor of anthropology, University of Manitoba.The long-delayed search for the remains of two murdered indigenous women, the victims of self-confessed serial killer, Jeremy Skibicki, is now in full gear.The families of Morgan Harris, 39, and Marcedes Myran, 26, with the support of several indigenous organizations, have been fighting relentlessly for a search at the Prairie Green landfill, just north of Winnipeg, since police announced in 2022 that the women had been killed by Skibicki who then deposited their dismembered remains in a dumpster.Skibicki, 37, is charged with first-degree murder in their deaths, and in the death of Rebecca Contois, 24, whose remains were found in a different landfill.All three were indigenous women who Skibicki, a white man, lured from their homeless shelters with the promise of access to drugs. His confession shows a hatred of indigenous women and a compulsion for homicidal necrophilia.Although Skibicki pleaded guilty to killing the four women, his defence team argued he should be found not criminally responsible due to mental incapacity when he murdered them.An update on the landfill search came on Tuesday, the day after closing arguments in his trial.Some of the details of that work were laid out for family members at a meeting with New Democrat Premier Wab Kinew about the search, which is being led by the province.Melissa Robinson, one of Morgan Harris’s cousins, said the tour included seeing a site at another location where the province is building a healing lodge, which will later be moved to the landfill for family use during the search.After meeting with the premier, the aggrieved families travelled to the landfill site and performed a cultural ceremony.Following the meeting, Kinew said the first stage of the search process, which included getting licence approvals to search the landfill, is now complete. The search will move through its next stages through the year and could extend into early 2026.Robinson said seeing all the work that's been done to try to bring her cousin's remains home felt like a weight being lifted off her shoulders.“It was like, where do we go from here now?” she said. "It was a good feeling, though. So yesterday, those were happy tears."Those tears fell in part because of a promise Robinson said she made to her late cousin's sister, who died after Morgan was killed, that she would make sure to bring Morgan's remains home from the landfill.“I think back to when we went there a year and a half ago … and being so struck with the idea that she was laying there. And here we are now, you know, delivering that promise that we're going to be bringing her home. And at this point, that's all that matters,” she said.This story, as heartbreaking as it is, is a classic example of emotion, indigenous activist lobbying, and political virtue signaling taking precedence over logic, public interest, and scientific evidence. Manitoba’s former Progressive Conservative government earlier rejected calls to search the landfill, saying asbestos and other materials would pose a threat to searchers. There was no guarantee the effort would be successful not least because no proof has been offered that the remains were deposited where they are believed to be located.The Tories took out advertisements in last year’s provincial election campaign saying they would “stand firm” in not conducting the search, a move that may have cost them the election.The New Democrats promised to search the landfill before winning the election and is now acting on it.In his Tuesday press conference, Kinew said “We are doing the work of setting up the search facility” and that he is confident there’s enough money to cover the required work. He also opined that the search could run until early 2026 without revealing when actual excavation would begin.“We are going to ensure that we deliver on the compassionate mission here, which is trying to recover the remains of two of our fellow Manitobans.”Kinew also said “We have undertaken this [work] out of respect for the families.”Regrettably, cultural ceremonies, compassion, respect, and promised money will never result in any remains being recovered.Over a year and a half ago, Winnipeg police said a search of the Prairie Green Landfill was “not feasible” because they only became aware the remains were dumped there more than a month before about 10,000 loads of debris were dumped over them. In addition, 1,500 tonnes of animal remains were deposited in that 34-day time frame. Moreover, the garbage truck they believe was carrying the remains wasn't equipped with the GPS that could help investigators pinpoint the area of the landfill to search, and the garbage was later compacted with 9,000 tonnes of wet, heavy construction clay.The original 2023 federal-government funded and indigenous controlled feasibility study estimated that the search for remains would take between one and three years at a cost of between $84 million and $184 million, with no guarantee of success, far below the current federal-provincial allocation of $40 million. These crude and shifting estimates are a window into the most serious shortcoming of the study. The ideal window for beginning a successful landfill search for human remains is within its first 30 days. While the study’s personnel included two forensic experts, the landmark 2019 Paulsen and Moran study saw its warning “A search should not be initiated if more than 60 days had passed between the body entering the landfill and the search being initiated” arbitrarily rewritten as “Paulsen and Moran (2019) caution initiating a search when more than 60 days has [sic] passed between the body entering the landfill and the search being initiated.” Converting “don’t do it” to “be careful” points to a lack of professional objectivity, if not questionable ethics, in a search that would exceed the 60-day limit by 14-fold, were the Prairie Green excavation project to begin even as early as September of this year.Based on the results of many previous searches, the chances of recovering the remains of these two women is almost zero.At the end of the day, what is left is a useless search rooted in indigenous racial privilege, capitulation to emotional pleading, contrived feasibility, aversion to transparency and accountability, and a rejection of scientific evidence.Hymie Rubenstein is editor of REAL Indigenous Report and a retired professor of anthropology, University of Manitoba.
