In Canada, A Daughter's Fight To Bring Her Murdered Indigenous Mother Home (Trigger Warning)
(this is a long, gruesome, image-heavy, important read)
In Canada, A Daughter's Fight To Bring Her Murdered Indigenous Mother Home (Trigger Warning)
A portrait photo shows Elle Harris standing in front of a brown wooden door
Elle Harris, the daughter of Morgan Harris, at the Camp Morgan protest encampment at the Brady Road Landfill, in Winnipeg on November 10, 2024 [Ian Willms/Panos Pictures/Al Jazeera]
By Brandi Morin
Published On 1 Jun 20251 Jun 2025
Winnipeg, Canada - The last time Elle Harris saw her mother, she was on a bus in Winnipeg’s North End. It was a chance encounter. Elle was 16 and making her way to work when she spotted Morgan slouched near the back of the bus. She was in the grips of drug-induced psychosis - her eyes vacant and unfocused, her body rocking back and forth as her lips moved in silent conversation with someone who wasn’t there.
When their eyes met, there was no flicker of recognition. The woman who had once gently braided her hair and read her bedtime stories now stared through her. Elle got off at the next stop and sobbed as she watched the bus pull away.
This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Fund for Indigenous Journalists: Reporting on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Two-Spirit and Transgender People (MMIWG2T).
Birds fly over a landfill where rubbish covers the ground
The Brady Road Landfill [Ian Willms/Panos Pictures/Al Jazeera]
It was two years later, in early December 2022, when police broke the news: Morgan had been murdered. Between March and May of that year, a serial killer had systematically targeted vulnerable Indigenous women experiencing homelessness and addiction, luring them to his Winnipeg apartment with offers of food, shelter, or substances before murdering, dismembering, and disposing of them in rubbish bins.
Morgan Harris was his second victim. She was 39 years old. Jeremy Skibicki’s other victims were 26-year-old Marcedes Myran, 24-year-old Rebecca Contois and 30-year-old Ashlee Shingoose, who was known as Buffalo Woman - a name given to her by Indigenous elders - until she was finally identified this March.
Winnipeg police were first alerted to the then 35-year-old self-proclaimed white supremacist on May 16, 2022, when the partial remains of Rebecca Contois were found in a rubbish bin. Skibicki was charged two days later, and the following month, police began searching the Brady Road Landfill, a municipal landfill on the outskirts of the city, where they found more of her remains.
On December 1, 2022, police charged Skibicki with three more counts of murder.
Morgan and Marcedes’s families were told that their relatives' remains were likely in the privately operated Prairie Green Landfill, a sprawling waste disposal site north of Winnipeg.
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Red dresses representing Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls outside a healing lodge, brought in to facilitate the search of the Prairie Green Landfill [Ian Willms/Panos Pictures/Al Jazeera]
. . . . . .
As they continue their patrol, Elle shares memories of her mother. "Mom was always making people laugh," she says. "Even during the hardest times. She had this way of finding humour in everything." Her voice softens. "When I was little, before things got really bad, she used to sing to me every night before bed - these old lullabies." Melissa notes the transformation in Elle over the past two years - from a grief-stricken daughter to a powerful advocate who now teaches vulnerable women the safety strategies that might have protected her own mother. “Every woman deserves protection. Because my mother mattered. And because the system didn't protect her, so now we have to protect each other,” Elle reflects.“I don't want people, when they hear her [Morgan’s] name, to think of what she had to endure,” says Melissa. “I want people to remember that her family took their grief and turned it into action.”
In late February, the search crews at the Prairie Green Landfill discovered human remains. They were later identified as Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran.
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/longform/2025/6/1/in-canada-a-daughters-fight-to-bring-her-murdered-indigenous-mother-home
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