WARNING: This story contains details concerning the murders of First Nations women.
RCMP have confirmed one of two sets of human remains found in a landfill outside Winnipeg late last month are those of Morgan Beatrice Harris.
Experts have been searching for the remains of Harris and Marcedes Myran since late last year. The two women, both from Long Plain First Nation, 95 kilometres west of Winnipeg, were among four First Nations women murdered by serial killer Jeremy Skibicki in 2022.
In a Facebook post Cambria Harris, Morgan’s daughter, said Friday’s news was a “very bittersweet moment.”
“Please keep our families in your hearts tonight and every day going forward as we trust this process,” the post said. “I believe both our families will bring both of our loved ones home.”
Harris’s remains were found on Feb. 26 at the Prairie Green landfill north of Winnipeg, one of two sets recovered in the search, the province said in news release late Friday evening, adding that as facts are confirmed, relevant authorities will provide more information.
Skibicki was convicted in July 2024 of four counts of first-degree murder in the killings of four women in Winnipeg in 2022.
In addition to Harris and Myran, he was found guilty in the deaths of Rebecca Contois, 24, and a still-unidentified woman who has been given the name Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, or Buffalo Woman, by community leaders.
Investigators believe Contois was the last woman Skibicki killed, on May 14 or 15, 2022. They believe he killed Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe in mid-March of that year.
It’s believed Harris, 39, and Myran, 26 were killed in early May 2022.
Partial remains belonging to Contois were discovered in garbage bins near Skibicki’s apartment and at Winnipeg’s city-run Brady Road landfill.
During Skibicki’s trial, court heard that when Contois’s remains were found, Harris’s and Myran’s remains were in a dumpster just a few blocks away and about to be taken to a landfill that same morning.
It wasn’t until June 20, 2022, that police realized Harris’s and Myran’s remains had been taken to Prairie Green, and by then more than 10,000 loads of garbage had been dumped there.
‘Vindication for all of us’
Winnipeg police initially decided that it was not feasible to search the landfill. The decision was backed by then-premier Heather Stefanson and her Progressive Conservative party, leading to widespread anger among the families of the victims, First Nations leaders and community members.
During the last provincial election, the PCs campaigned on their opposition to a landfill search. In advertisements, the party said “for health and safety reasons, the answer on the landfill dig just has to be no.”
Early this week the party’s interim leader apologized to the families of the four First Nations women for refusing to do the search.
Premier Wab Kinew’s NDP, which won the October 2023 election, promised during the campaign to launch a search.
In October 2024, excavators started moving material away from an area of the landfill where Harris’s and Myran’s remains were believed to be, with the search officially starting in December.
“Just like we said it from the very beginning, we [led] and fought with our hearts and now her spirit can rest,” Melissa Robinson, Harris’ cousin, said in a Facebook post Friday night.
Sandra DeLaronde, who was one of a number of Indigenous leaders and advocates who wrote a letter to the federal government in December 2022 urging funding for a landfill search, said finding Harris’s remains wouldn’t have been possible without the dedication of the families who fought to ensure their loved ones “were respected as human beings” and as Indigenous women that “deserve to go home.”
“It’s like your whole body just vibrates because they were right … in their heart they were right.” DeLaronde told CBC News Friday night. “This is the vindication for all of us.”
DeLaronde is happy for Harris’s family, but she said they shouldn’t have endured what they went through to bring their loved one home.
She said the Winnipeg Police Service and the City of Winnipeg should have done better to determine a type and level of search for the remains.
“They have a lot of explaining to do as well as the last [provincial] government,” she said. “They caused undue harm to the family and to the community … by saying the lives of Indigenous women are not valued.”
The Southern Chiefs’ Organization Grand Chief Jerry Daniels said in statement Harris’s story underscores the importance of taking urgent action at all level of government to address “the national emergency of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, two spirit, and gender-diverse people.”
“Morgan deserved so much more,” Daniels’ statement said.
In a statement, the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs said the search has always been about honouring the lives of the four murdered women and other families still waiting for their loved ones to be brought home.
“No family should have to search in this way, yet their loved ones stood firm in their truth and refused to be silenced,” the statement said.
“Their voices led this search. Their love brought us here.”
Support is available for anyone affected by these reports and the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous people. Immediate emotional assistance and crisis support are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through a national hotline at 1-844-413-6649.
You can also access, through the government of Canada, health support services such as mental health counselling, community-based support and cultural services, and some travel costs to see elders and traditional healers. Family members seeking information about a missing or murdered loved one can access Family Information Liaison Units.
