I wrote this out of sheer frustration as I sit helplessly and watch the government continuously refuse to search the Prairie Green Landfill in Manitoba to recover the bodies of three murder victims of a predator of Indigenous women.
Despite finding the partial remains of Rebecca Contois last year at the city-owned Brady Road Landfill, south of Winnipeg.
Despite having a suspect in custody charged with four counts of murder.
I know it is logistically challenging, but at the very least, could they stop dumping more garbage on top of those women, and goodness knows who else may be in there?
As we prepare to honour residential school survivors on Sept. 30, I find it increasingly difficult to believe that this country actually wants reconciliation with us.
Denialists continue to call us liars and have actually snuck onto residential school grounds with shovels to “see for themselves” the bodies of our relatives.
Yet they can’t support searching for murdered Indigenous women.
The government continues to lie, steal and pillage our land and resources.
Organizations and governments scramble to write land acknowledgements, yet do nothing to rectify the situation that created the need for such a thing.
Resources are spent to fight us, block us from our inherent rights and separate us from each other in life and death.
If they can’t search the landfill, then at least close it and create a space for healing and ceremony, a monument commemorating those women’s lives—a park where their loved ones can find some closure and be as close to them as possible.
I wrote this because that could be me.
Why are they not looking for me? I’m lying here under the stars, waiting for them to find me and bring me home.
To my family, I love you and miss you so much. I don’t know why it is taking so long to find me; I’m right here. I can see you trying to get to me; I can hear your cries of sorrow and frustration as you try to get past those who want to stop you.
Why do they stop you? I want to go home and visit my relatives. I want to travel that incredible journey to be with my ancestors, where I will finally be safe.
I’m so cold and lonely. Why do they hate us so much? How can they treat us this way? I was only trying to survive, and I did not make it out alive, but to leave me here with the trash they throw away is so cruel.
I’m not alone. My sisters are here, too, and they are trapped under all of this garbage. I can hear them crying, I can’t reach them, I cannot move, I’m so cold.
My relatives, I can hear you too. I can listen to your songs, I can hear the drums, I can feel your prayers. I know you are trying to get to all of us here in this cold, lonely place.
My name is Morgan Harris.
My name is Marcedes Myran.
My name is… Buffalo Woman.
Search the landfill now.
We are not garbage.
All my relations. Aho.
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Cory Bilyea is an Indigenous journalist currently working for Midwestern Newspapers. She is a member of the Six Nations of the Grand River, better known as Onkwehonwe, the original people. Cory is a survivor of intergenerational trauma caused by residential schools. She can be reached at cbilyea@midwesternnewspapers.com.
