At the entrance to a venue for the World Police and Fire Games in Winnipeg on Sunday night, protesters briefly pushed and shoved with security. This happened after a rally where Indigenous leaders and grieving family members kept asking the government to search landfills for the remains of homicide victims.
About 200 people marched from the Oodena Circle, an Indigenous meeting place at The Forks in the city’s downtown, to the athletes village. They chanted “bring them home” and “search the landfill” as they moved through the national historic site.
When they got to the site of the games, a small group of protesters pushed against the front entrance gates, which were held in place by nine security guards. After a few tense moments, the protesters moved away from the police.
As many as a dozen Winnipeg police officers in uniform showed up soon after, but they weren’t seen doing anything to stop the protesters.
The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs (AMC), which speaks for most of the First Nations in the province, set up the rally and march, which was otherwise peaceful.
The advocacy group held the rally to keep putting pressure on the governments of Manitoba and Canada to move forward with the landfill searches.
Morgan Harris, 39, and Marcedes Myran, 26, were both killed by the same man last year, and their bodies are thought to be in the Prairie Green landfill just north of Winnipeg. The landfill is run by a private company.
Winnipeg police say they don’t think it’s possible to look for them. A recent feasibility study, which was done by the AMC, shows that a search could be done safely.
The Manitoba government has said before that it won’t help pay for a search because sifting through toxic materials could be dangerous.
Money for games, but not for research, has been criticized
Grand Chief Cathy Merrick told the people at the rally that the province gave millions of dollars to help pay for the police and fire games.
More than 8,500 people, including friends and family of the competitors, from more than 70 countries are expected to take part in the Olympic-style competition for active and retired first responders.
Merrick told Premier Heather Stefanson that she shouldn’t ignore the calls for her government to change its stance.
“Since you brought people from all over the world to Winnipeg, we will show the world… Merrick said, “This is not friendly Manitoba.” He was referring to the long-standing slogan on the province’s license plates. 
“You are a person in addition to being the prime minister… do the right thing and work together,” Merrick told them.
Merrick was joined by other First Nations leaders from the province as well as family members of the women who had been killed. Melissa Robinson, Harris’s cousin, said that Stefanson was “heartless,” and Morgan Harris’s daughter, Cambria Harris, said that the provincial government’s decision was “a scary, scary thing to do.”
“Why were the police and fire games possible but the search wasn’t?” Harris said so. “It’s because they don’t value our lives,” she told the group.
Some people have been worried about how well landfills are searched for more than a decade. Tanya Nepinak, Sue Caribou’s niece, is one of the women who went missing or were killed in Manitoba.
In 2012, police looked for her body at the Brady Road landfill run by the City of Winnipeg. They thought she had been killed by a man who was later convicted of killing two other Indigenous women.
Shawn Lamb was charged with second-degree murder for Nepinak’s death, but the case was dropped in 2013 because there wasn’t enough evidence.
Six days were spent searching Brady Road, but nothing was found. “They gave up on my niece,” she said while holding a big picture of her. 
“I am not giving up,” said Nepinak. “We’re all human beings, and nobody belongs in a dump.”
Hope that the new federal minister will do somethin
Merrick said she hopes to hear from Gary Anandasangaree, the new federal Crown-Indigenous Relations minister. Anandasangaree just took over for Marc Miller after a cabinet shuffle.
Miller had called the province’s decision not to search “heartless.”
Last week, Anandasangaree promised to find a “just and proper” solution for the families of the victims.
Merrick said, “I can’t wait to hear from you so I can start doing this important work for our women.”
Cambria Harris told CBC just before the rally that Miller had supported search efforts “all along the way” and that she hoped Anandasangaree would do the same.
“If they say they care so much about reconciliation, then they should look in the trash,” Harris said.