Influx of supporters join landfill blockade after 'act of hate' at MMIWG mural

Protesters blocking the Brady Road landfill south of Winnipeg say their resolve is even stronger after a man shovelled a truckload of soil and debris onto an MMIWG mural near the blockade Sunday.

The blockade went up last week after the province refused to fund a search of Prairie Green landfill north of Winnipeg for the remains of two Indigenous women. The city ordered those blocking the roadway to vacate by noon Monday.

"Screw it. Who cares what they have to say? Who cares what they want? I'm not gonna take no for an answer anymore," said Cambria Harris, whose mother's remains are believed to be at another landfill outside the city. She said Camp Morgan — which has been at the Brady Road landfill since December— originally erected the blockade to 'send a message,' not block the landfill entirely, as it has two entrances.

But after the man's act on Sunday, she and others issued a call on social media for more 'warriors' to join those on site, who said they're ready to keep rallying for change.

Harris said she wasn't at the blockade Sunday when the man in a black pickup truck dumped soil on the mural, but she saw the video of it happen, which she posted on social media. In the video, the man is seen shovelling soil and debris from the back of his truck onto the mural, while telling protesters to 'take care of their own people.' After someone responds, he asks, 'then why are they dead?'

Harris questions how he got past the security on site.

"Why are you so angry to feel like you have to take that extreme of a measure of a hate crime?" she asked. 

"You don't realize that you're talking to an entire group of people who have been pulverized their entire life through systemic oppression."

"I'm outraged. I'm enraged. I'm infuriated," said supporter Melissa Morrisseau, who said she was at the landfill Sunday to help give a voice to missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls and their families.

"I'm here till the very end," she said.

Florance Smith was also there to take a stand with the families.

"They need to dig for our women," Smith said. "They just think that we belong in the garbage."

Harris said she believes the province's decision to not support a landfill search shows that the government doesn't care, and she now feels she's been 'disrespected' by all three levels of government. She said it shouldn't have come to measures like the letter sent by the city, telling protesters to shut down the blockade.

"I've never ever understood it why this kind of trauma is our fault," Harris said.