AFN head meets with Manitoba’s viceregal to seek independent inquiry into killings

OTTAWA — The national chief of the Assembly of First Nations is urging Manitoba’s lieutenant-governor to establish an independent inquiry into the killings of four Indigenous women in the province.

Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak said she had a productive meeting with Lt.-Gov. Anita Neville on Wednesday.

The meeting came days after the AFN passed a resolution seeking an inquiry to assess the police investigation and provincial response to the killings.

Jeremy Skibicki was found guilty of first-degree murder last week in the deaths of Morgan Harris, Marcedes Myran, Rebecca Contois and an unidentified woman the Indigenous grassroots community refers to as Buffalo Woman.

Woodhouse Nepinak said Wednesday’s meeting was just the beginning of a process that will also include a conversation with Manitoba’s premier, and she expects Neville to respond to the call in a letter.

“I think it’s important that we open up those lines of communication and that we work to resolve this,” Woodhouse Nepinak said in an interview.

“What if this happens again? What do we do?”

She said she is hoping a provincial probe can reignite a national conversation about missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, and pressure governments to act on unmet recommendations from a 2019 national inquiry.

The assembly found that only two calls to action of 231 from the 2019 report have been completed to date — a figure Woodhouse Nepinak has repeatedly spoken about publicly as a means to urge all levels of government to work harder to address the issue.

“It’s almost like they want to forget and to push things on the side,” Woodhouse Nepinak said.

“I think that if we do this, it brings about change even if it’s not right away.”

The proposed scope would ensure protocols are followed to preserve evidence. It would also seek to investigate how systemic biases could have potentially influenced case outcomes.

It would also see First Nations commissioners be the ones to carry out the inquiry and evaluate search efforts.

Countrywide protests were held over the case, which dates back to 2022, demanding that a landfill be searched for the remains of two of the victims.

The former Progressive Conservative government in Manitoba refused to fund the search, saying it was too expensive, and it became a major issue in last fall’s provincial election.

During the campaign, the NDP’s Wab Kinew promised he would fund the search if he became premier. His party won the election, and the search is to begin this coming fall.

Morgan Harris’s daughter Cambria Harris told the AFN last week that a “sad, sad precedent” was set when governments refused to search the landfill where her mother is suspected to be buried.

“And now, I can finally say that we’re doing it,” she said as the resolution was passed.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 17, 2024.

Alessia Passafiume, The Canadian Press