Activists blockading a Winnipeg landfill site have promised to continue their protests after police carried out a court order to dismantle the blockade on July 18 without incident.
“This is bigger than just us here,” he added.
The protesters set up the blockade at the Brady landfill alleging it could potentially contain the bodies of several missing indigenous women, believed to have been murdered by an alleged serial killer after human remains were found at a different landfill north of the city. The province has so far declined to undertake a search.
Protesters believe that the bodies of other missing women in Manitoba may have been discarded in landfills.
On the morning of July 18, front-end loaders and other machinery appeared at the Brady landfill with the police and began dismantling the blockade, which has been in place for almost two weeks.
Insp. Gord Spado of the Winnipeg Police Service said he spoke with the leader of the protest, and the removal of the blockade was completed without incident. “The protesters removed things they wanted to keep off the roadway and that allowed the city to come in and assist us in removing the material that was still blocking the road.”
The protest began after Heather Stefanson, Manitoba’s premier, said the province would not search the Prairie Green Landfill, a privately-owned landfill north of Winnipeg.
On July 14, a Manitoba judge gave the City of Winnipeg a temporary injunction to end the blockade on Brady Road, after the city argued it was causing risk to safety and the environment.
‘Closed for Good’
One of the activists, Tre Delaronde told reporters that protesters would protect the “camp by all means necessary, with our last breath because it is sacred law, it is sacred ground, it is sacred for our ancestors.”Mr. Delaronde and another landfill activist, Joseph Munro, said their ultimate goal is to have the “landfill shut down.”
“If another body and another indigenous woman, our sister, ends up in that landfill, it means that something, another action might have to be taken if nothing is done properly to have this land fill completely shut down,” said Mr. Delaronde.
“That’s our end goal, to have Brady landfill closed for good,” added Mr. Munro.
Chief of Pine Creek First Nation, Derek Nepinak, also spoke to reporters on July 18 and said chiefs across Canada passed a resolution in Halifax last week that supports “what’s being done here [at the protest] by the warriors, denouncing the acts of the provincial government and their premier.”
“This is about supporting what they’re doing, supporting what we’re all going through because the tragedy of one is the tragedy of all,” said Mr. Nepinak.
Premier Stefanson has declined to search the Prairie Green landfill stating it exposes workers to safety risks and potentially toxic material, and could cost up to $184 million according to a federally funded study, with no guarantee of finding anything.
