Searching for Justice: Indigenous Self-Determination over the Landfill Search as a Matter of Justice for MMIWG2S

Abstract

“Search the Landfill” is an Indigenous-led movement for justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit people (MMIWG2S) which originated through Indigenous resistance to police racism in Winnipeg, Canada. The movement calls upon all levels of government to support and execute the search of the Prairie Green Landfill, just north of the City of Winnipeg, to recover the bodies of at least two of four First Nations women who were murdered in early 2022 at the hands of a white male serial killer. Through an analysis of the news articles, press releases, and reports, this paper explores the way in which Indigenous leaders resisted and rewrote the discourses that surrounded the search. By at once condemning the Winnipeg Police Service’s refusal to search the landfill and rejecting police authority and control over the decision-making process, Indigenous women who became the leaders of this movement crafted the space to articulate for themselves how and why the search must be done as a matter of Indigenous rights. This paper explores how Indigenous leadership offers glimpses of what a decolonizing approach to justice may look like in cases of MMIWG2S and which, in turn, invites further opportunities to problematize, subvert, and move beyond the Western legal norms and traditions.