Advocate meets with premiers staff to discuss landfill search for Tanya Nepinak

A woman in Manitoba who advocates for families of missing and murdered Indigenous people says she’s continuing to push officials to search a Winnipeg landfill for the remains of her missing niece. Sue Caribou, the aunt of Tanya Nepinak, said she met with members of Premier Wab Kinew’s staff Tuesday. Nepinak, a 31-year-old mother of two, vanished in 2011 after leaving her home to walk to a pizza restaurant. Winnipeg police suspect she fell prey to a convicted serial killer who was operating in the city at the time and disposed of his victims in the garbage. Nepinak’s remains are believed to be in Winnipeg’s Brady Road landfill. “I had a wonderful meeting,” Caribou said in a telephone interview with APTN News after her meeting. “We agreed to work together.” A spokesperson for the premier confirmed staffers met with Caribou, who is Cree and has kept her niece’s disappearance in the public eye for the past 14 years. Caribou has lost seven people in her family to murder and two to disappearances. No one was convicted in Nepinak’s death. Caribou sought the support of Winnipeg Police Chief Gene Bowers for a landfill search last month, she told APTN at the time. She is hoping the premier and Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham feel the same way. Police officers searched a small part of the landfill for Nepinak’s remains over three days in 2012. It was “devastating” when they called off the search, said Vernon Mann, Nepinak’s former partner and a member of Sagkeeng First Nation. Vernon Mann stands in front of the Manitoba Legislature where he says he was not allowed to attend a meeting with the premier’s staff. Photo: Submitted “I’ve been fighting this fight for a long time,” Mann said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “It’s frustrating.” Mann said he tried to attend the meeting at the Legislature and was turned away. He thought Caribou was meeting with the premier, Bowers and Gillingham and wanted to be part of it. “I should be at the table, and so should [Nepinak’s] children,” he told APTN. “I’ve been speaking up for Tanya ever since everything happened. I’ve done numerous interviews and videos, every rally and walk.” Nepinak, of Minegoziibe Anishinabe [Pine Creek] First Nation, is survived by a son, 23, and daughter, 28, said Mann. He does not have a relationship with Caribou, he added. Read More: Landfill search begins for missing Winnipeg woman Supporters hold birthday walk for Tanya Nepinak 13 years after her disappearance Kinew promised in March to mount a search of the Brady landfill for the remains of Ashlee Shingoose, who was murdered by convicted serial killer Jeremy Skibicki in 2022. She is one of four victims whose remains have yet to be recovered. A date for the search has not been announced. Caribou said Mann “confronted” her at the Legislature after the meeting. “I’ve been reaching out to a lot of people all [of] these years and … I have never seen him reach out to anybody,” she said. Meanwhile, a member of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs (AMC)encouraged the family members to work together. A missing poster for Tanya Nepinak, who disappeared in Winnipeg in 2011. Photo: Instagram “To move mountains, you’ve got to have a team to do it,” said Melissa Robinson, the organization’s newly appointed Liaison for Missing and Murdered Indigenous People. Robinson is a cousin of Morgan Harris, another Skibicki victim. She worked with Harris’s daughters to pressure politicians to search the Prairie Green landfill outside Winnipeg for the remains of Harris and Marcedes Myran. The victims’ remains were located and identified in March after Kinew and the federal government agreed to fund a search. Robinson said she told Bowers in a meeting about a month ago that it was time to find Nepinak. “We have to include Tanya in that [upcoming] search,” she said in an interview with APTN. “We can’t go in for one and leave the other one out.” Robinson said Caribou confirmed she had a May 6 meeting with the premier and Mann could attend. However, two hours before the Tuesday meeting, Robinson said she and Mann were told they were “no longer invited.” She said they arrived anyway and weren’t allowed in. “I’m hearing Vernon was excluded from some of the meetings and discussions around searching the landfill,” said E.J. Fontaine, the chief of Sagkeeng. “There needs to be more inclusiveness in that process.” To do otherwise is to perpetuate the harm caused by Nepinak’s unsolved murder, he added in an interview. “People are hurting. This is not culturally appropriate to be doing that to people.” Sagkeeng has the highest number of unsolved cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls from a single community in Canada at 19.  “Everybody should be involved in bringing Tanya home,” Fontaine said. “That’s how we heal.” Continue Reading