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This is the reality of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2SLGBTQ+ people (MMIWG2S+) in Canada today. And it’s why Grandmother’s Voice continues to fight. Because this isn’t history. This is now.

We’ve had commissions. We’ve had inquiries. We’ve had 94 Calls for Action and 231 Calls for Justice. And yet, Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran ended up in the Prairie Green Landfill.

All along their families and community knew they were there. The police knew. And Canada waited. Delayed. Hid behind reports and risk assessments. Refusing to dig.

When we say Indigenous women are treated as disposable, this is what we mean.

Their bodies were literally treated like trash. And their families — strong, determined, grieving women like Cambria Harris — had to scream to be heard. Had to camp out in the cold. Had to beg Canada to find their mothers and daughters, even as the weight of trauma sat heavy on their hearts.

A forensic search was not automatic. It was resisted. Fought. Delayed again and again. The web of bureaucracy was designed to tangle them up, not bring them answers.

I think of the Thunderbird when I think of these women.

The Thunderbird brings storms to cleanse the earth and renew life. We need that storm. We need the cleansing power of truth and justice. But it feels like every time the Thunderbird flaps its wings, Canada builds another wall to block the wind.

Thunder Bay is another wall we cannot seem to break. It’s a city where Indigenous women vanish and no one blinks. Where families are dismissed. Where bodies are found in rivers and alleys, and no one asks why: “just another drunk Indian drowned in the lake.”

The societal and systemic racism there isn’t whispered. It’s shouted. I’ve sat with women who’ve told me their stories — their terror, their losses, their rage — and still, law enforcement drags its feet. They hold inquiries into police conduct, and then nothing changes. The cycle repeats.

It’s exhausting. And infuriating. Because we were promised better.

In 1991, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples laid out a path for change. It named the systemic injustices. It showed us the way forward. Canada did not follow it.

In 2019, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls released . It called the crisis what it is: a genocide. It issued 231 Calls for Justice. They are legal imperatives, not recommendations. But here we are. Still waiting. Still watching more women go missing. Still fighting for dignity.

At Grandmother’s Voice, we are tired, but we are not done. We walk with the families. We hold space for their grief and their fury. We honour the red dresses hanging in trees, each one a silenced voice.

We carry our drums and sing for those who never made it home. And we remind Canada that our women are not forgotten. Not by us.

The institutions built by colonialism are still holding firm. They protect those who benefit from our pain. They resist every effort to bring about justice because real justice would require accountability. It would mean returning land, power and respect to Indigenous women. And for too many in this country, that is still unthinkable.

But we are not asking anymore. We are demanding. The Thunderbird is calling the storm, whether Canada is ready or not.

I am angry. I am heartbroken. But I am not hopeless.

I see the strength of the women leading this fight — the mothers who refuse to back down, the daughters who carry their mothers’ names in marches and vigils, the sisters who search the rivers and forests when police refuse. I see them, and I stand with them.

And I ask you: When will you stand with us? When will Canada lower its walls and let the storm in? Because this cleansing is coming. It must.

Our grandmothers continue to witness. And they are waiting for us to do what is right.