Donning bright pink vests and fully equipped with food and supplies, Morgan’s Warriors gathers under the setting sun and heads out into the dark streets of Winnipeg, three nights a week.
The outreach group provides support to the community in numerous ways, including handing out food, water and clothing to vulnerable Winnipeggers, picking up discarded needles, administering Narcan and calling emergency crews for someone overdosing, and looking for missing loved ones in drug houses and dark corners of the city.
But sometimes, it’s as simple as lending an ear to someone in need.
“We’re just here for the relatives, really here for them,” Elle Harris told Global News.
“(We help) literally everyone and anyone. It doesn’t have to be an unhoused relative. Sometimes we even come up to people just needing to get home from their bus stop cause they’re too scared to walk alone at night. Or all the way from someone who has unfortunately OD’d and we help them and call the ambulance and stay with them every step of the way.”
The outreach group was founded in honour of Elle Harris’s mother, Morgan Harris, who was one of four women murdered in 2022 by a serial killer targeting vulnerable Indigenous women. Both Elle and Melissa Robinson, Morgan’s cousin, founded the group.
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“(This group) means so much more than I can put into words. This is something my mom would have very much benefited from,” Harris said.
“And I’m very glad to be able to give this to other women who can benefit from this as well. We have so much going on in the background that I can’t wait to speak out loud about. It’s going to be amazing, and I know that she would be so proud, I know that she is very proud. And we’re going to go such a long way.”
The non-profit organization is also in need of donations, especially winter clothing items heading into the colder months.
“We’re out there late at night, early hours of the morning doing outreach,” Morgan’s Warriors member Kristin Flattery said.
“It’s very important because due to the onset of colonization and what happened to Morgan Harris, Marcedes Myran, and Buffalo Woman — who we now know is Ashlee Shingoose — it’s important that no other woman or two-spirit, gender diverse person ever ends up in that situation again.”
The group provides hope and healing to those in the community, but also for its members, many of whom have been touched by the MMIWG2S crisis, including Joelyne Bighetty.
“I myself have been impacted by MMIWG. My youngest daughter, Kyra Bighetty, she passed away in 2007; her dad took her life. He got charged with second-degree murder, but served a manslaughter punishment,” Bighetty said.
“I was only 20 years old at that time, so I was a young mother (and) there was not really many resources. I didn’t realize I was in a domestic violence relationship.”
“So that’s why I advocate a lot for MMIWG is for my daughter, and that’s why I joined (First Nations Indigenous Warriors) too, because I got tired of our women being murdered and going missing.”
Bighetty says connecting with the community and looking out for those in need is part of her healing journey.
“It feels good, it feels really good. On my heavy days, I could be at home in my grief, but instead I come out with these wonderful people, like this is my second family,” Bighetty said.
“Just being out in the community connecting with my relatives, talking with my relatives. I feel good. At the end of the night, I go home and I feel whole, my spirit is up rather than being down.”
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