Content warning: This story includes details about missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and Two Spirit people (MMIWG2S+). Please read with care for your spirit.<\/p>\n
About 150 people attended a vigil last Saturday for Leah Faye Keeper in Winnipeg, held in a backlane near where the missing Anishinaabe woman\u2019s partial remains were found five months ago.<\/p>\n
Attendees offered tobacco and flowers into a sacred fire lit there in memory of the 32-year-old mother of two, who police identified<\/a> last week from DNA tests.<\/p>\n Keeper, from Sagkeeng First Nation, was last seen in the city\u2019s North End nearly three years ago, leaving behind daughters who are now eight and 13.<\/p>\n The vigil, held by a backlane garage on the 600-block between Selkirk and Pritchard avenues, included singing, drumming, and handing out roses and candles.<\/p>\n Loved ones remembered Keeper as a petite, athletic jingle dress dancer with a big personality, who loved to sing and make others laugh and feel welcomed.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cLeah was known by her family as a vibrant and outgoing spirit,\u201d her family\u2019s obituary<\/a> noted, \u201csomeone who could light up a room with her presence and her distinctive, joyful laugh.<\/p>\n \u201cShe was deeply loved by those closest to her. As a proud mother of two children, Leah carried a deep love for her family.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Marilyn Courchene, her aunt, she \u201cmet up with the wrong people later on, which caused her to go into addictions,\u201d she said at the vigil.<\/p>\n Ultimately, it was \u201cthe land that helped her overcome her addictions, all of the medicines that made her stronger,\u201d Courchene said.\u00a0<\/p>\n To detox, Keeper drank medicinal teas harvested from the land.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ahead of Saturday\u2019s vigil, Courchene blamed authorities including Child and Family Services (CFS) for urging Keeper to return to Winnipeg to be vaccinated before her death.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we could\u2019ve had Leah still today, had I not listened to the CFS workers and the nurses that wanted Leah to come back into the city during COVID,\u201d said Courchene at an April 8 press conference<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI brought Leah in, and somehow she disappeared from their hands, and that\u2019s where this started.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n But after moving back to Winnipeg, Courchene recalls her niece falling out of balance and into old patterns \u2014 before eventually asking for help to heal on her home reserve.\u00a0<\/p>\n Courchene said loved ones reported Keeper missing four months after she was last seen because they \u201cwere used to her taking off,\u201d but said blame lies with authorities, not her family.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I don\u2019t like is when they said that, \u2018Well, why did you wait so long?\u2019\u201d Courchene said at the vigil.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt was the system that lost her, it wasn\u2019t us.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Courchene recounted how Keeper\u2019s late mother Ingrid, from Little Grand Rapids First Nation, fought to prevent CFS from apprehending her daughter, like her other children had been.<\/p>\n So her mother asked a close friend to take her daughter into her care in Sagkeeng First Nation, signing a kinship agreement as \u201csister-friends\u201d so she could remain connected as Keeper grew up.<\/p>\n They had \u201cfound a solution on their own,\u201d Courchene recalled, \u201ca loophole against CFS.\u201d<\/p>\n In Winnipeg, Keeper went on to study to be a health care aide and health unit clerk at Urban Circle Training Centre, and worked at the Health Sciences Centre Winnipeg Women\u2019s Hospital.\u00a0<\/p>\n She dreamed of becoming a nurse, family members said.<\/p>\n When she was last heard from in July 2023, she had called her adoptive mom telling her she wanted to go back to Sagkeeng for substance use treatment because she had relapsed.\u00a0<\/p>\n After her partial remains were identified, on April 7 police notified Keeper\u2019s family, who held a press conference<\/a> the next day. \u00a0<\/p>\n The Winnipeg Police Service (WPS) said it found her remains last November, according to a media release<\/a>, but DNA testing only confirmed they belonged to Keeper recently.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Winnipeg Police Service has notified Leah\u2019s family of this tragic news, and \u2026 is in the process of reaching out to community leaders,\u201d said the release, which said the homicide unit was investigating it as a \u201csuspicious death.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOur thoughts are with Leah\u2019s family and loved ones, as well as the Indigenous community.\u201d<\/p>\n But the Chief of Sagkeeng First Nation decried the WPS for how they communicated the news to her community.<\/p>\n \u201cThe way that the police are announcing the tragedy in our community is not very culturally sensitive,\u201d said E.J. Fontaine at the press conference.\u00a0<\/p>\n He said \u201ca simple phone call\u201d would have shown that \u201cour people matter.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe police chief is trying to change the culture of that police force,\u201d he added, \u201cbut this would have been a great opportunity for them to demonstrate a kinder way.\u201d<\/p>\n The Southern Chiefs Organization posted<\/a> on Facebook that \u201cLeah\u2019s life touched many people,\u201d adding that \u201cLeah is remembered. She is loved. She is not forgotten.\u201d<\/p>\n But as they remembered, family members said they were also left with many unanswered questions in the wake of her death, for instance how and where she was living at the time, and who she was with.<\/p>\n He recalled how Keeper\u2019s adoptive mother Beverley Courchene had contacted him and shared her daughter\u2019s photo.\u00a0<\/p>\n