Miles Morrisseau
ICT
She was found in the heart of Winnipeg, in its mythical north end, halfway between McPhillips and Main Street. Half a dozen blocks from the Canadian Pacific Railroad yards and three blocks from the McPhillips Street Station Casino.
Leah Keeper was last seen in April of 2023. The family contacted the Bear Clan and soon they were out searching for the 32-year-old mother of two.
Nearly three years after her disappearance, on Nov. 26, 2025, the Winnipeg Police Service reported the discovery of partial human remains in a rear lane in the 600 block of Selkirk Avenue. The investigation was considered to be a suspicious death, and the homicide unit assumed the investigation.
The partial remains were identified through DNA testing as Keeper, who was born in Little Grand Rapids First Nation and raised in Sagkeeng Anicinabe Nation, 77 miles east of Winnipeg, Manitoba the provincial capital.
A press conference was held on Wednesday April 8, with Assembly of Manitoba Grand Chief Kyra Wilson, Sagkeeng Anicinabe Nation Chief E.J. Fontaine and Keeper’s auntie, Marilyn Courchene, and supporters.
“We acknowledge how heavy this is for everybody,” Wilson said at the press conference. “When one person hurts in our community, we all hurt. And we’re here today to support the family of Leah Keeper to talk about who she was, and how important she is to our community, to our family.
“Today we want everyone to know that she was deeply loved by her family and by the whole community,” Wilson said. “We all want what’s best for our families, for our people.”
Keeper’s story was one of the most well-known disappearances in the city and was featured on an episode of the APTN series, “Taken,” which tells the stories of the victims of Canada’s epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.
The remains of Keeper were found in November but the information was not made public until the following month.
“In December, there was news that there were remains found,” Courchene said. “And I remember sitting at home watching the news and thinking, ‘What if it’s our Leah? Little did I know that it would be confirmed yesterday that it was her.’”
‘Auntie, I need some help’
Fontaine, the Sagkeeng Anicinabe chief, said the news is devasting to her family.
“We also share in the devastation that is being felt by the mother of the young lady that was found deceased, as well as our aunties and the uncles,” Fontaine said. “Everybody in the community feels these tragedies when they happen. It shakes the very foundation of our community — because the women are the foundation in the community — when we hear how our people are treated and how the women are constantly being found murdered or missing.”
Courchene, Sagkeeng Anicinabe Nation, said her gifted, beautiful niece had been taking a nursing program at Winnipeg’s Health Science Centre. But then she “met up with the wrong people later on, which caused her to go into addictions,” she said.
Courchene said it was Indigenous healing back on the land that helped her own daughter and her niece.
“I remember the phone call she gave me,” Courchene said. “She said, ‘Auntie, I need some help.’ And at the same time, I was going through my own daughter’s addictions and together they did land-based, land-based healing. They didn’t go into treatment. They made bonfires. They went out in the bush and picked medicines. They went to the beaches almost every day. They did healing together.”
Courchene believes that if her niece had stayed in the community she would still be alive.
“I think we could have had Leah still today had I not listened to the [Child and Family Services] workers and the nurses that wanted Leah to come back into the city during COVID,” she said. “We had to get some vaccinations. So I brought Leah in, and somehow she disappeared from their hands. And that’s where this started.”
‘Tired of not being heard’
Winnipeg police detectives collected DNA samples from Keeper’s children to confirm that the remains were hers, but Courchene does not feel that the Winnipeg police kept the family up to date on what had happened to their loved one.
Credit: Photo courtesy of Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs
“What I’m upset with is, why December until now? What has happened within those three years? Was Leah’s remains there all those three years? I don’t have any answers and they’re not giving us any answers as to what happened in between all that,” Courchene asked. “Was she in a house? Was she outside of a house? Were there people walking by her remains? We don’t know. We haven’t heard anything yet. And that’s what I mean.”
Courchene does not believe the Winnipeg police are treating their case and their family with equal respect they show to non-Indigenous families.
“We should have been standing with the Winnipeg police today,” Courchene said. “It should have been standing with us like they do with the White society. When their families go missing, they’re standing right beside them. But us here, we’ve got to organize ourselves, which is not fair.”
Courchene called on the Winnipeg police to form councils for survivors, elders, youth and community members for advice and direction in facing the crisis.
“I think our families are so tired of not being heard, not being listened to,” Courchene said. “And it’s time they allow us to speak. They allow us to have our own place, our own circle of friends where we can connect with and talk to them, and not be shuffled when we go to the Winnipeg police office to report a missing person, to five different departments before we can even get to the right person. We’re exhausted by that time.”