Tanya Jane Nepinak was 31 when she left her Sherbrook Street home in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on the evening of September 13, 2011. She told her mother she was walking a few blocks to a pizza restaurant; she never returned. From Pine Creek First Nation, she was a mother and her family say it was highly out of character for her to lose contact.

In June 2012 Winnipeg police charged Shawn Cameron Lamb with second-degree murder in connection with her disappearance and with the deaths of two other Indigenous women, Carolyn Sinclair and Lorna Blacksmith. Police came to believe Tanya’s body had been placed in a garbage bin and taken to the Brady Road landfill, prompting a six-day search of a small portion of that site in October 2012; no remains were found. The charge in Tanya’s case was stayed in November 2013 with officials citing insufficient evidence for a conviction without her body. Lamb was later convicted of manslaughter in the other two deaths.

Tanya’s family has continued to hold walks, vigils and feasts while pushing for a renewed, more thorough search of the Brady Road landfill. Does anyone who knew Tanya or was in the Sherbrook Street area on September 13, 2011 have information that could help her family?