The man who dumped mulch and dirt on a mural of a painted red dress at a blockade outside the Brady Road landfill says he is sorry for what he did.
Kyle Klochko went to the Winnipeg landfill on Sunday to empty the back of his truck and says he was unaware a group had blocked access.
She got into a heated argument with protesters, yelling as she dumped several shovels into the ground over a mural painted in honor of missing and murdered indigenous women.
“I let my anger get the best of me, and as I was driving down the road, I was like, ‘You know what? I want to make this person mad as much as they’ve made me mad right now,'” Klochko said. Breaking: on Wednesday, after protesters learned where he lived and gathered outside his home just before 7 p.m.
Mud and other yard debris was dumped on the porch and stairs in front of the front door of Klochko’s home.
Protesters also covered the gate, fence and sidewalk leading to the house with red painted handprints.
Several police officers sat nearby in vehicles at the start of the protest, but moved into the courtyard, standing between the protesters and the house, after a window was broken.
They estimate there were between 40 and 50 people at one time.
Police said a 19-year-old man threw a rock through the window and has been charged with mischief.
In a press release, they said officers “must balance the rights of people to assemble with the need to ensure public safety and maintain the peace.”
“The expectation of all citizens who participate in said assembly is to behave in a peaceful and respectful manner. Violence will not be tolerated.”
Someone livestreamed the meeting on Facebook, showing people yelling and swearing, directing their anger at the house and urging Klochko to come out.
Klochko finally addressed the group.
“I went and apologized for my actions of shooting directly on the mural. I didn’t mean to disrespect them in that regard,” she said in the interview with Breaking:.
“But at the end of the day, I was upset that I didn’t have a place to shoot.”
The crowd eventually dispersed and no one was injured, police said.
Rainey Raven, who arranged the gathering outside Klochko’s home on Wednesday, said she doesn’t accept his apology.
“It wasn’t genuine at all. He made excuses all the time,” he told the CBC on Thursday. “He just wanted us to leave.”
He said that as someone who knows indigenous people who have disappeared or been killed, he wanted Klochko to hear what they had to say.
“We let our voices be heard,” he said.
Protesters call for search of landfill in search of remains
Dozens of protesters have blocked the main road to the Brady Road landfill in Winnipeg since July 6, demanding a search of a private landfill north of Winnipeg called Prairie Green, where the remains of two women from the First Nations last year.
Manitoba Premier Heather Stefanson said the province would not support a search at Prairie Green, pointing to a study that said it could cost $184 million and present security risks, and that success was not guaranteed.
The study also said that a search is possible, and that not searching would have social costs, as well as a cost to families.
Prairie Green is located in a rural municipality north of Winnipeg and is not under that city’s jurisdiction. But the Brady Road landfill, on the city’s southern edge, is heavily used and was attacked by protesters because of its higher profile.
A city official said earlier this week that the lockdown was preventing maintenance work from taking place and the city risked violating its environmental license.
The city filed an application Tuesday with King’s Bench Court for an injunction ordering the protesters to move. The court will hear the request on Thursday.
Protesters told Breaking: they were shocked, hurt and angry by Klochko’s actions on Sunday, but quickly realized that the dirt he threw contained cedar wood chips.
“Cedar is our protective medicine, and we decided that we would include it in our artwork and surround it to protect it,” Diane Bousquet, the artist who did the red dress mural, previously told CBC.
Protesters swept up the wood chips in a circle around the mural.
“We make the ugly beautiful here. That’s what our people are known for doing,” Bousquet said.
This is the second blockage at the Brady landfill. Protesters previously closed access from December 11 until January 6, when they agreed to pull off the road. They established a camp called Camp Morgan, which has stood ever since.
The camp is named for Morgan Harris, who, along with Marcedes Myran, is believed to be buried at Prairie Green.
Harris’s cousin, Melissa Robinson, posted a message on Facebook Wednesday night to say the women’s families disagree with the actions at Klochko’s home.
“Just so everyone knows, we as a family do not condone or support this type of confrontation. We understand that people are angry, but this is not the way to deal with this,” she wrote.
“Camp Morgan is meant to be a peaceful protest, nothing more.”
Jeremy Skibicki has been charged with first degree murder in the deaths of Harris and Myran. He is also charged in the deaths of Rebecca Contois, whose partial remains were found at the Brady Road dump site last year, and of an unidentified female indigenous leader named Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, or Buffalo Woman, whose remains have not been found. .
