The way of the warrior

By Lethbridge Herald on May 13, 2025.

Alexandra Noad
Lethbridge Herald
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Warriors are often thought to be the face of battles with a powerful force, but a Siksika man found the true role of the warrior is to be a protector, not an aggressor.

Ben Gavel grew up not realizing he was Blackfoot until six years ago and consequently spent much of his life trying to figure out who he was.

After battling addiction and fighting to become sober, he came across the TikTok account of a warrior stationed at Camp Morgan in Manitoba, which was set up in protest of four missing women who were believed to be in a landfill.

The camp was a peaceful protest by members of the First Nations Indigenous Warriors, a warrior society from Winnipeg. They were responding to the Winnipeg Police Department, and later on the Manitoba provincial government, refusing to search the landfill for Morgan Harris, an unknown women known as Buffalo Woman-later to be identified as Ashlee Shingoose, Tanya Nepinak and Rebecca Contois.

A fire, which was meant to guide the spirits of the women home, was set on Dec. 18, 2022, the middle of winter in Winnipeg.

At the time he discovered the TikTok video, which he says was the first time he’d heard about the four women, Gavel says he wasn’t in a position to help.

“I wasn’t really in a place to be that boots-on-the-ground,” he says. “I just got laid off, I was still battling coming out of active addiction, working on my sobriety and everything,”

However, he felt what he describes as a calling to help their cause.

With the chaos in his personal life, he forgot about Camp Morgan until March 2023, when he was scrolling through TikTok and saw a few videos about the camp in his feed.

At that time, members stationed at Camp Morgan were asking for donations and any kind of help.

In June, members of the camp made a blockade at the entrance of the landfill in protest to the government saying searching for the bodies was “too risky” and offered to build a monument instead. The message of the blockade and subsequent protests around the country were “our women are not garbage; we are not garbage”

The blockades were given an injunction of 30 days to disperse and were met wilth bulldozers to clear everything out.

After seeing the events unfold on TikTok, the feeling of being called to help out came back to Gavel. One night in a dream, his father, whom he’d never met, came to him and told him “You need to be there and you need to be there for you soul.”

At the time, he was still fighting to stay sober and still hadn’t found a job, but he packed all of his belongings and took a plane to Manitoba, where he knew absolutely no one.

On July 19, 2023, Gavel arrived to camp, not knowing what to expect.He says he didn’t know it then but understands now why it was so important for him to go, especially for his sobriety.

“You can’t be around that type of ceremony if you’re using, if you’re drinking or anything like that,” he says.

Arriving at camp, he placed a tobacco offering at the fire, which was his first time participating in any kind of Indigenous ceremony. He knew there was a lot to learn.

While Camp Morgan was a peaceful protest, they were met with hostility every day but stood firm in their fight.

Gavel became the sole fire-keeper for most of his time at the camp – a total of 483 days.

He says from the moment he stepped into camp, it felt like home. He describes learning about Indigenous protocol as almost an unconscious process, like he knew in his heart when to smudge and other ceremonies through his time at camp.

Every morning, he would offer coffee to each of the grandfathers, which were the rocks surrounding the fire, as well as a plate of food before he would eat or drink for himself.

He says there were moments where he wondered if he was doing the right thing. He described one instance of offering tobacco to the fire asking if he was doing everything right. The next day a friend came to visit and as they were hugging “You are my Sunshine” began playing on her phone, a song he would play for his wife before she passed.

That was an answer to his prayers.

“That right there was that little hammer home to me that (said) ‘you’re supposed to be here, you’re meant to be here.’”

Camp made Gavel grow in a lot of ways he didn’t expect, whether it was talking to people on a regular basis as an introvert or dealing with conflicts such as someone running over their outhouse.

On Dec. 18, 2024 exactly two years after it was lit, the fire was closed, signifying the women could rest.

Gavel then began another battle of continuing to find himself after camp. He says reintegrating himself back into society after being in ceremony for so long was not an easy task.

“I had to remember that even though I’m not there anymore and I don’t have that fire per-se that doesn’t mean that I still can’t do what I was doing-it’s just I didn’t know how to, I didn’t know how to be native in an urban setting.”

He compared it to his ancestors who lived in ceremony for time immemorial and then had to adjust to a colonial way of life. He says he can feel them guiding them, but he still has to do the work.

The bodies of Myran and Harris were found in February of this year at the Prairie Green Landfill. The bodies of Shingoose Nepinak have not been located but are believed to be in the Brady Landfill.

Gavel’s next step in reclaiming his culture is meeting with his Blackfoot people to better understand the protocols and language and while he hopes to have a break in standing shoulder to shoulder to defend Indigenous rights, if he is needed he is prepared to answer the call.