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Women bless the Red River with offerings of tobacco during a gathering on the Alexander docks in Winnipeg on Sept. 14, 2014. The ceremony, organized by the group Drag the Red, was to bless the river and ask the spirits for safe passage while they drag the river seeking clues to missing loved ones.LYLE STAFFORD/The Globe and Mail

Bones found by volunteers scouring the shores of Winnipeg's Red River for missing persons' remains have been turned over to police for forensic analysis – the discovery prompting a call for more native-led searches for clues about Canada's missing and murdered aboriginal women.

The bones were spotted on Tuesday evening by a team that is dragging the murky river by boat and searching its banks on foot for evidence in the city's missing persons cases.

The Winnipeg Police Service said on Wednesday that forensic testing is under way, noting it remains unclear if the bones are human or animal.

"We respect the fact that members of the public are taking it upon themselves," Constable Jason Michalyshen said. "They want answers.… This is a community coming together, and we absolutely respect that."

The Drag the Red River team was formed after the death of 15-year-old Tina Fontaine, the aboriginal girl whose body was found in the river on Aug. 17. Her case sparked a renewed push for an inquiry into the country's 1,180 murdered and missing native women.

Grand Chief Derek Nepinak of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, said those who have lost mothers, wives, sisters and daughters across the country should organize similar searches rather than wait for the federal government to undertake a national probe. "It's going to have to be us who do this," said Grand Chief Nepinak, who joined the dragging effort Wednesday by launching a boat. "No one else will."

One of the Drag the Red River leaders, a woman whose sister has been missing from the provincial capital since 2008, said the discovery of the bones confirms the search is worthwhile, despite naysayers who cautioned it would be fruitless and dangerous. Bernadette Smith said volunteers, who held a dragging test-run Sunday and started their riverbank search on Tuesday, have also found dentures and a floor mat splattered with what could be blood. Both items have been turned over to police, she said.

"We've been told it's like looking for a needle in a haystack where there isn't a needle," said Ms. Smith, whose missing half-sister, Claudette Osborne, is related to Helen Betty Osborne, the 1971 murder victim whose case brought the issue of violence against aboriginal women to the fore. "But this gives us more hope that what we're doing is the right thing."

Constable Michalyshen said experts at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner will analyze the bones to determine if they are human. If so, they will be submitted to the RCMP Forensic Science and Identification Services facility in Ottawa for DNA analysis and, if possible, comparison to samples from unsolved cases.

"[The bones] were pretty big," Ms. Smith said. "It resembles an adult bone – a leg or a thigh bone."

David Burley, the chair of the archeology department at Simon Fraser University, said the remains "could be anything" but that it would be simple for a trained eye to determine if they are human so long as they are mostly whole.

The Winnepeg Police Service has said it does not randomly drag the Red River, but its dive team scours it based on specific information. And while the service is not participating in the search, officers are helping ensure safety. The search continues, and Ms. Smith said the group will immediately alert police of major discoveries, but will otherwise bag the items, track their location on a GPS system and give them to police once a week.

Ms. Smith said she has already been contacted by numerous families of missing people who fear the bones could belong to a relative. "Any time remains or bones are found, families automatically go to that place: 'Is it my loved one?'"

With a report from the Canadian Press

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