I wont comment on the efficacy of the search itself—I don’t know enough to meaningfully hold a stance about it—but I think you also have to consider the symbolic meaning of the government funding this search. There’s a long history of federal and provincial governments at best ignoring indigenous people and their struggles, if not actively pursuing policy that harms them.

This search has become a flashpoint for an accumulation of unrest over that history, it can’t be viewed in a vacuum. The sheer poetic horror of murder victims rotting in a landfill makes this example particularly abhorrent, but it’s hardly the only time the police and justice system has failed indigenous women and girls. The government putting a lot of funding into this specific search is bigger than just the outcome of the search itself.