Police searching for missing Ojibwe woman last seen a month ago in northern Wisconsin
Melissa Beson, a Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe tribal member, has been missing for more than a month as tribal and local police continue to search for her in northern Wisconsin.
Beson, 37, was last seen March 17 near Indian Village Road and Chequamegon Forest Trail on the Lac du Flambeau Reservation within Vilas County.
She was wearing red sweatpants, a black sleeveless shirt and a gray sweatshirt. She is 5'7' with a medium build, brown hair, brown eyes and has numerous tattoos, including on her neck, arms and legs.
Beson was reported missing by her family members on March 23.
Lac du Flambeau Tribal Police Chief Thomas Bill in a statement said finding Beson has been his department's top priority.
'We have conducted extensive ground searches on foot, even in severe weather conditions,' he said in a statement. 'Our officers have even come in on their days off to search for her.'
Bill said search dogs appeared to have picked up Beson's scent where she was last seen and police have used drones, including an underwater one, to search the surrounding vast wilderness area.
He said police have covered about 824 acres of forested areas looking for Beson as of April 14.
'Although we are expending monumental efforts in searching the area in which Melissa was last seen, we are in no way ignoring the possibility that she may be elsewhere,' Bill said in a statement. 'Our officers are working non-stop during every shift to follow up on every lead and tip that we receive.'
He said police have interviewed dozens of people and have reached out to other law enforcement agencies around the state.
That includes departments in the Wausau area where police followed up on a lead where Beson may have been.
Other local police departments, including the Vilas County Sheriff's Office, are assisting in the search.
Beson's disappearance is the latest in what tribal officials and advocates call an epidemic of murdered and missing Indigenous people.
More: 'Somebody in Lac du Flambeau knows something': Siblings seek help in solving their mother's 1990 cold case murder
On March 18, a day after Beson was last seen, St. Croix Chairman Thomas Fowler mentioned the crisis during his State of the Tribes address to the Wisconsin Legislature in Madison.
'We need adequate funding allocated to serve our understaffed police departments, more cohesive law enforcement training, strengthened alert systems, increased funding for tribal programs that provide shelter and increased mental health resources," he said in his address.
Homicide is the third-leading cause of death for Indigenous girls and young women, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And Indigenous females are more than three times more likely to be murdered than white females, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information.
The Wisconsin Attorney General's Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women Task Force expects to release its report about the crisis later this year.
More: Jurisdiction, human trafficking and drugs play roles in violence against Indigenous people, Wisconsin AG says
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Frank Vaisvilas is a former Report for America corps member who covers Native American issues in Wisconsin based at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Contact him at fvaisvilas@gannett.com or 815-260-2262. Follow him on Twitter at @vaisvilas_frank.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Search for missing Ojibwe woman continues across Wisconsin
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