Menominee powwow adds Red Shawl Contest to honor unsolved murder case

The Menominee Nation Contest Powwow in Keshena will do more than fill the summer weekend with dancing, singing and drumming. On Aug. 1, Menominee MMIP Families will hold a Red Shawl Contest as a public act of remembrance for Rae Elaine Tourtillott, the Menominee Princess of 1984 whose murder remains unsolved nearly four decades later.

The contest is open to girls 13 and older, and the top three winners will receive cash prizes. Organizers are using one of Menominee County’s biggest annual gatherings to center Missing and Murdered Indigenous People awareness in a setting where families, youth, dancers and visitors will see it up close rather than as a distant policy issue.

Tourtillott was 18 when she was last seen on Oct. 15, 1986, attending a birthday party on the Menominee Indian Reservation before she was picked up in a vehicle by two individuals, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Her body was recovered on April 9, 1987, by Menominee Tribal Police and the FBI, and a Wisconsin missing persons page says the FBI and the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin are offering up to a $15,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction.

The Red Shawl Contest gives that history a visible place inside a cultural event already rooted in regional significance. The 2026 Menominee Nation Contest Powwow is scheduled for July 31 through Aug. 2 at Woodland Bowl in Keshena, and Travel Wisconsin says contestants and spectators come from across the United States and Canada each year. Held within that setting, the contest turns the powwow into a place of witness, prayer and advocacy, while keeping Tourtillott’s name in front of the community that knew her as a young woman and dancer.

The Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin says its culture and residency in the area now known as Wisconsin date back 10,000 years, and the powwow continues that long public tradition through a formal board structure that the tribe has been organizing for the 58th year of the event. By placing MMIP remembrance inside that space, Menominee families are making sure the loss of Rae Elaine Tourtillott is not treated as history alone, but as an unresolved wound that still calls for justice.