The Case of Sheila St. Clair: Or, How to Disappear an Indigenous Woman and Get Away With It (Apparently)

Sheila St. Clair walked into a Duluth apartment building on August 20, 2015, and vanished. Poof. Gone. Like a ghost. Like she was never even there. Except—she was there. Surveillance footage proves it. She was wearing a black dress and walking up the stairs next to a man in a white T-shirt. But eight years later, no arrests. No closure. Just a missing woman and a whole lot of shrug from the people who were supposed to give a damn.

Sheila was 48. A member of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. A mom. A friend. A woman in recovery who was working on healing her shit. She deserved to be protected. But instead, she became another name on the ever-growing list of Indigenous women who go missing while the system takes a nap.

Sheila may also be known by the surname Jackson. She walks with a limp and has an eagle tattooed on her forearm. She has a lot of defining characteristics that might make her more identifiable in Duluth, or possibly other places she was known to frequent like White Earth or Red Cliff, WI. There are some who think she may have been trying to hitch a ride to one of those areas around the time she went missing, so they are important locations for this case.

Police say they have a "person of interest” who they’ve never publicly named. They just don’t have enough to move forward. You know, because the video of her literally walking into a building with the guy is just too vague. Too circumstantial. Too whatever. It’s giving “meh.” It's giving "we'll circle back." It's giving "if she were blonde and named Madison, we'd have a Netflix doc already."

Her family has spent years putting up billboards, raising reward money, pleading for information—doing the job of law enforcement while grieving someone who might still be out there, or might not. Because they don’t even have a body. They just have silence. Deafening, government-issued silence.

So here’s your reminder: Sheila St. Clair didn’t just vanish. Someone knows something. Someone did something. And the rest of us? We’d better stay loud, stay pissed off, and keep saying her name until the world starts listening.

Now go stab a fork into something chocolatey. Rage tastes better when it's frosted.