Let’s Talk About Jacqueline Keeler

I want to preface this by saying that this is about my personal experience with Jackie and how we got from fighting Native mascots to where we are today.

This is my perspective on the situation, such as it is. You can choose to read or disregard. Your mileage may vary.

It was 2014. I accidentally stumbled into activism because I was involved in reporting about Christina Fallin, Pink Pony, and Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips putting a dog in a headdress. I wrote about it for a couple of websites. It was my introduction into just how much a force Native voices can be given the appropriate platform.

Somehow I ended up in the Eradicating Offensive Native Mascotry (EONM) group on Facebook. A newcomer, I was in awe being in the presence of Jackie, Tara, Toby, Summer, Jennie, Maggie, Ethan, and Johnnie.

They were powerhouses. It was from them I was educated not only on mascots but on the variety of issues facing Natives and the power our collective voices could hold.

I was 100% committed, my kid having been called a ret*rded r*dskin at her job. I promised her I'd do everything in the nonexistent power I had to make sure that football team name was changed.

I participated in petitions and Twitterstorms. I watched and learned. Encouraged by the leadership I saw in these people I began speaking out, making what noise I could. It changed my life.

That same year #notyourmascot exploded. We gained traction in the collective consciousness in a way Natives hadn't before. We even got the hashtag trending on Twitter during the Super Bowl. It was exhilarating feeling like we could actually maybe change the world for the coming generations.

It was that same year that Washington hired a liberal blogger, Ben Tribbett, to defend against our attacks on the team name.

He was incredibly effective at it. He set up the r*dskins caucus, initiating a media blitz that started to stem the tide of changing public sentiment about the name.

It was at that time that I decided to check out his blog, which he'd taken offline. With the help of the Internet Wayback Machine I was able to peruse it. I ended up finding a series of tweets that were derogatory to Natives. It was with Jackie's assistance that I wrote about it for The Good Men Project. She also put me in touch with Indian Country Today who used my research for an article that was the precursor to Tribbetts resignation 8 hours after publication.

Jackie spent hours tweeting about and commenting on articles that used my research without attribution, making certain everyone knew it was me who'd facilitated those reports.

That's the Jackie I knew: a woman who spent her time making sure I got the recognition she felt I deserved.

It was an exciting time. Well, it was until all of a sudden it wasn't.

I didn't know what happened at the time but everything imploded. All of a sudden EONM became just Jackie. The incredible family I knew was just gone.

I've since come to be told by multiple people, all of whom were in the core group leading EONM, what happened. That's not my story to tell but suffice to say all the accounts match up that it was a power play by Jackie, one we're still seeing play out today with the attacks on Tara. Eight years is a long time to hold a grudge but Jackie clearly nurses hers like they are her babies.

I continued on with my baby activism, tweeting and posting to social media about mascots, sovereignty, and other issues we live with as Indigenous Peoples.

Through the years I sporadically kept in touch with Jackie. I ended up appearing on her podcast and writing for Pollen Nation Magazine, a publication she wrote for. These were platforms I wasn't used to having and it felt good to be encouraged in that way. Our friendship blossomed. I considered Jackie not only a mentor but a sister.

That's why, in 2020, when Jackie DMed me with her suspicions about Tara's Indigeneity, I listened. She had horrible, libelous things to say about Tara, many of which are known, some of which are not. I'll not detail them here because Tara has had to deal with enough so you'll just have to trust when I say that her accusations, even if proven untrue, would have had a devastating effect on Tara and her work. I told Jackie I'd look into it. Though I never did, and despite Tara's grace in forgiving my involvement, I carry with me the shame of having been even tacitly involved in Jackie's vendetta.

Then came the Pretendian list.

The Pretendian list as originally conceived was supposed to address the false claims of Indigeneity that we're causing harm to our Native Nations. It was a list that was to be researched by confirming a relationship with Native Nations, either through enrollment or kinship. It was always to take those ties as gospel, not to try to invalidate them via ancestry research. It was supposed to respect tribal sovereignty.

It was also not supposed to be a public hit list. It was originally only going to be brought up when false Indigeneity claims, as verified through the Native Nations via enrollment or kinship ties, were harming Natives. It was never intended to be wielded as the violent cudgel it is today.

When EONM imploded Jackie decided to charge forward with the list. In her zeal to be the one combatting this issue she disregarded the original parameters of determination, instead making a personal hit list and shaking family trees, picking and choosing documents that could uphold her sometimes dubious claims.

I was involved with that list after Jackie took over. I honestly believed it to be something that could address some of the harm being done to us. I was wrong.

When it began to morph into what it is today I stood by, hoping that in its genesis it would become a useful tool, the odd kinks in it somehow worked out for the betterment of all.

We all know how that turned out.

I watched as it became a twisted, bastardized version of what it originally could have been. I stayed quiet as it happened, not wanting to believe my sister could be causing so much damage.

Then she published it.

Still not wanting to believe the worst I allowed for it to grow out of control, my silence a complicit blessing to the harm being done.

It was not until later (much too late) that I decided I could be silent no longer. I sought advice from my elders who knew Jackie about what I needed to do to either get her to stop or at least extricate myself from the inadvertent position I found myself in. They advised I email Jackie and appeal to the person I thought she was in hopes that she'd listen.

Instead she used my email and her response as a PR ploy to mitigate the blowback the list was subjecting her to.

Still that wasn't the straw that broke the camels back for me. It was the screenshot of her supporting the use of Blackface.

I publicly denounced the list.

I had been warned by both my elders and by others who had been subject to her vicious attacks after the inevitable falling out she has with anyone she comes in contact with to be prepared for the worst. I was ready for her to come at me. What I wasn't ready for was for her not to come correct.

Jackie's response was to block me and list our Uncle as the only publicly identified person having done research on a person on the list, despite that research having been done for a Deadspin article and not at Jackie's behest, and definitely not for that abominable list.

I'm no saint. I'll 100% admit I went on the offensive, partly to defend my Uncle, partly to mitigate the damage my silence and participation had caused. I thought if I could take some of the heat personally then it might distract her from concentrating on her hit list. I'll still take that bullet any day of the week.

Then today came the renewed attacks on Tara.

Make no mistake. This has nothing more to do with Tara than the fact that through her tireless work she's obtained what Jackie never could: respect.

You see, Jackie may have 22k followers but if you really look at her Twitter you'll see the dwindling number of likes she gets for her tweets. She's no longer welcome by Native American Journalists Association. Reputable publications are learning not to listen to her. It's why people are questioning her more and more. It's why she has a Substack instead of a byline in the New York Times, Huffington Post, and The Daily Beast like she used to. People are seeing through her grift and that enrages her.

And grift it is. If it weren't she wouldn't have so hungrily and disgustingly danced on Sacheen Littlefeathers grave, using shoddy research to pump up her profile, not caring that it has far reaching consequences for tribal sovereignty including damage to ICWA.

No, this isn't about saving our Native Nations. It's about her profile, her books, her money. It's about what's best for her and everyone else be damned.