Pretendian Hunters

Summary

The Copernic Affair | Canadaland Investigates: Episode – "Pretendian Hunters"

Release Date: June 4, 2024

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Introduction

In the "Pretendian Hunters" episode of The Copernic Affair by Canadaland Investigates, hosts Dana Ballout and Alex Atack delve into the contentious issue of individuals falsely claiming Indigenous heritage—commonly referred to as "Pretendians." The episode spotlights the work of Jacqueline Keillor, a dedicated journalist and activist, who has been at the forefront of identifying and exposing these fraudulent claims. Through detailed discussions, personal testimonies, and critical analysis, the episode examines the impact of Pretendians on genuine Indigenous communities, the methodologies employed to uncover fraud, and the broader implications for justice and cultural integrity.

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Understanding Pretendianism

Definition and Scope

The episode opens with hosts Robert Jago and Angel Ellis expressing the gravity of misidentifying genuine Indigenous individuals. They outline the essence of Pretendianism, emphasizing its detrimental effects on authentic Native communities, including the erosion of trust and the potential financial and social harm inflicted on Indigenous individuals and institutions.

Jacqueline Keillor’s Role

Jacqueline Keillor is introduced as a prominent figure in the fight against Pretendianism. As a Navajo citizen and co-founder of Eradicating Offensive Native Mascotry, Keillor has successfully led campaigns to remove offensive Native American mascots from major sports teams, such as the Cleveland Indians' now-renamed Cleveland Guardians. Her dedication extends beyond mascots to identifying individuals who falsely claim Indigenous heritage, thereby undermining genuine Native voices.

Notable Quote:

"Promote stereotypes, outdated stereotypes about Native people, and they pigeonhole us so that real Native people aren't seen for who we are and nobody knows anything about us."
— Jacqueline Keillor [05:12]

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The Buffy Sainte-Marie Exposé

One of Keillor’s significant achievements discussed in the episode is her investigation into Buffy Sainte-Marie, a renowned musician often celebrated as a Native American icon. Keillor was pivotal in uncovering inconsistencies in Sainte-Marie's claimed Indigenous background, revealing that her ancestry was inaccurately represented.

Impact on the Community

The revelation had profound emotional repercussions for Indigenous listeners and communities who had revered Sainte-Marie as a symbol of Native identity. Angel Ellis shares her personal disappointment, highlighting how such exposes can shatter longstanding perceptions and connections.

Notable Quote:

"She was on Sesame Street, and you're like a native kid, like, watching Sesame Street, and it's like the first time you've ever seen that. It's like, a thing. And so it kind of like, makes your childhood a lie in a way. It's like, what is going on here?"
— Angel Ellis [08:03]

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Methodologies and Criteria for Identifying Pretendians

Creating the List

Keillor discusses the creation of a Google Doc containing suspected Pretendians. Initially listing around 25 individuals, the list expanded to 200 names based on contributions from Native professionals who identified questionable claims within various fields. This collaborative approach aimed to harness community insights to authenticate Indigenous identities.

Verification Process

Despite the extensive list, only a small fraction—about 7%—of the claims could be verified as genuine. Keillor emphasizes the difficulty in substantiating distant ancestries and the scarcity of verifiable evidence among self-claimed Indigenous individuals.

Notable Quotes:

"We stopped at 200 because we needed to finish the investigation. We have since received several hundred more names."
— Robert Jago [09:08]

"We actually can identify that ancestor and they are from the tribe they are claiming, no matter how far back it is, we mark them as verified, we verify that."
— Jacqueline Keillor [10:31]

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Case Study: Tara Houska

The episode presents a specific case of Tara Houska, a recognized citizen of the Kucha Ching First Nation and a prominent land defender. Keillor's investigation questioned Houska's maternal ancestry, suggesting that her connection to the tribe was too distant to be considered legitimate. However, Houska's Indigenous identity through her paternal lineage remained intact, highlighting the complexities of tracing and verifying mixed-heritage ancestries.

Community Reactions

Houska’s inclusion on the list sparked significant backlash, demonstrating the personal and professional consequences of being labeled a Pretendian. She describes the harassment and threats faced by herself and her family, underscoring the harmful effects of such public accusations.

Notable Quotes:

"We're talking about our dead, whose legitimacy is questioned by persons who have no relationship to him."
— Kairos Old [19:41]

"I've dealt with the criminal element who she directed at my family and I had to tighten up security measures."
— Kairos Old [20:27]

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Ethical Concerns and Methodological Critiques

Host and Guest Perspectives

The hosts critically examine Keillor’s approach, arguing that her methodology—publicly listing and investigating individuals without prior communication—can be perceived as aggressive and dehumanizing. Angel Ellis questions the fairness of public shaming and the potential for innocent individuals to suffer undue harm.

Criteria for Investigation

Dana Ballout and Alex Atack outline their own criteria for identifying Pretendians, focusing on the authenticity of tribal membership, the prominence of the individual, and community rejection. They contrast this with Keillor’s criteria, noting similarities but also significant differences in approach and execution.

Notable Quotes:

"She's just doing investigative journalism. She says that work should be looked at as reporting on fraud."
— Angel Ellis [23:27]

"If you add up all of the salaries of pretending universities that are instead going to imposters, it adds up to an astounding level of fraud."
— Jacqueline Keillor [13:32]

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Historical Context and Systemic Issues

Racial Integrity Act of 1924

Kairos Old provides a historical backdrop, drawing parallels between Keillor’s modern-day investigations and the oppressive practices of the Jim Crow era’s Racial Integrity Act. This legislation criminalized misrepresentation of racial identity, particularly targeting Native and Black communities. Kairos argues that Keillor's tactics echo these outdated and discriminatory practices, perpetuating a cycle of distrust and marginalization.

Systemic Oppression

The discussion highlights how Pretendian investigations can be another tool of systemic oppression, disproportionately affecting marginalized communities. Kairos emphasizes the existing challenges Indigenous people face in reclaiming their identities and the added burden of combating fraudulent claims imposed by external actors.

Notable Quotes:

"It's just Jim Crow rebranded for the digital age, because it's the same information, the same persons used in the same way."
— Kairos Old [22:14]

"We're used to the idea that people like us don't belong where we are."
— Kairos Old [22:14]

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Personal Accounts and Consequences

Kairos Old’s Experience

Kairos Old, a recognized member of the Pamunkey Tribe and founder of the largest Indigenous forum on Reddit, shares his personal experience of being erroneously listed as a Pretendian. He details the subsequent harassment, threats to his family's safety, and the broader impact on his mental well-being and community engagement.

Broader Impact on Indigenous Communities

The episode underscores the chilling effect such accusations have on Indigenous individuals, discouraging genuine community participation and fostering an environment of fear and suspicion. The stigmatization and potential ostracization resulting from these lists can lead to isolation and mistrust within communities.

Notable Quotes:

"It's created an environment of fear. Unfortunately, I'm part of that environment of fear."
— Kairos Old [24:32]

"It's like bullying. There is a problem in Indian country. We all agree that there is a problem."
— Angel Ellis [26:52]

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Balancing Accountability and Harm

Intent vs. Impact

While acknowledging the necessity of addressing Pretendianism to protect Indigenous communities' integrity, the hosts and guests debate the ethical implications of Keillor’s methods. They recognize the importance of accountability but caution against approaches that may cause more harm than good through indiscriminate accusations and lack of due process.

Alternative Approaches

Dana Ballout and Alex Atack advocate for a more measured and respectful approach, suggesting that tribal governments and official bodies should spearhead investigations into Indigenous identity claims. They emphasize the need for collaborative efforts that prioritize the voices and standards of the Indigenous communities themselves.

Notable Quotes:

"I think that tribal governments and only tribal governments should be doing these investigations."
— Kairos Old [25:02]

"If she had done a few key things differently, I could really support the work that she's doing."
— Angel Ellis [26:19]

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Conclusion and Forward Look

The episode concludes with a reflection on the complexities surrounding Pretendianism and the challenges of balancing the need for genuine representation with the imperative to avoid unjust harm. While recognizing Keillor’s contributions to uncovering fraudulent claims, the hosts and guests advocate for improved methodologies that respect and protect Indigenous communities' integrity.

Future Episodes

Listeners are teased with upcoming topics, including investigations into Pretendians within Hollywood and other high-profile sectors, promising to further explore the pervasive nature of this issue.

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Key Takeaways

• Pretendianism significantly undermines genuine Indigenous communities, leading to lost opportunities and perpetuated stereotypes.
• Jacqueline Keillor has been instrumental in identifying and exposing individuals falsely claiming Indigenous heritage, though her methods raise ethical concerns.
• Verification Challenges highlight the difficulty in confirming distant ancestries and the low rate of successfully verifying claims.
• Historical Parallels draw connections between modern Pretendian investigations and historical discriminatory practices like the Racial Integrity Act.
• Personal Impacts underscore the real-life consequences of being mislabeled as a Pretendian, including harassment and community alienation.
• Ethical Dilemmas emphasize the need for balanced approaches that protect Indigenous integrity without inflicting undue harm.

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Notable Quotes Recap:

"Promote stereotypes, outdated stereotypes about Native people, and they pigeonhole us so that real Native people aren't seen for who we are and nobody knows anything about us."
— Jacqueline Keillor [05:12]

"It's just bullying. There is a problem in Indian country. We all agree that there is a problem."
— Angel Ellis [26:52]

"It's the same information, the same persons used in the same way. Whether you want to call it use a slur pretendian, or if you want to use an older slur like mongrel, which is what they would refer to us as."
— Kairos Old [22:14]

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Final Thoughts

"Pretendian Hunters" offers a nuanced exploration of a deeply divisive issue within Indigenous communities. By presenting multiple perspectives, including those of activists, affected individuals, and the hosts themselves, the episode fosters a comprehensive understanding of the complexities involved in identifying and addressing fraudulent claims of Indigenous heritage. It calls for a thoughtful and community-centered approach to ensure that efforts to maintain cultural integrity do not inadvertently perpetuate harm.

Transcript

[Robert Jago]

Canada Land funded by you. Angel what's the worst thing that could happen with this series?

[Angel Ellis]

The worst thing that could happen is that our information is bad and the person is actually a native.

[Robert Jago]

Could you imagine I would just be.

[Angel Ellis]

Like crawling under a rock and dying is what I would do.

[Robert Jago]

Worst case scenario is that we get it wrong and then we look like goddamn clowns to hundreds of thousands of people. And also like we've really screwed someone over.

[Angel Ellis]

Yeah, that's the kind of thing that will haunt you forever.

[Robert Jago]

A mistake like that is our worst nightmare, but it's also someone's reality. Today's episode is about a pretending hunter who may have gone too far. It's about what happens when pretending investigations go wrong.

[Jacqueline Keillor]

You want to calculate their total takings and hang them on the neck of people who are falsely claiming.

[Kairos Old]

I just find it has just a very rotten heart of hate.

[Robert Jago]

Scrolling down.

[Kairos Old]

My newsfeed on a hot summer day.

[Robert Jago]

Gotta find them Indians who ain't who they say with my trusty keyboard under the hot summer sun goin chase them imposters until the job is done.

[Angel Ellis]

Hello, it's Giles Whittell from Tortoise.

[Kairos Old]

Welcome to the news meeting.

[Robert Jago]

I think the danger here is that.

[Kairos Old]

We'Re not as relentless as we were the first time around. We have to keep that up.

[Robert Jago]

Just one newspaper found 30,000 thousand lies or falsehoods or misleading statements to during his last term. Trump met the moment here because traditional.

[Kairos Old]

Media is in crisis, we should be.

[Robert Jago]

Talking about how our reporting is getting into the hands of people and how we're building trust with those audiences. Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recomm.

[Angel Ellis]

Hello, welcome to We Signed an NDA, our podcast where we talk about the people who sign NDAs. Hollywood is the North Pole and the celebrities are Santa. This is a show all about the.

[Robert Jago]

Elves, so please don't sue us Santa.

[Angel Ellis]

My name is Amanda Lifford. If my voice sounds at all familiar, it's probably from the Vile Files podcast. And my name is Ann Maddox. You may have seen me on Vanderpump Rules getting fired on national television by Tom Sandoval. The Glasgow Willy Wonka Expanded comedians. One of the worst jobs in history. Kirsty, you're on the right podcast.

[Robert Jago]

I was wearing snow pants lying under Stephen Colbert.

[Angel Ellis]

Welcome.

[Robert Jago]

I've heard of Vanderpump Rules. I don't know what it is.

[Angel Ellis]

So listen to we signed an NDA. Wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Robert Jago]

ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time it's gonna get personal.

[Angel Ellis]

I don't know who sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

[Robert Jago]

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts from. Canaland Podcasts this is pretendience, a show where we investigate the impact that fakes, frauds, and phonies have on real Native people. My name is Robert Jago. I'm a freelance writer from the Kwantlen First Nation and Nooksack Indian Tribe.

[Angel Ellis]

And I'm Angel Ellis, a citizen of the Muscogee Creek Nation located in Otmulgee, Oklahoma. I've been a writer, editor, journalist for about 15 years. Foreign.

[Robert Jago]

I'd like you to meet Jacqueline Keiller.

[Jacqueline Keillor]

My name is Jacqueline Keillor. I am a citizen of the Navajo Nation. My father is Yankton sue from South Dakota. I'm a journalist and author, and I have been doing research into allegations of ethnic fraud, commonly called Pretendianism.

[Robert Jago]

Non Native listeners may not be familiar with Jacqueline Keillor, but they're likely familiar with her work. Jaclyn Keillor is a Navajo and co founder of the group Eradicating Offensive Native Mascotry. They claim the buck tooth red face image is offensive to Native American culture.

[Kairos Old]

I love Wahoo.

[Robert Jago]

Fuck you. It's a caricature. Get over it. Jacqueline and her team succeeded in getting most of those awful mascots away from major sports, like the Chief Wahoo mascot of the Cleveland Indians, now known as the Cleveland Guardians. As a result of her campaign, they.

[Jacqueline Keillor]

Promote stereotypes, outdated stereotypes about Native people, and they pigeonhole us so that real Native people aren't seen for who we are and nobody knows anything about us.

[Angel Ellis]

And she also got the Washington R to ditch that name. Now they're the Washington Commanders. Can we beep R? It's like such a. They just go beep.

[Robert Jago]

Okay, so that's one of her projects. Another has been leading the charge to identify and expose Pretendians. She's been quite effective at that, too. CBC News gets the credit for exposing Buffy St. Marie and how she misrepresented her Indigenous identity. But it was actually Jacqueline Keillor who first discovered and researched this.

[Jacqueline Keillor]

Yeah, I'm the one who found out she wasn't who she was at First.

[Robert Jago]

Jaclyn was a Buffy fan. Like a lot of natives, she used to have a radio show, and she used a Buffy song in every episode.

[Jacqueline Keillor]

I had as the sort of theme song to my show, a song, Carry it on by Buffy Saint Marie. You know, every morning I have a show, I'd like it all worked up, listening to it, like, get all, like, jazz and stuff and get myself going. Someone in the comments basically said, oh, did you know that she's a fraud? I was suddenly having this sinking feeling when I realized that she never was able to really identify her family or any proof at all that she, you know, had come from Saskatchewan or even Canada. And I was like, oh, my God, this seems like a pretending. And the first thing that popped up was that she had been on the Massachusetts birth index, was being born in Stoneham, Massachusetts. And I was like, whoa, what does this mean? I mean. And so we were able to really piece together that she was born there. And these were her actual relatives. Her Italian father and her white pilgrim mother. There's an Italian American community there that felt very rejected by her, that she was ashamed of them. You know, there are stories in the printed at the time of her driving her. Her Italian uncles away and screaming at them, you know, because she was ashamed that people might realize that they were her actual. She looks like them. She looks exactly like them, you know, and, you know, it was all there. It was pretty apparent that she was lying. And she's lied about it so much, it's just completely ridiculous to fall back on that at this point. You know, she's never told the truth about it. She was lying. That's the end of the story.

[Robert Jago]

Angel, how did you feel about the Buffy expose?

[Angel Ellis]

Oh, my gosh, the buffet expose kind of rocked my world because, like, it was, like, generations of my family who were, like, hurt. You know how when your dad really loves that song and you have great memories of that song in the car, and then it turns out that they're not actually like you?

[Robert Jago]

It was really disappointing because she was always one of those figures that for any sort of Canadian thing, they always dragged her out and propped her up. It was just disappointing because of her status in the community.

[Angel Ellis]

She was on Sesame street, and you're like a native kid, like, watching Sesame street, and it's like the first time you've ever seen that. It's like, a thing. And so it kind of like, makes your childhood a lie in a way. It's like, what is going on here?

[Robert Jago]

Buffy is just one of Jacqueline's Many subjects. What we're going to focus on today is her main effort to identify pretend, pretending it's in universities, in the media, all over. And she made a list.

[Jacqueline Keillor]

I created a Google Doc and I put down the names I knew, which was, I don't know, maybe 25 people I knew of. And then I opened the list that was never open. It was private list, but if someone asked to have access to it, we would let them. But only once they gave their real names, we were able to ascertain if they were actually native and that they were professional in various fields.

[Robert Jago]

Right.

[Jacqueline Keillor]

So they're talking about in colleagues in their fields. Right. And so then we opened the list up to them. It was we, we stopped at 200 because we needed to finish the investigation. We have since received several hundred more names.

[Robert Jago]

200 names were added to this Google Doc. All of them were people who were suspected of being pretendians. Now, as you heard Jacqueline says this was a private list.

[Angel Ellis]

Then how do you know about it, Robert?

[Robert Jago]

Because it wasn't private. It may have been private when it was first released, but once it was out in the world, it was everywhere. On Reddit, on Twitter, put up on people's blogs. People made copies and shared them around. It was very easy to find. And native social media, as you know, is a pretty tight knit and small world. Once word of this list got around, everyone was checking to see who was on it. I asked Jacqueline if she filtered out any names before adding them to the list.

[Jacqueline Keillor]

We did remove some if we knew off the bat that they were legit. You know, I mean, I don't know. We really were looking for people who were, who were seriously questionable. We wanted to find out the truth. Mostly we just accepted what they wrote. I think if someone, we allowed access to the list, you submitted a bunch of claims that were spurious or obviously ridiculous. We just got rid of those. But mostly they were chosen by people who are professionals in those fields. Native professionals who have suspected fraud in their fields. They were the ones who chose the people in the list. And some of them I put alleged because, you know, we had not confirmed these cases and we needed to do so.

[Robert Jago]

This was not a list of confirmed Britannians. This was a list of people who are deemed to be likely suspects if.

[Jacqueline Keillor]

We actually can identify that ancestor and they are from the tribe they are claiming, no matter how far back it is, we mark them as verified, we verify that. So the problem is very few of these claims pan out and we've only been able to verify like seven people.

[Angel Ellis]

Wait, so there were people on this list of possible pretendions who she later verified as being legit?

[Robert Jago]

Yes. So, for example, one of the people targeted elsewhere by Jacqueline Keiller was Tara Houska. She's a citizen of the Kucha Ching first nation. She's a prominent land defender, a lawyer fighting for tribal rights, and she was front and center at Standing Rock. But online, Keiller cast doubts about her ancestry by investigating her mother's ancestry and determining that her connection was too distant to count. But Hauska is a registered native through her father's side. Jacqueline admits that some of the names on the list were not actually Britannians, but she doesn't see that as a problem. She argues that there was actually an upside for people who were called out on the list for maybe being frauds because it gave them an opportunity to clear their names.

[Jacqueline Keillor]

Verifying facts can actually relieve someone from accusations of fraud, but it can also show that fraud is really rampant. I mean, the initial list that we verified included 200 names and most of them in academia in some form. And, you know, out of that 97% of them, we could not verify their tribal claims. You know, why don't they. If they really have an issue, why don't they just present their evidence?

[Angel Ellis]

So it's kind of like if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, I guess.

[Robert Jago]

Jacqueline says she and her secret group of researchers aren't out to get anybody. She says they actually prefer it when they find out someone isn't a pretendian.

[Jacqueline Keillor]

In fact, we found that CSU San Marcos professor who was actually being 100% accurate, her description of her descent. We actually threw a little online zoom party, our researchers, because we were just so happy to find someone we could actually confirm. Like, we don't. It kills us to see that people are lying. It's not something we want to find.

[Robert Jago]

She says she doesn't want to find pretendions, but when she does find them, she sees it as very important to call them out.

[Jacqueline Keillor]

You know, what we are dealing with is fraud. I'm investigating a huge fraud case. I mean, a case of fraud happening in this country, which is probably stealing billions of dollars away from native people. And that's not an exaggeration. These documents have, like, how much their families own their land, everything. We know how much they got out of this. And so we want to calculate their total takings and hang that on the neck of people who are falsely claiming, because these people, as I've been quoted as saying before, their ancestors, their family members were on the white suprem party bus. And these people are driving native people out of their professional careers. They are impoverishing native families because many native families depend on people who can, you know, get a PhD to help support everyone on the rez.

[Robert Jago]

She says if you add up all of the salaries of pretending universities that are instead going to imposters, it adds up to an astounding level of fraud.

[Jacqueline Keillor]

Investigating a massive fraud case is what journalists do. That's why it actually make the world a better place.

[Angel Ellis]

Honestly, I agree with the points she's making about natives losing opportunities and I agree with the point she's making about investigations and what journalists do and that it's important work. That's what we're trying to do here.

[Robert Jago]

Right? I mean, sure, that's the idea.

[Angel Ellis]

So let me ask you this, like what's her criteria? Like when, when we started making this series, we set up some rules for ourselves.

[Robert Jago]

Yeah. It's not enough just to verify that they're not indigenous. I mean there are lots and lots of people who are pretendians and most of them aren't really harming anybody but themselves. So to make someone worth investigating, we agreed on a three part test. Just first off off the basics. They're not indigenous. So that means they're not a citizen of a nation, they're not part of that nation, they're not tribally enrolled, they're not federally registered or they have no ability to be any of those. Also, the tribe exists and it's a legitimate real tribe. That's number one. Number two is that they're prominent enough to have an impact on the interests of actual native people. So they're not just, you know, so and so at the gas station who says, oh, you're a Native, I'm native too. We don't care about that. It's about the ones who are doing things that are changing our politics, changing the culture, who are again like making money off of this. The key takeaway is that there is some sort of harm. The third criteria is that their community rejects them.

[Angel Ellis]

The tribe they claim doesn't claim them.

[Robert Jago]

There are people on the ground from that place who say that this person by our standards is not one of us. That last part I think is really, really important. And it's what a lot of pretending stories have missed out on is going into the community and finding out how does citizenship work here? We can't just come in from on high from a non native media organization. We can't go into someone else's nation and say that Person's not a real one of you. I mean, we need to go and talk to them and find out what their standards are and apply those standards. So that's our criteria. And I asked Jacqueline what hers are.

[Jacqueline Keillor]

The criteria is in the definition of pretendianism that we use, which is that they are professionals in their field. They are seeking to be our spokespeople. They have monetization schemes going to monetize the claims, that sort of thing. So by definition, these people are consequential and these people are gatekeepers and these people are causing harm and basically trying to salt the ground for actual Native people to participate.

[Robert Jago]

So it's a pretty similar idea there too. But angel, the difference with Jacqueline, I think, is in her methodology.

[Angel Ellis]

Well, yeah, I mean, if you're gonna publicly release a list of names and then start investigating, that's kind of ass backwards.

[Robert Jago]

Well, I mean. Well, as you've heard, Jacqueline disputes that the list was truly public. And she disputes the idea that simply being on the list hurt anyone. If anything, she says it gives them a chance to prove who they are. But in a minute you're going to hear from someone who was put on her list and who feels pretty differently about the whole thing. I'm guessing that most of the Canadians listening to this right now already listen to Canadaland, the Americans. I'm not so sure. For over 10 years, Canadaland has been publishing weekly episodes that look critically at the media, break news stories and bring listeners like you perspectives from across Canada that you won't find anywhere else. Angel, since you started working on the show, have you been listening? Have you been catching up on all things across the medicine line?

[Angel Ellis]

People are always telling me that you Canadians are nice, polite, boring folks. But I've been listening to some news stories and holy cow, the stereotypes are wrong. You guys are wild. I've heard stories about medical cover ups, election interference, right wing trolls, racism, messed up policing, and something called a pokeroo. Anyway, you guys are like the US but with less guns and a younger, better looking president or leader, whatever you call him. I've learned a lot.

[Robert Jago]

Yep, Canadians are just as awful and outrageous and messed up as Americans are. They just hide it better.

[Angel Ellis]

I'm learning that Robert, you can listen.

[Robert Jago]

To and follow Canada land anywhere you get your podcasts.

[Kairos Old]

My name is Kyros Old. I'm Pamunkey.

[Robert Jago]

The Pamunkey Indian tribe is a federally recognized tribe in the state of Virginia.

[Kairos Old]

I served on the board of directors for Native American Lifelines of Baltimore in Boston as the capacity of president and I'm proud of that service. Thank you.

[Robert Jago]

Kairos is active online. He's the founder and moderator of Indian country, which is the biggest indigenous forum on Reddit. His first encounter with Jacqueline Keiller happened online.

[Kairos Old]

We disagreed with something on something on Twitter. I think it's that petty. I don't think she ever forgave me for that.

[Robert Jago]

After that, his name appeared on Jacqueline's list.

[Angel Ellis]

So I have to ask if he's on the list, is he a pretendian?

[Robert Jago]

Well, we looked into his background and there's enough there to show that he almost certainly is not a pretendian. His mother and grandmother had tribal membership. He himself has chosen not to pursue a tribal id, but he is acclaimed and very active member of the Pamunkey community. He's not relying on some distant ancestor or generalized descent.

[Kairos Old]

I'm embraced as Pamunkey by the Pamunkey people.

[Angel Ellis]

Good enough for me.

[Robert Jago]

So during the pandemic when Kairos was involved in getting native people vaccinated, he learned that his name was on Jacqueline's list.

[Kairos Old]

I came to find that I, along with about 200 other individuals targeted, were part of the alleged Pretendions list in the last days of January 2021. It was one year anniversary of the loss of our child and it's an unsubstantiated allegation.

[Robert Jago]

Cairo says that even though he was the individual named, his whole family was implicated and not just the living.

[Kairos Old]

We're talking about our dead, whose legitimacy is questioned by persons who have no relationship to him. And so I saw one day she was making an attack about my mother having financed her home in D.C. from fraudulent Pamonkey claims, fundraising based off of false claims. And I pushed back on that publicly because my parents financed that home through a mortgage funded through their jobs. They were teachers in D.C. public schools.

[Robert Jago]

I asked Kairos how Jacqueline Keiller's allegations impacted him.

[Kairos Old]

I mean, it hasn't impacted me negatively economically because I didn't make money off of indigeneity. It's not my bread and butter. I don't do this stuff for a living.

[Robert Jago]

But that's not to say he didn't suffer from it. After the list went around, others took it upon themselves to harass people who appeared on it.

[Kairos Old]

I've unfortunately dealt with the criminal element who she directed at my family and I had to tighten up security measures. I had felt less safe and it's gotten somewhat better. Insofar as I've gotten used to looking over my shoulder in this capacity, I've been less inclined and I'VE seen other people affected by this being less inclined to share of themselves and other communities and of their families, because there are sharks here, are monsters in those digital waters, and she's certainly one of them.

[Robert Jago]

As disturbing as all of this has been to Kairos, he says that it's not really new. He sees Jacqueline Keiller's list as a new digital form of something that's plagued natives for generations.

[Kairos Old]

So under the Racial integrity Act of 1924, the legislators in Virginia, who were among the first families of Virginia, some of whom have documented ancestry going back to Pocahontas, wanted to carve out an exception to this act that defined, in very hard ways, race in Virginia, setting up a racial regime in which you could be white if you had distant Indian ancestry. All of the persons were considered colored or black. And then there was this tiny Indian category that eugenists did everything they could to persecute and repress and identify as suspect and fraudulent so they could keep the white race pure, so they could keep in their language, so they can keep these Negroes from passing into the white race by calling themselves Indian on documents such as birth certificates.

[Robert Jago]

It's worth noting here that Kairos is both black and native.

[Kairos Old]

The regime, the Jim Crow regime, very much wanted to know where people lived where, where they worked, who they were married to, who their friends were, where they went to church. A total invasion of the lives of these people and the safety of these people. And you have to remember that there were felony penalties for violating the Racial Integrity Act. People did, in fact, find themselves imprisoned. So it just strikes us as being Jim Crow rebranded for the digital age, because it's the same information, the same persons used in the same way. Whether you want to call it use a slur pretendian, or if you want to use an older slur like mongrel, which is what they would refer to us as. So, yeah, it's old hat. It's a bad policy. And I'm used to people demanding what my business is. Oh, did you really earn the job that you have, or are you a diversity hire? Oh, what are you doing here in this neighborhood? That's how it hits me to say that my parents did earn their home. We're used to that. We're used to the idea that people like us don't belong where we are. I just find it has just a very rotten heart of hate. She's a direct successor to it in methodology and in rhetoric and in targets. Direct successor.

[Angel Ellis]

So, I mean, Jacqueline said that she's just doing investigative journalism. She says that work should be looked at as reporting on fraud.

[Robert Jago]

She did say that she's just doing investigative journalism. She also said that she always tries to get the other side of the story, as any journalist would. Kairo says that's not true.

[Kairos Old]

She never tried talking with me at all. No outreach, no interview. It's all been very dehumanizing because it's like we're dealing with some kind of wannabe anthropologist who doesn't talk with their subjects, who just writes about them and places things in the most hostile, antagonistic, derogatory light. We're not talking about professionals, we're not talking about political journalists here. We are talking about agitators and people who are trying to prop themselves up using clout and controversy and inference. What is the term? Speculative journalism? She's really stolen our story and created something else.

[Robert Jago]

Kaira says that since the list, some natives have got really paranoid.

[Kairos Old]

I've seen people who've on social media feel compelled to dox themselves to present their tribal ID and other personally identifiable information that they need to keep secure because they're afraid of being called frauds. It's created an environment of fear. Unfortunately, I'm part of that environment of fear. An unwilling participant in all this.

[Angel Ellis]

I'm just curious though, does Kiro see any kind of value in the intent of this kind of work? I mean, there's widespread understanding that pretendians are a real problem.

[Robert Jago]

Yeah, he thinks that tribal governments and only tribal governments should be doing these investigations. And given his experience, I don't really blame him.

[Kairos Old]

I think people need to understand that it's not normal for someone to make a list of 200 enemies, digging down into where they live, who their family is, digging up their family trees, creating, fabricating new family trees, pissing on those family trees, degrading those ancestors who can't speak for themselves.

[Robert Jago]

You know, Kairos was saying that the only people that should be doing these sorts of investigations are tribal governments. And I was actually hired by my first nation to do one of these sorts of investigations. And so I appreciate what he's saying there. And, and I think that applies when you have an identifiable nation and, and someone is, is claiming to be part of that. When you've got stories like Guillaume Carl, who we did a while ago, or the Hell's Angels one a while ago, where they're making up nations. I think there's a place for external actors to come in and take a look at that. But I don't think he's wrong.

[Angel Ellis]

Yeah, I have real bad issues with Jacqueline's methodology. It seems like she's kind of holding people hostage in a court of public opinion that they have absolutely no way of refuting, because a lie can be around the world and back again before the truth ever puts its shoes on. And I think that if she had done a few key things differently, I could really support the work that she's doing. But it is fucking crazy to just make a list of your 200 enemies and start blasting them on social. That's bullying.

[Robert Jago]

You're right. It is bullying. There is a problem in Indian country. We all agree that there is a problem. She agrees. We agree. We all agree that there is an issue with these pretendians taking opportunities, talking over us. And it's. It's like an illness in our culture, in our country. And you can take a surgical approach and take it out carefully, being as minimally invasive as possible and making sure you don't hurt anybody. Or you could use a shotgun, and some of the pellets will go past and hit bystanders, but a couple will actually hit the thing. And so. Well, there we go.

[Angel Ellis]

Sloppy.

[Robert Jago]

For all of the cases where you get it one right, it doesn't justify any of the cases where you get it wrong.

[Angel Ellis]

Absolutely not. I hate to think about what Kos and his mom and his grandmother had to go and do in their own community when these kind of things started circulating.

[Robert Jago]

You know, Kairos isn't the only false positive that we talk to. He's the only false positive that would talk on tape because the others were afraid, and they were afraid of the harassment that they've gotten because of the list. And it's quieted down for a little bit now. And they were afraid that if they talked to us on tape, that it would come back to them, that it would restart everything all over again, and they would have to deal with people harassing them online and possibly in person.

[Angel Ellis]

Hey, Robert, I got a question. So, like. So if we were to have, like, a glaring mistake and someone pointed out holes in our methodology, what would your first step be?

[Robert Jago]

If we're, like, a huge mistake, I would have to see where my data was bad. Okay, this is the thing with Jaclyn Keillor. It's hard to support her. She makes it very hard. The way she. She deals with people is just not freaking cool. It is just. It's not cool the way she deals with people. It's not professional. It's not humane when you put that aside. She is doing a job that needs to be done, and she is one of the very, very few people who will do that job. And she has been right. And I think that if she were to change some of the ways that she deals with things and with people, that her contributions could be much greater than they are now or much greater than they have been so far. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to ruin your life. I should have tried to get it right, but I got it wrong. You are for real all along. So let's just move on.

[Angel Ellis]

And that's our show.

[Robert Jago]

Next time on pretendience. Angel zooms in on pretendience in Hollywood.

[Jacqueline Keillor]

Johnny Depp is now a member of.

[Angel Ellis]

A Comanche family and has an Indian.

[Robert Jago]

Name that suits him perfectly.

[Jacqueline Keillor]

It's Shapeshifter.

[Robert Jago]

Our executive producer and editor is Jesse Brown.

[Angel Ellis]

Additional production from Caleb Thompson.

[Robert Jago]

Julie Shapiro is our contributing editor.

[Angel Ellis]

Canadaland's editor in chief is Karen Pulesi. If you like Pretendians and want to hear more of it, it's really important to help us get the word out. When you follow us, subscribe to us, rate us, and review us on Spotify and Apple podcasts, the sacred algorithm takes note and spreads the word to others. Please do it now.

[Robert Jago]

You can listen ad free and early on Amazon music included with Prime.

[Angel Ellis]

Thanks for listening.

[Robert Jago]

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time it's gonna get personal.

[Angel Ellis]

I don't know who sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

[Robert Jago]

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts.

[Angel Ellis]

Hello, it's Giles Whittel from Tortoise.

[Kairos Old]

Welcome to the news meeting.

[Robert Jago]

I think the danger here is that.

[Kairos Old]

We'Re not as relentless as we were the first time around. We had have to keep that up.

[Robert Jago]

Just one newspaper found 30,000 thousand lies or falsehoods or misleading statements during his last term. Now, Trump met the moment here.

[Kairos Old]

Because traditional media is in crisis, we.

[Robert Jago]

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[Kairos Old]

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[Angel Ellis]

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[Kairos Old]

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[Robert Jago]

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[Kairos Old]

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[Angel Ellis]

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[Robert Jago]

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