Jacqueline Keeler: Help put an end to racist mascots in sports

Monday morning I looked at my Twitter (@jfkeeler) Interactions list and I was surprised to see that Jake Tapper, CNN anchor had answered an obnoxious response to my tweet “Why Indian Mascots Need to End in a Picture” featuring a photograph I had clipped from a Facebook post of a Sonic Drive-in in Belton, Missouri with a sign that read, “KC Chiefs” Will Scalp the Redsk*ns Feed Them Whisky Sent - 2 - Reservation.” He said to the troll, “you truly can’t understand why a Native American would find that offensive?”

When I tweeted him the photo with my one-line observation, I didn’t really expect him to retweet it. I sent it to many high-profile media figures (actually, I was most hopeful that Rachel Maddow would retweet it) and was pleased when he did retweet it Sunday night. He or one of his staff, because I’m sure not all media figures read their own Twitter accounts. Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) has over 300,000 followers on Twitter- not in the Kardashian range, but still, respectable.

Comprising only 1 1/2 per cent of the population of the United States, we get very little meaningful media coverage of our issues. And yet, as major landowners with an outsized interest in the path this country pursues regarding the development of our natural resources (fracking/water issues for example) we should have a larger media profile because the future of the country depends on us agreeing to this economic policy. Yet, even in this day and age of digital media, we are so invisible to the American public—seen only as mascots & movie characters set in the Old West that getting a prominent news anchor to publicly comment on our issues, is something that rarely happens. They don’t even know what our issues are. But you’re reading Indian Country Today, you know all this—what you want to know is how do we make Native American issues go viral and make an impact on policy, law & imagery that limits the public’s perception of us.