PART 2 THE CHIEF AND THE CALCULATION
The public statements. The documented record. The question that remains. By Troy Littledeer | @candyminksprings
THE HONOR
Ten weeks before her Sept. 11, 2025 email, on June 29, 2025, N’Kiyla “Jasmine” Thomas posted a photograph to her campaign Facebook page.
She was standing beside Chuck Hoskin Jr.
“Meeting Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. of the Cherokee Nation was an absolute honor,” Thomas wrote. “As a Chickasaw woman, moments like this remind me how deeply connected our communities are across tribal nations, across movements, and across generations. Chief Hoskin’s leadership, commitment to sovereignty, and unwavering advocacy for Indigenous rights set an example not just for Indian Country, but for all of Oklahoma.”
She closed the post: “Mvto, Chief Hoskin.”
Mvto is a Muscogee word for thank you. Not Cherokee. Muscogee. The nation whose council Hoskin addressed 55 days later.
Hoskin is Cherokee Nation. The United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma (UKB) is also Cherokee – Keetoowah Cherokee People, a federally recognized government whose roots predate the Cherokee Nation’s modern corporate structure. They share ancestry, language and history.
On Aug. 23, 2025, Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. told the Muscogee Nation National Council that supporting the UKB would cause “irreparable damage to the relationship between the Cherokee Nation and the Muscogee Nation.”
Four council members voted against tabling the resolution and in support of the UKB position. Nine council members voted to table the resolution. It failed to advance.
Thomas publicly praised Hoskin on June 29, 2025.
THE STATEMENTS
On Jan. 5, 2026 – less than four months after calling the UKB fight abstract – Thomas posted a reel to her verified Instagram account @jasmineforok.
Corn husk doll on the table. Camera rolling.
“Tribal sovereignty simply means this: Tribal Nations have a right to self-governance. They decide their leadership, their laws, and their internal matters. Not the state, not the federal government, and certainly not a U.S. senator.”
She continued: “Even when there are disagreements between tribes – and those disagreements can be real and painful – a U.S. senator doesn’t get to step in and pick sides or force outcomes. That would actually violate sovereignty and not protect it.”
She closed with: “A candidate promising to side with one tribe over another isn’t showing leadership – it’s not – and they’re misunderstanding sovereignty. Real advocacy means protecting lawful processes and strengthening relationships across all tribal nations. No tribe is greater than the other. All deserve equal access, equal respect, and the way that we protect Indian Country is by honoring self-governance, when it’s uncomfortable. One band, one sound.”
Set those statements next to the record:
The proposed congressional language – circulated through Senate Appropriations and not disclosed to the UKB prior to its discovery through a FOIA request – would, if enacted, require Cherokee Nation consent for land-into-trust decisions that federal courts had said did not require that consent. It was described by UKB leadership as occurring “without consultation.”
Four council members – Barnett, Freeman, Randolph and Whitecloud – voted against tabling the resolution and in support of the UKB position. Nine council members voted to table the resolution. It failed to advance.
UKB Congressional Delegate Victoria Holland said no candidate had contacted the tribe as of Oct. 4, 2025.
Nobody called.
THE DELETION
Thomas subsequently posted a multi-part thread on her verified Threads account @nkiylaforoklahoma addressing the UKB dispute publicly.
She disclosed she had learned what a congressional rider was by consulting an attorney. She described its specific effect on UKB housing, health services and economic development. She defended her decision not to take a public position as responsible leadership.
When this punk responded in the comments, Thomas wrote: “I cannot argue with chat GPT. So until I have a real conversation to better understand, I will leave this where it’s at.”
Those posts no longer appear on her Threads account.
Screenshots are retained by Candy Mink Springs Media LLC.
For the record: this punk is a UKB member, an award-winning Indigenous journalist, and the founder of Candy Mink Springs Media LLC. Not a chatbot.
THE CONTRACTS
On Jan. 21, 2026 – the same day Oklahoma news outlets first reported the story – Thomas posted a reel to @jasmineforok opposing a proposed ICE detention and processing facility in Oklahoma City. The Department of Homeland Security had notified city officials in a letter dated Dec. 23, 2025, of its intent to purchase a 26.8-acre warehouse at 2800 S. Council Road – a facility designed to hold between 500 and 1,500 people at a time. The site sat less than two miles from Western Heights High School, in a district where approximately 50 percent of students are Hispanic.
Speaking to camera, Thomas said: “As your next U.S. Senator, I just want to say this – this is not the time to sit around and be complicit and complacent. It’s the time to actually get activated and get motivated in order to keep our neighbors, our friends, our family – whoever – at home and out of that system.”
Cherokee Federal – the federal contracting brand of Cherokee Nation Businesses, the corporate arm of the government whose principal chief Thomas publicly praised on June 29, 2025 – lists Immigration and Customs Enforcement as a federal client in GSA contractor profiles. A separate SAM.gov justification memo documents a Cherokee Federal subsidiary holding contracts supporting CBP Border Patrol facilities.
The Cherokee Nation tribal government passed Resolution No. 15-20 in 2020, formally calling on ICE and CBP to reform harmful practices against Indigenous migrants. The government passed that resolution. The business arm holds those contracts.
Thomas has not publicly addressed Cherokee Nation Businesses’ federal contracting relationship with ICE in available campaign statements reviewed for this report.
THE QUESTION
The UKB is not abstract.
The 76 acres near Tahlequah are not abstract. The behavioral health clinic in Goingsnake District is not abstract. The Echota administrative building is not abstract. Diamondhead Resort on the Illinois River – a tribal economic development project now owned and operated by the Keetoowah Cherokee people – is not abstract. The five new land-into-trust applications the UKB filed on April 3, 2026, covering 112 additional acres, are not abstract. The Keetoowah Cherokee families whose housing, healthcare and economic future depend on those applications are not abstract.
Indian Country is this punk’s family. His community. His obligation. The UKB member down the road waiting on housing that federal recognition was supposed to guarantee is not a policy abstraction. He is a neighbor. The elder who drove to Okmulgee to watch the Muscogee council vote and went home without allies is not a data point. She is kin.
Muscogee Nation Representative Dode Barnett said it plainly from the chamber floor on Aug. 23, 2025, before the vote: “This right now is happening to another tribe. Tomorrow, it can be Muscogee Nation.”
Barnett voted against tabling the resolution. So did Freeman, Randolph and Whitecloud.
On Sept. 11, 2025 – 19 days after that vote – Thomas said the issue was too abstract to address.
Then she made a corn husk doll and said “one band, one sound.”
Nobody from her campaign called the one band that needed to hear it.
Oklahoma has 38 federally recognized tribal governments, according to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The U.S. Senate seat Thomas is seeking carries direct jurisdiction over Indian Country appropriations, land-into-trust determinations and the federal trust responsibility to every one of those governments. That is true whether you are reading this in northeastern Oklahoma, Portland, Oregon, Portland, Maine, Puerto Rico or Guam – in a policy office or a checkout line.
The documented record – her emails, her public posts, her public praise of Hoskin, her deleted Threads thread, and the silence Victoria Holland confirmed at the 75th Annual Keetoowah Celebration – leaves one question she has not answered in any forum this punk has found:
Which sovereignty does she actually intend to defend?
Troy Littledeer is an award-winning Indigenous journalist and member of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma. A lifetime member of the Indigenous Journalists Association, he is the founder of Candy Mink Springs Media LLC and the editor of Kituwah Punk. He was present at the Muscogee (Creek) Nation National Council session on Aug. 23, 2025, and at the 75th Annual Keetoowah Celebration on Oct. 4, 2025.
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