Her grandmother Marjorie Keeler was from a prominent Episcopalian Dakota family. She was the first cousin of Standing Rock Lakota historian Vine Deloria, Jr., niece of Yankton Dakota ethnologist and linguist Ella Deloria, and niece of the Rev. Vine Deloria, Sr. She was also the niece of the Rev. Charles Cook. Cook, the Yankton Dakota minister at Pine Ridge who, with fellow Dakota Dr. Charles Eastman, oversaw the welfare of Lakota survivors of the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890. Marjorie Keeler was also the great-niece of Rosebud Lakota author Susan Bordeaux Bettelyoun.