Historic Tomahawk Returned to Ponca Tribes

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS— The Associated Press reports that Harvard University has repatriated tomahawk once owned by Chief Standing Bear to members of the Ponca tribes of Nebraska and Oklahoma. Standing Bear was arrested in 1878 for leaving a reservation in Oklahoma in order to fulfill a promise and bury his son in traditional lands in Nebraska’s Niobrara River Valley. In a federal trial in 1879, Standing Bear successfully argued for the recognition of Native Americans as persons entitled to rights and protection under the law. He subsequently gave the tomahawk to one of his lawyers. The university acquired the tomahawk in 1982. “We talk about generational trauma, but we don’t talk about generational healing, and that’s what we’re doing now,” said Stacy Laravie, who is a descendant of Standing Bear and the historic preservation officer for the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska. “This is healing.” To read about efforts to compile U.S. archaeological radiocarbon dates, the first of which was obtained in 1949 in Nebraska, go to “Save the Dates.”