Ponca Chief Standing Bear is one of America’s greatest civil rights leaders, whose extraordinary courage righted a great injustice in our legal system and nation.

In 1878, he was arrested and detained while honoring his son’s deathbed wishes to be buried in the ancestral Ponca homeland, after a federal treaty forced the Ponca tribe to move to an unfamiliar and uninhabitable land. He filed a writ of habeas corpus and became the first Native American to be recognized as a person in federal court. Chief Standing Bear’s dignity and eloquence during his historic court battle resulted in the recognition of all Native Americans as ‘persons within the meaning of the law,’ entitled to civil rights, for the first time in our nation’s history.

The statue will represent the State of Nebraska, where Chief Standing Bear won his groundbreaking civil rights victory and where he returned to honor his son’s deathbed wishes. He replaces a statue of William Jennings Bryan, a former Omaha World-Herald editor and Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson. Chief Standing Bear will join Julius Sterling Morton, an agriculturist and founder of Arbor Day, until Mr. Morton is replaced by Willa Cather in the near future.

Photo courtesy Benjamin J. Harris