Harvard returns Standing Bear's tomahawk to Nebraska tribe

A tomahawk once owned by Chief Standing Bear, a pioneering Native American civil rights leader, has been returned to his tribe after being housed for decades in a museum at Harvard University.

Members of the Ponca tribes in Nebraska and Oklahoma visited the Massachusetts university on June 3 for the ceremonial return of the artifact, the tribes said in a recent announcement.

Standing Bear had originally gifted the pipe-tomahawk to one of his lawyers after winning the 1879 court case that made him one of the first Native Americans granted civil rights.

The tomahawk changed hands several times before being acquired by Harvard in 1982.

“This is a good homecoming and a good step in the many steps we have to do to get back to our identity, to our ways of our people,” Angie Starkel, a member of the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska who made the trip to Cambridge, said in a statement.

By Philip Marcelo

This undated photo shows a tomahawk once owned by Chief Standing Bear, a pioneering Native American civil rights leader, which will be returning to his Nebraska tribe after decades in a museum at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. (Harvard Crimson via AP)