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Ponca Tribe supports naming of high school for Chief Standing Bear
Wednesday, May 26, 2021
Indianz.Com
The descendant of a Native chief who walked nearly 550 miles from Oklahoma to his homelands in Nebraska in 1879 to bury his son said Tuesday his family would be honored if a new high school bore his ancestor’s name.
Steve Laravie Jr. is a descendant of Ponca Chief Standing Bear, who won his freedom after a landmark 1879 legal battle in which a federal judge ruled Native people were persons under the law and deserving of the same civil rights and freedoms as others.
“The things that he stood for and lived for was family … family, community, but he also spoke for the innocence of life,” Laravie said. “He was a compassionate man.”

That hand is not the color of yours, but if I pierce it, I shall feel pain. If you pierce your hand, you also feel pain. The blood that will flow from mine will be the same color as yours. I am a man. The same God made us both.
— Ponca Chief Standing Bear
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