When she was able to hold a tomahawk that once belonged to Standing Bear, Stacy Laravie said, it felt like a moment of generational healing.
Laravie, a descendant of the famed Ponca chief and civil rights icon, was one of the Nebraska tribe’s representatives who traveled to the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University for the tomahawk’s repatriation ceremony June 3.
“Being able to hold the tomahawk, I was like, ‘Wow, my great-great-great-grandfather touched this,’ †Laravie said. “It felt like a relative was coming home.â€
Standing Bear had gifted the pipe-tomahawk to his attorney, John Lee Webster, following Webster’s work in the 1879 Standing Bear v. Crook case that helped cement human rights for Native Americans.
After Webster’s death, the item was purchased by a private collector. It changed hands a few times before being acquired by the Peabody Museum in 1982, according to a press release from the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska.
Once it was brought to the tribe’s attention that the item was in the museum, efforts began to return the artifact to the Ponca people. The Nebraska Legislature passed a resolution in May 2021 encouraging the Peabody Museum to fulfill commitments to repatriate native artifacts.
The Peabody Museum officially removed the tomahawk from its collection in 2021, but tribal leaders weren’t able to make the trip to Massachusetts until earlier this month because of pandemic-related travel restrictions.
On June 3, representatives of the Nebraska tribe joined museum staff and representatives of the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma for what Laravie described as an emotional ceremony.
Laravie said she is glad that the historical item is now back on Ponca land and in the hands of those who know and appreciate its history.
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“Even though the tomahawk was gifted out … it was always meant to remain in a family, not a museum,†she said.
The museum’s director, Jane Pickering, apologized for the museum’s past acquisition policies during the ceremony, according to a press release from the Ponca Tribe.
“The Peabody directly benefited from collecting practices that we acknowledge today ignored the wishes and values of families and communities,†Pickering said.
The return of Standing Bear’s tomahawk is representative of a larger movement to return historical and ceremonial objects to their respective tribes. It also comes amid a new federal push to understand the scope of boarding schools that once existed across the country with the goal of assimilating Native American children. Those efforts include attempts to document and locate the remains of indigenous children who died at facilities like the Genoa Indian Industrial School in Nebraska.
“These are all things that need to be brought home,†Laravie said.
The Ponca Tribe of Nebraska will announce plans to display the tomahawk at a later date, according to the release.
Members of the Ponca Tribes of Nebraska and Oklahoma attend a repatriation ceremony at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University on June 3. A tomahawk that once belonged to Standing Bear and was acquired by the museum has been returned to the tribes.