State leaders want Standing Bear on $1 coin

The resolution has been forwarded to the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee, which will hold a hearing on it later this session.

“He’s not only important to the history of Nebraska, but he’s important to the history of the country,” Avery said of Standing Bear. “The court recognized Native Americans for the first time as people, persons, in the law.”

In January 1879, Standing Bear and 30 followers left Oklahoma, where the Ponca had been forcibly moved two years earlier. They planned to return home to Nebraska to bury the chief’s son.

Two months later, Standing Bear was arrested and put on trial.

That May, after a two-day trial, a federal judge recognized Standing Bear as a human under the law and freed him, a landmark decision that secured constitutional rights for all Native people.

The Nebraska Hall of Fame includes a bust of Standing Bear. His story has been told in books and in an opera performed in Omaha last year. In 2004, his image emerged as one of five finalists to be featured on the state quarter, although two years later Gov. Dave Heineman chose Chimney Rock over Standing Bear.

Along with U.S. Rep. Jeff Fortenberry and the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs, Avery is lobbying federal officials and Native advocates who will decide whether Standing Bear will be put on the $1 coin.

The effort began after Congress approved a bill in September honoring the contributions of Native people to U.S. history. The bill calls for a different Native leader to be featured on the flip side of the Sacagawea coin each year starting in 2009.

The Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, the Congressional Native American Caucus and the National Congress of American Indians, will choose the Native leaders to be featured.

Judi Morgan gaiashkibos of the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs said she’s confident federal officials will select Standing Bear. If they do, it will provide Native advocates an opportunity to spread Standing Bear’s message.

“Through that coin passing from hand to hand and seeing Standing Bear, then we can talk about what is the significance of the trial of Standing Bear when Indian people became recognized as humans under the law,” she said. “Prior to that, we weren’t.”

Larry Wright Jr., chairman of the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska, said he was disappointed when Heineman chose Chimney Rock over Standing Bear to be featured on the state quarter.

He thanked those state leaders who’ve taken on the latest effort to honor Standing Bear.

“It’s good for our tribe to have one of our leaders honored in this manner,” he said. “It talks to the very essence of civil rights issues.”