Standing Bear deserves place on $1 coin

For an idea of how the coin could look, look at the elegant, uncluttered design created by the U.S. Mint as one of the four finalists for Nebraska’s state quarter.

The opportunity for Standing Bear’s likeness to appear on the $1 coin arose last September when Congress approved legislation calling for a different Native leader to be featured on the coin starting in 2009.

Standing Bear’s impact on history was truly national in scope. In 1879, he won a federal court declaration that Natives are human beings. Unthinkable as it might seem, that ruling after a trial in Omaha was the first time Natives were recognized as people in the law.

Standing Bear was arrested when he returned to Nebraska to honor his dying son’s wish to be buried along the Niobrara River in the tribe’s ancestral homeland. Two years previously, the Ponca tribe had been forced to move to a reservation in Oklahoma.

As we wrote in an editorial in 2001: It was illegal for Standing Bear to speak in court, but he insisted that “No man can talk for another as well as he can for himself.”

He was allowed to speak after court was adjourned. His words were not officially part of the courtroom testimony, but his eloquence shines brightly in history.

Holding out his hand to Judge Elmer Dundy, Standing Bear said, “That hand is not the color of yours, but if I pierce it, I shall 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.”

A week later, Dundy handed down his decision. “I conclude … an Indian is a person within the meaning of the laws of the United States.”

For the first time in U.S. history, Natives were legally declared to have the right to travel where they wished and live where they pleased.

As Fortenberry noted, the timing is right for a decision by the coin design selection committee to put Standing Bear’s likeness on the coin. This year is the 100th anniversary of Standing Bear’s death.