A lawyer in Tulsa is fighting for the return of a heirloom tomahawk that he says was unjustly given away to a museum over a hundred years ago.
“This is a morality and justice issue,” Brett Chapman told The Guardian.
Chapman can trace his family history back to Chief White Eagle and Chief Standing Bear of the Ponca Tribe. The story of the tomahawk starts in 1878.
Standing Bear and the Ponca Tribe were among the thousands of Native Americans who were forced out of their ancestral lands as part of the Trail of Tears.
The tribe was living in a reservation in Oklahoma when Standing Bear's only son died. His last wish to was to be buried in the place where he was born, which is now Nebraska.
Standing Bear and the Ponca Tribe defied orders forcing them to stay on the reservation and were arrested by the U.S. cavalry. The arrest led Standing Bear to successfully sue the government in a landmark case that recognized Native Americans as people and entitled to civil rights and other protections.
As a thank you to the two American lawyers who took the case, Standing Bear gave them a family tomahawk. Somehow the tomahawk ended up at the Harvard Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology where it is now on display.
Now Chapman is asking Harvard to return the tomahawk to the Ponca Tribe. He recognizes that it was given as gift but says returning it would right a historic wrong.
“If it weren’t for this injustice of them being forcibly removed illegally, which the government recognized, (Standing Bear) wouldn’t have needed a white lawyer. He wouldn’t have needed to give this to them. It would still be in the family," he told KFOR.
The museum's director responded to Chapman's return request by saying she is open to a "dialogue" and "collaboration with Ponca people."
Photo: Getty Images/Library of Congress