Native American lawyer calls on Harvard to return ancestral relic
Ponca chief Standing Bear’s tomahawk is currently at Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology
A descendant of a Native American chief and civil rights leader urges Harvard University to repatriate an ancestral heirloom. Ponca chief Standing Bear’s tomahawk – a single-handed axe, is currently displayed at Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.
“This is a morality and justice issue,” Brett Chapman, an attorney in Oklahoma with Ponca, Pawnee and Kiowa heritage, says. Chapman’s maternal great-great-great-grandfather, Chief White Eagle, and Standing Bear shared a common grandparent.
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