The remarkable story of Chief Standing Bear was recounted in a video by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts created for Native American Heritage Month.

The Ponca Tribe chief convinced a federal judge in 1879 to recognize Native Americans as persons under the law, granting them the right to sue for their freedom. Government prosecutors in Omaha had argued that Native Americans weren’t legal persons.

Senior U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Bataillon said the Ponca chief wanted to be an equal among Americans.

“Standing Bear was a man that decided to buck the system,” Bataillon said in the video. “He felt he was being treated unfairly.”

The Ponca were banished from their tribal lands in Nebraska to reservation land in Oklahoma as part of the Trail of Tears. About a third of the tribe died. After the journey to Oklahoma, Standing Bear’s son, Bear Shield, died. He asked his father on his death bed to return his body to be buried in his homeland.

The chief and a small band of men returned to Nebraska in defiance of a federal order. The U.S. Department of the Interior ordered Gen. George Crook to detain Standing Bear in Omaha.

“He recognized the plight that Standing Bear was in, and he came up – generally speaking – with this idea to have the court involved,” Bataillon said.

Two prominent Omaha attorneys, A.J. Poppleton and John Lee Webster, stepped in to represent Standing Bear for free. They filed a writ of habeas corpus with the federal court in Omaha.

Addressing the court during arguments in United States ex rel. Standing Bear v. Crook in May 1879, Standing Bear said, “This hand is not the color of yours, but if I pierce it, I shall feel pain. If you pierce your hand, you also feel pain. The blood that will flow from mine will be of the same color as yours. I am a man. The same God made us both.”

Judge Elmer Dundy wrote in his opinion that he had “never been called upon to decide a case that appealed so strongly to my sympathy,” and he concluded that Native Americans were persons under the law of the United States and have the right to contest the restraint of their liberty under the U.S. Constitution.

Journalist Joe Starita brought the case to greater public attention in his 2009 book “I Am a Man.”

“We Americans need to understand what we did to Native people,” Starita said in a video. “You cannot progress along the line that we want to as a democracy if we don’t tell the truth to ourselves about things that we did, and you cannot come to grips with the reality until you do.”

A statute of Chief Standing Bear was placed in the National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol. Standing Bear’s legacy is also displayed at the Roman L. Hruska Courthouse in Omaha.

Watch the video at bit.ly/3kPkiJV or find it at omahadailyrecord.com.

Find more on Standing Bear’s legacy from the U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska at www.ned.uscourts.gov/public/standing-bear-display.