I Am a Man: When American Indians Were Recognized as People Under U.S. Law

. This is the story I have meant to share.  You had to know the story of the Massacre of the Cheyenne first. That took place at Fort Robinson, Nebraska on January 9, 1879. This story, and these events, played out only months later, in Omaha, Nebraska, in the spring of 1879. Though I draw on […]

Massacre of the Cheyenne

. The story I mean to relate is for tomorrow. This is another story. This one needs to be told first, as Joe Starita tells it first, for context, in his I Am a Man: Chief Standing Bear’s Journey for Justice. Standing Bear’s story is of the Ponca tribe. This story is of the Cheyenne. […]

Ethnic Cleansing in the United States, Historic & Contemporary

. I tried to keep up with posting while in Nebraska last week, but then the pace of the workshop – the NEH Legacies and Landmarks of the Plains Native Americans, conceived and hosted by Central Community College – was fourteen-hours-a-day relentless, with lots of travel and a couple of times, by night, I confess, […]

Thomas Jefferson, Architect of Deception

. I head in a few days to Columbus, Nebraska for an NEH workshop on the Legacies and Landmarks of the Plains Native Americans. One of the books I’m reading in preparation is “I Am a Man”: Chief Standing Bear’s Journey for Justice, by Joe Starita. Standing Bear was a Ponca Indian chief whose efforts to return his […]