Week 22: I Am A Man: Chief Standing Bear’s Journey for Justice by Joe Starita (St. Martin’s Press, 2008, hardcover)
This is the first of four books I am reading for a National Endowment for the Humanities workshop on the Plains Indians. This book, a non-fiction narrative, follows the travails of Standing Bear, a Ponca Indian in the late 1800s trying to survive, along with his tribe, as they are forced onto reservation land by the American government. The book focuses on his travels to and from the “Indian Territory” of modern-day Oklahoma and his eventual legal battle to gain independence through a legal declaration that he and all American Indians are human and therefore deserve humane treatment.
To get us to that legal battle, Starita shows us how the intersection with the growing European-American population and the Ponca. Through legal (treaties) and non-legal (physical and cultural coercion and corruption) the Ponca, like other Plains Indians, are forced to move from their tradition hunting and agricultural lands to reservations. Starita describes this tragic history effectively, giving us a clear picture of how the Ponca struggled to survive in their changing world.
It is against this historical backdrop that Starita sets the heart of this story-a legal battle with Standing Bear fighting for the right to return to his tribe’s homeland to bury his son. Starita effectively setups up the legal context and the unique individuals involved in this fairly unknown civil rights issue. The strength of his writing is that he makes this story of real people, taking real risks for a necessary cause. Starita shows us clearly that history is not an abstract event, but is moved and shaped by people who are willing to fight for their beliefs.
I highly recommend this novel. It gives us a thoroughly engaging window into an overlooked historical event and brings to life those who experienced it.
Next week . . . An Unspeakable Sadness: The Dispossession of the Nebraska Indians by David Wishart.