"I Am a Man": Chief Standing Bear's Journey for Justice [Hardcover]

Joe Starita (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 20, 2009 | ISBN-10: 0312533047 | ISBN-13: 978-0312533045 | Edition: First Edition

In 1877, Chief Standing Bear’s Ponca Indian tribe was forcibly removed from their Nebraska homeland and marched to what was then known as Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), in what became the tribe’s own Trail of Tears. “I Am a Man” chronicles what happened when Standing Bear set off on a six-hundred-mile walk to return the body of his only son to their traditional burial ground. Along the way, it examines the complex relationship between the United States government and the small, peaceful tribe and the legal consequences of land swaps and broken treaties, while never losing sight of the heartbreaking journey the Ponca endured. It is a story of survival---of a people left for dead who arose from the ashes of injustice, disease, neglect, starvation, humiliation, and termination. On another level, it is a story of life and death, despair and fortitude, freedom and patriotism. A story of Christian kindness and bureaucratic evil. And it is a story of hope---of a people still among us today, painstakingly preserving a cultural identity that had sustained them for centuries before their encounter with Lewis and Clark in the fall of 1804.

Before it ends, Standing Bear’s long journey home also explores fundamental issues of citizenship, constitutional protection, cultural identity, and the nature of democracy---issues that continue to resonate loudly in twenty-first-century America. It is a story that questions whether native sovereignty, tribal-based societies, and cultural survival are compatible with American democracy. Standing Bear successfully used habeas corpus, the only liberty included in the original text of the Constitution, to gain access to a federal court and ultimately his freedom. This account aptly illuminates how the nation’s delicate system of checks and balances worked almost exactly as the Founding Fathers envisioned, a system arguably out of whack and under siege today.

Joe Starita’s well-researched and insightful account reads like historical fiction as his careful characterizations and vivid descriptions bring this piece of American history brilliantly to life.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1879, Ponca chief Standing Bear challenged decades of Indian policy when he stood in a federal courthouse in Omaha, Neb., and demanded to be recognized as a person by the U.S. government. Journalist Starita masterfully portrays the chief's story in this compelling narrative of injustices finally righted. The Ponca, relocated from their beloved Niobrara River valley to the harsh plains of Oklahoma, found unlikely allies in a Nebraska newspaper man and a lifelong Indian fighter. Thomas Henry Tibbles, an ex-preacher and editor, filed a writ of habeas corpus on Standing Bear's behalf, demanding the government show good reason why the Ponca should be deprived of their property, homeland and their very lives without due process, an unprecedented act that forced the government to grapple head-on with whether Native Americans, like the recently emancipated black slaves, were persons entitled to equal protection under the law. Gen. George Crook, an accomplished Indian fighter, supported Standing Bear and Tibbles with a harsh indictment of the very policies he had spent his career implementing. Starita transforms what could have been a dry academic survey of U.S. Indian policy into an engaging yarn, full of drama and sudden revelations. (Jan.)
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Review

 “The painful, moving, inspiring, and important story of Chief Standing Bear has found a worthy chronicler in Joe Starita. This excellent book is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the West, or of America.”--Ian Frazier, author of On the Rez and Great Plains 

“’I Am A Man,’ Joe Starita's account of Ponca Chief Standing Bear's search for justice, is a compelling story that needed to be told, and one that all Americans should read. Standing Bear's perseverance resulted in a legal shift in white America that was a far-reaching benefit for all native peoples, and Joe Starita has told the story with sensitivity and rare insight.”-- Joseph M. Marshall III, author of The Journey of Crazy Horse, The Lakota Way, and The Day the World Ended at Little Bighorn

 “What makes a man a citizen of the country in which he was born? Joe Starita vividly tells the little known story of Standing Bear, whose 1879 case in Federal Court was to the status of American Indians what the Dred Scott case was to African Americans. In Starita’s book, the story of a great man from a very small tribe becomes a microcosm for the complex nineteenth century struggle that both the American Indians and the Federal government faced in trying to define the status of native people under the law. He paints an important and compelling picture of the plight of the Ponca, a tribe impaled by misguided paternalism, while hopelessly ensnarled in the bureaucratic red tape of an indecisive and out-of-touch government. It is a story that needs to be told and a book that needs to be read by anyone trying to understand the complex story of America’s relationship with its native people.”--- Bill Yenne, author of Sitting Bull and Indian Wars

"Starita paints a powerful picture of Standing Bear, the Ponca chief who, by wanting only to bury his son’s bones in the lands of his ancestors, set in motion a series of events that resulted in all Native American peoples being given the full rights of American citizenship.  It is a portrait of a man, a portrait of a time, and an evenhanded discussion of the complex legal and moral issues that lay beneath the struggle of our nation’s first inhabitants to find justice in the land of their birth."--Kent Nerburn, author of Chief Joseph and the Flight of the Nez Perce and Neither Wolf nor Dog

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; First Edition edition (January 20, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312533047
• ISBN-13: 978-0312533045
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #451,156 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Read of Fascinating True Story, May 30, 2009

By 

ShowMeMule "SKW" (St. Louis MO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: "I Am a Man": Chief Standing Bear's Journey for Justice (Hardcover)

This book was recommended by the History Book Club. I rarely read a nonfiction from front to back, this is one of the few that I could not put down. This is an inspiring story about a Ponca chief challenging the federal government in court and the many white citizens working on his behalf. While it tells of many horrors, it is a success story for all americans regardless if aboriginal, immigrant, or native. Tells of experiences in Nebraska, Oklahoma, and travels in Chicago, New York and other cities in eastern U.S. This is history of events that took place after the american civil war.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Story Few of Us Know, September 5, 2009

By 

Lori L. Owens (Henderson, NV USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: "I Am a Man": Chief Standing Bear's Journey for Justice (Hardcover)

As a graduate from UC Davis with a minor in Native American Studies, and being of Cherokee descent, I thought I know a fair amount of Native American history. While I had heard of Chief Standing Bears court battle to be recognized as a man and a citizen of the United States, I knew only the surface of this intriguing and important event.

Joe Starita has done Chief Standing Bear and the Ponca a great service in his well-written account of a fascinating chapter of US history that has far-reaching implications for all of us of Native American descent.

Starita manages to present the facts and keep the reader's interest in what could have been--but is not--just another boring history book. Starita's book is a page turner, especially as the trial approaches and he reveals one fascinating fact after another.

I only wish this book were required reading for all students of American history. It is an eye-opener!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Lining of the Stars, November 9, 2010

By 

Larry Earksdale - See all my reviews
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This review is from: "I Am a Man": Chief Standing Bear's Journey for Justice (Paperback)

This is a wonderfully written book. The language flows with very interesting content. The story of the Ponca people and Cheif Standing Bear is a lesson in human relations that one should not let pass by ones personal library of cultural wealth. There is a lesson for all of us. The is something deeper that Joe Starita hits on in this book. How was it that General Crook came to saddle up his hourse, risk a military career, and ride to a contact to suggest that Chief Standing Bear should sue General Crook? How was it that Chief Standing Bear had the understanding to go along with a scheme as it unfolded to file the habeus corpus writ. Are the great men and women that sense something great and rise to the occassion, or do the stars somehow align due to randomness or providential guidance. In my opinion, the greatness of Starita's book is that he tells the story that evey American should know, but lets the reader go through evolutionary experience to discover deep questions about the essence of the human species. I highly recommend this book to those from the young adult to older ages.