A visit with the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska

On a bluff overlooking the Yellowstone River near Miles City, MT, Brye Lefler interviews former Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail superintendent Gerard Baker. The recording will serve as an introduction to the Tent of Many Voices video project to be released in 2025. NPS photo

About this article: This article was originally published in the Lewis & Clark Trail Annual Report 2024.

Trail Tribal Partnerships Specialist / Cultural Anthropologist Brye Lefler (left) and Culture Director for the Ponca Tribe Ricky Wright Jr. (right) meet at Ponca Community Grounds near Niobrara, Nebraska. NPS photo

A visit with the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska

This May, Brye Lefler, Trail Tribal Partnerships Specialist/Cultural Anthropologist, travelled to the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska’s Ponca Community Grounds, near Niobrara, Nebraska. There, he met with several Tribal staff who generously provided a tour with highlights including the Tribal bison herd, interpretive Education Trail, and a bronze sculpture by Benjamin Victor of Chief Standing Bear, a significant civil rights figure in Ponca and U.S. History. Another casting of the statue is on permanent display inside the National Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol as one of two statues selected by the state of Nebraska.

Lefler met with Ricky Wright, Jr., Culture Director for the Tribe to discuss areas for future collaboration, including the panoramic mapping of key Ponca Community Grounds locations by Terrain360, a trail partner currently engaged in mapping areas along the entire Trail. Other areas of mutual interest include resource protection, interpretation and education, and language revitalization. Beginning in Fiscal Year 2025, the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska and Lewis and Clark Trail will begin collaborating on Indigenous place names research.

Part of a series of articles titled
Lewis and Clark Trail 2024 Annual Report.

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Proactive Protection of Natural Resources on the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail

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Native Speaker Series: Our Voices Remain

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