Harvard returning Standing Bear’s tomahawk to Ponca Tribe

This undated photo shows a tomahawk once owned by Chief Standing Bear, a pioneering Native American civil rights leader, which will be returning to his Nebraska tribe after decades in a museum at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. The university's Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology says it's been working with members of the Ponca Tribe in Nebraska and Oklahoma to repatriate the artifact. (Harvard Crimson via AP)

BOSTON (AP) — A tomahawk once owned by Chief Standing Bear, a pioneering Native American civil rights leader, is returning to his Nebraska tribe after decades in a museum at Harvard.

The university’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology says it’s been working with members of the Ponca Tribe in Nebraska and Oklahoma to repatriate the artifact.

The tribe’s chairman says the tomahawk’s anticipated return is a powerful symbol of homecoming for the tribe.

Standing Bear gave the tomahawk to one of his lawyers after winning the 1879 court case that made him one of the first Native Americans granted civil rights.