Reported by Bill Kelly, STATEWIDE Correspondent

It was a small encampment, rising just above the flatlands of the Niobrara River, shimmering in the August heat. This event marked the beginning of a three day Pow Wow celebrating the return of an Indian tribe once left for dead.
   The Ponca tribe lost it's land along the Missouri River when a misworded treaty gave it away to the Sioux Indians. In 1877, hundreds of Ponca died on a forced exodus to a reservation in Oklahoma.
   When Chief Standing Bear tried to return, hoping to bury his dead son on tribal land, he was arrested by the U.S. government. The trial of Standing Bear marked the first time an American court recognized Indians as human beings. But the Ponca's land would never be returned. By 1962, the United States government voted the Nebraska based Poncas out of existence. For thirty years they have been a people without an identity.
   [Ronnie Picotte:] "They would ask, what kind of Indian are you? And I would say, 'I'm a Ponca.' A lot of people wouldn't even know or heard of the Ponca."
   [Bill Kelly:] "Did that hurt?"
   [Ronnie:] "Yeah, it did. It hurt, yeah it did."
   Ronnie Picotte, great grandson of Standing Bear, was a young man when his tribe dissolved. It took a long time to recognize the importance of his tribal identity.
   [Ronnie:] "I've always had a tribe, in my mind and in my heart, okay?"
   After three decades of fighting and pleading the Ponca finally convinced the United States government they deserved to be re-established as a tribe. But the Congress, and Nebraska's Congressman Doug Bereuter in particular, made sure the Ponca's would never have their own reservation land.
   [Congressman Doug Bereuter:] "[I support the effort] to give them an opportunity to have a land base which they can purchase for ceremonial purposes, industrial purposes, even for agricultural purposes, but not for residential purposes."
   [Ronnie Picotte:] "Our lands have been here all the time, and I think we're entitled to it. It's ours. It should be a reservation."
   The Poncas do own land, 160 Acres. The original Agency building still stands here. The business of the tribe is handled out of it's small office in Niobrara. There are satellite offices in Omaha, Lincoln, and Norfolk ... a sign of the tribe's far-flung membership.
   The most intriguing business for the Poncas has been rediscovering its history. Land records and family histories fill cardboard boxes.
   [Tribal Official looking through boxes of records:] "Well, most of the Ponca Tribe is kind of related one way or another. Two or three clans mixed together."
   Paperwork that had been buried in a bureaucrats file cabinets and in museums are now precious pieces of history to be preserved.
   "See, here's my relation here. Otto Knutson. My grandfather's brother."
   But the most important part of the Ponca legacy isn't on paper. It's in the language, the dance, the songs, and the spiritual beliefs they represent.

For the first time, this Pow Wow reunited the newly reformed Northern Ponca with the Oklahoma-based Southern Poncas. They have been the caretakers of the customs and culture.
   [Announcer at the Pow Wow:] "Ladies & gentlemen, this is the first Grand Entry of the first annual Northern Ponca Pow Wow. It's going to get bigger and larger and more beautiful in the years to come."
   The Southern Ponca drum team and dancers came to perform and perhaps teach.
    [Louis Headman:] "We've sung several songs since we've been here about this place. We looked at some places up north of here where there were some interesting battles that took place and we have songs about them, about those areas."
   Louis Headman lead the delegation from Oklahoma that will help the Northern Ponca relearn their tribal traditions.
    [Headman:] "I would simply have to say its in the language and its in our singing and probably in our dances. If they can learn at least a portion of this, I think they will be well on the way to getting their culture back to what it used to be."
   Watching in the bleachers was Judi Morgan of Lincoln. She had never been to a Ponca Pow Wow, even though her grandfather was the last chief of the Northern tribe.
   [Judi Morgan:] "For me it's very special, and I think he would never believe what's going on today ... or my mother for that matter. And so it's very spiritually moving and special to me to carry on for my grandfather."
   Many do not speak the language, and never learned the dances. Tonight, there were Poncas who entered the dance circle for the very first time.
   [Headman:] "If you've been away from home for awhile, you want to go home.
   [Kelly:] "And this is home?"
   [Headman:] "I think it is. Yeah."
   William Leroy is four years old and already fascinated by his Indian heritage.
   [William's mother dressing him in feathers:] "Should we get this one on?"
   [William:] "Yeah!"
   His father is Ponca.
   [Willis Leroy:] "See, we all forgot. We've all been living in the city. Our children, everybody. So we have to teach ourselves our culture. Our dances, our feathers, how to build them."
   [William:] "I'm a Ponca Indian."
   [William's mother:] "You're a Ponca Indian, that's right."
   Yet, it may take more than a simple declaration of identity to determine who is and who is not Ponca. With all the good feelings of the weekend, there were still deep divisions among the Ponca about the type of tribe this should become.
   There may be no such thing as a pure-blood Ponca anymore. So who should be considered a true member of this tribe? At what point does blood become too thin?
   The acting tribal chair would like to see some minimum standards ... a set quantity of ancestral blood ... as a requirement for membership.
   [Deborah Wright:] "I would like to see a blood quantum. Maybe a teeny-weeny one, but I would like to see one. I think we need to have one."
   Brothers Aljo and Ronnie Picotte want an even stricter requirement: up to 25 percent of proven Ponca blood.
   [Aljo Picotte:] "Ten, twenty years down the line we won't be a tribe of Native Americans. We'll be mostly Caucasian. Then the government is going to say, well, were going to have to terminate you because you aren't Indian."
   But others argue that the tribe should be more inclusive.
   [Laura Dahl, looking at her family tree:] "These are my great-grandparents here. Dancing Sun, Little Dog, and this woman here. And these are descendants of Old Man Buffalo Chip. Napoleon Larabie. His grave site is right up the hill."
   Like many of Ponca lineage, Laura Dahl married white. She lives in West Des Moines, Iowa, and returned to Ponca to be part of something that held great meaning to her.
   [Laura Dahl:] "That's what coming home means, it's real emotional. You know you're back, and this is home."
   Judi Morgan welcomed those rediscovering their ancestry.
   [Judi Morgan:] "I don't think you ever loose it. It just has to be rekindled, stirred up to get that feeling in your heart. Yet we need to be inclusive of all other people for economic development and other things and I think we need to work with everyone. And we can't be bitter, we need to work with everyone and we can't be bitter and we have to get beyond that ... the bitterness and anger."
   There is no more difficult issue than the prospect of resettling a Ponca reservation. The law won't allow a full reservation, but the tribe can buy another 15 hundred acres and put it in trust. Nonetheless, if this makes up a rightful tribal homeland, some argue there should be a permanent, independently governed reservation.
   [Willis Leroy:] "I was the chairman of the housing authority and I sent out a questionnaire, a survey, to all the Poncas in the United States. Fifty Five percent said they'd come back here to.
   [Bill Kelly:] "Come back here to live.."
   [Willis:] "Yes. Right here. If we had a place to go. Housing. A job."
Aljo's daughter Desiree seemed to embody the conflict between the need tradition and desire for success.
   [Bill Kelly:] "If there was a Ponca reservation, would you live here?"
   [Desiree Picotte:] "Probably for awhile. I think it'd be pretty neat."
   [Kelly:] "Would you have to have to leave to pursue the kind of career you want pursue though?"
   [Desiree:] "Yeah, I'd probably leave long enough to get a good job, and then get enough money to do what I want, then come back here."
   [Judi Morgan:] "A lot of our people, well, all of our people are basically urban Indians, and because we have our offices at these different sites, we are at an advantage because the resources are available to us that wouldn't be to a reservation tribe. So personally to me I don't see that it would be moving forward to move everyone back to a reservation."
   The issues of land, and blood lines, and governance will all come to a head soon when the tribe elects its first tribal council in thirty years.

This night of ceremony was an important symbol for a tribe divided, now reunited on the very land they were driven from.
   When Louis Headman shared a prayer in the Ponca language, many didn't understand the words, but most understood the meaning.

[To download a 2.4 Meg movie of Louis Headman's prayer, Click Here.]
   Then the flames from two separate campfires ... one lit by the southern tribe, the other by the northern tribe ... were joined in the center of the dance circle. And that night, for the first time in thirty years, the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska ... once again a tribe in every sense of the word ... danced to songs written by ancestors so many years ago.
For STATEWIDE, I'm Bill Kelly.