The distinct history and heritage of the Ponca Nation is poorly documented, and the available literature is limited in scope and often supports the classification of the Ponca as a subset of numerous Native American tribes. This situation has been rectified through the work of Louis V. Headman to produce a comprehensive ethnography and ethnohistory of the Ponca people. Walks on the Ground: A Tribal History of the Ponca Nation is the product of decades of research and study by Headman, a citizen of the Ponca Nation, pastor of the Church of the Nazarene in Ponca City, Oklahoma, and director of the Ponca Nation language project.
Headman consults an impressive body of oral literature in his research with an emphasis on the lived experiences of the Ponca in Oklahoma. His primary source was his father, a respected custodian of Ponca history in the twentieth century. Headman’s teachings also include a broad repertoire of stories told by his grandparents, uncles, and aunts. Additional information was gained through his association with elders from his father’s generation, native speakers of the Ponca language who were born on the reservation in Indian Territory. Headman considers this group the last of the Ponca storytellers. An additional source accessed in the study are the musical traditions of the Ponca Nation. The Ponca have a proud legacy of documenting important events and individual achievements in songs, and have established a considerable reputation as musicians and composers of songs in multiple genres. Headman’s activity as a singer brought him into close relations with Ponca elders who knew hundreds of songs and were knowledgeable of their interpretation and contexts.
Headman achieves a balanced synthesis of these diverse voices to produce an ethnohistory and ethnography anchored in the oral tradition of the Ponca Nation. He documents the early history of the Ponca from their origin in an unspecified homeland to the east, and traces their gradual movement over centuries to the central Plains. There they settled into villages in the region between the Niobrara and Elkhorn Rivers in northeastern Nebraska. They developed a sophisticated subsistence strategy that included gathering, horticulture, agriculture, fishing, and hunting. The book addresses the painful effects of colonialism on the Ponca, characterized by cycles of population loss, resource dispossession, and forced assimilation. This culminated in 1877 with the forced removal of the Ponca people from their Niobrara homeland to a reservation in north-central Indian Territory, modern-day Oklahoma.
Chief Standing Bear resisted relocation to Indian Territory and led the members of his residence band back to their homeland in Nebraska. The plight of his people resulted in a legal appeal in 1879 that validated the return of Standing Bear to Nebraska and secured a landmark civil-rights case for Native Americans. Most of the Ponca people remained in Indian Territory and relied on traditional environmental knowledge and community cooperation to survive. The book excels in its consideration of the recent history and contemporary ethnography of the Ponca Nation in Oklahoma. Prominent are fresh assessments of spirituality, language reclamation, music, material culture, and tribal governance in the twentieth century.
This book is a significant contribution to Native American ethnography and transcends the genre in its approach and style. Most significant is the expansive oral history that provides the foundation of the book. Headman does a masterful job of mediating conflicting narratives and reconciling the inevitable disjuncture between oral history and lived experiences. Walks on the Ground: A Tribal History of the Ponca Nation provides an inventive model for collaborative ethnography that will be of service to fellow scholars in academic and community settings. Readers from a range of academic disciplines and general audiences interested in the history and heritage of Native North America will benefit from this book.
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[Review length: 618 words • Review posted on Dec 2, 2021]