I Am a Man by Joe Starita documents the riveting story of how poorly the Ponca, Chief Standing Bear’s tribe, was treated by the US government. Many treaties were broken. Their land and homes and much of their farming equipment was stolen and given to the Lakota tribe. They were sent on a forced march for hundreds of miles where many died. In Oklahoma, they were squatters on land owned by others and they had no homes or farming equipment. Their clothes were tattered. They were starving. They were dying of disease. Linny had not heard of Chief Standing Bear prior to reading Joe Starita’s I Am A Man. She loved reading about this courageous Native American. Nancy described that, living in Nebraska, she was familiar with Chief Standing Bear and that Lincoln’s newest high school is named for him, that Nebraska’s new statue in the US Capitol’s Statuary Hall is of him, and that she has recently attended an opera based on his life. This is a story about how one man honored his son’s dying wish and established in US jurisprudence that Native Americans are humans. Addressing the court, the first Native American ever to testify in a US court room said, hand outstretched: “That hand is not the color of yours, but if I pierce it, I shall feel pain. If you pierce your hand, you also feel pain. The blood that will flow from mine will be of the same color as yours. I am a man. The same God made us both.” Nancy learned, through this book, that many East Coast tribes were forcibly moved to the Great Plains. She looked up the tribe that lived in Linny’s area and found it was the Susquehannock tribe, part of the powerful Algonquin Nation. Eventually the Susquehannock people moved west, were killed by settlers, and the remaining 22 were murdered in 1763. Linny was very impressed by Chief Standing Bear and his tribe, the Ponca. She was amazed at how articulate he was and how he handled himself so well in all sorts of settings. The book was hard for her to read sometimes given the deplorable treatment they received at the hands of the US government. Nancy said her overall feeling was one of shame and sadness at the wrongs done to the Ponca. She said as she was reading Chief Standing Bear’s story, she thought about how badly she would feel if she lived on their homeland now. But then she realized, her home is probably on Native American land stolen through some broken treaty or another. She said realizing this has given her a new appreciation for Land Acknowledgements. She read the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s and then one that opens the City of Lincoln Comprehensive Plan. Nancy shared the URL for a map that shows Indigenous People lived: https://native-land.ca/ After talking about Standing Bear’s journeys and the significance of his court case, Linny and Nancy talk about the first Ponca who dies on the march from their Niobrara homeland to Oklahoma. It was infant White Buffalo Girl. The town, Neligh, Nebraska, still keeps flowers on her grave, as Joe Starita writes: “For more than 125 years, the citizens of Neligh and surrounding communities have kept fresh flowers on the grave…No one really knows where they come from, only that they are always there, week after week, month after month, year after year.” Linny cries. Linny and Nancy disparage the lying, cheating US Indian Inspector Kemble. They liked the evolution of Brigadier General George Crook who became a good friend to the Ponca, after having been responsible for their removal from their homelands. Linny and Nancy discuss Big Snake, Chief Standing Bear’s brother, who was murdered by the US Army as he was imprisoned for no reason. When he refused to leave his chair, surrounded by 29 military men, he was murdered. Linny and Nancy talk about their stay at Fort Robinson where Crazy Horse was bayonetted, also as he was unarmed.