Monsheeda (Dust Maker), and his wife Mehunga (Standing Buffalo), of the Indigenous Ponca tribe, posed together in their wedding photo

Indifferent by Julie Buffalohead. 2016. Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma. Raised in Minnesota.

The transfer was celebrated by members of the Ponca Tribe as well as environmental advocates who oppose the construction of the pipeline and continue to demand a total transition to renewable energy.

"We want to protect this land," Larry Wright Jr., the chairman of the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska, told the World-Herald. "We don't want to see a pipeline go through."

"While TransCanada is trampling on Indigenous rights to fatten their bottom line, Native leaders are resisting by building renewable energy solutions like solar panels in the path of the pipeline," said 350.org executive director May Boeve.

"Repatriating this land to the Ponca Tribe raises new challenges for the Keystone XL pipeline and respects the leadership of Native nations in the fight against the fossil fuel industry," she added. "Tribal sovereignty is central to the movement to keep fossil fuels in the ground and build a more just society for all."

“Paxton ... asks permission for certain Ponca Indians to travel with him for one year, and whom he proposes to exhibit, and to lecture upon the Indian character, and solicit funds to assist missionaries … this request … cannot be granted”, 11/17/1871.

Series: General Correspondence, 1862 - 1872

Record Group 75: Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, 1793 - 1999

Transcription:

Nebraska Omaha Tribe Working To Save Endangered Language, Culture

Letter detailing plans for a new manual labor school on the Ponca reservation (page 3), 9/19/ 1870.

“At the proper time, ten acres or more of grounds is to be cultivated by the children, under the direction of the teacher, for their partial subsistence; the products to be principally garden vegetables.”

Series: General Correspondence, 1862 - 1872

Record Group 75: Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, 1793 - 1999

Transcription:

Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:

Ponca City takes its name from the Ponca Tribe, a Native American tribe that lives nearby. For more than a century, the region, in north central Oklahoma, has been ravaged by the environmental degradation associated with oil and gas development.

From abandoned oil and gas wells to refineries, tank farms and hydraulic fracturing, the pollution and destruction—including damage from thousands of man-made earthquakes—have exacted a heavy toll on the region’s air, land, water and people.

In many ways, Ponca City and its 24,000, predominantly white inhabitants are well off. Its schools, library, sports centers, parks and concert hall would be the envy of most small towns in America.

But interviews with local residents, historical records, legal depositions and internal government reports tell of a sacrifice zone, where oil rights were first taken from the Ponca Tribe and then exploited by the oil and gas industry with little thought given to environmental protection.

The resulting development has left homes enveloped in toxic fumes, black slime oozing from basements, emissions of fine particulate matter that can damage the heart and lungs and walls cracked from earthquakes induced by injecting wastewater from hydraulic fracking deep underground. In one case, the fumes were so overpowering a family was forced to leave their home for several years.

Groundwater contamination from what is now the Phillips 66 refinery led to one of the largest environmental settlements in U.S. history, with the company buying and razing an entire neighborhood in the early 1990s.