Harvard returns Standing Bear’s tomahawk to Nebraska 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) — Harvard has returned a tomahawk once owned by a pioneering Native American civil rights leader to his tribe.

Members of the Ponca tribes in Nebraska and Oklahoma visited the Massachusetts university this month for a ceremony returning the pipe-tomahawk owned by Chief Standing Bear.

The university’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology has been working with the tribe for the past year to repatriate the artifact.

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.