Standing Bear Park & Museum

The Ponca did not come to Indian Territory by choice. In 1877 the government moved them south from Nebraska without the chiefs' consent, and by some estimates nearly 158 people, almost a third of the tribe, died in the first years. Standing Bear's return north and his 1879 trial split the tribe. The southern Ponca, under White Eagle, settled on a 101,000-acre reservation where the Salt Fork meets the Arkansas, and the Ponca Nation's headquarters are still at White Eagle.

The park began with a quarrel. In 1993 a monument unveiled downtown exposed a long unease between Ponca City and its Native neighbors, and the banker Carl Renfro and Genevieve Pollak, then chair of the Ponca tribe, set out to mend it. The committee they formed drew in the Kaw, Osage, Otoe-Missouria, Pawnee, Ponca and Tonkawa, and they chose Standing Bear to stand for all of them. Oreland C. Joe, a Diné and Ute sculptor and the first Native member of the Cowboy Artists of America, was picked from more than fifty applicants. His statue was unveiled in 1996, its right hand raised to the east over the Arkansas valley.

At its feet a sunken court is laid out in eight sections, each named for one of the original Ponca clans. Limestone boulders around it carry the six nations' seals. The 2007 museum has a case for each nation. The six nations host a powwow here each September. In August 2025 the park became the starting point of the Oklahoma Civil Rights Trail.