Standing Bear grew up where the Niobrara and Missouri rivers meet. He and his Ponca tribe members fished and hunted, sang and danced, and watched and waited as American settlers laid claim to land all around them. Eventually the Ponca and Standing Bear, now chief of his clan, were forced off their land by the U.S. government. Chief Standing Bear made it his mission to return to his homeland, leading him to become the first Indigenous person to sue in a U.S. courtroom.