July 2, 2025: Models of Critical Patriotism: Standing Bear

[As the author of a book on the contested history of American patriotism, every day of 2025 feels strikingly relevant. So for this year’s July 4^th series, I wanted to share & expand on excerpts from that book that feature models of critical patriotism from across our history, leading up to a weekend request for further conversations!]

On two 2025 takeaways from one of our most important and inspiring court rulings.

The book excerpt: “[Helen Hunt] Jackson experienced her own version of that shift in understanding toward justice for Native Americans, as she was brought into the cause after hearing a speech by the Ponca chief turned civil rights activist Standing Bear (Mantcunanjin; c. 1829–1908). Standing Bear’s Ponca tribe had been removed from their Nebraska homeland to “Indian Territory” (modern-day Oklahoma) in 1877, after decades of conflicts with white settlers and the U.S. army; when Standing Bear attempted to return to that homeland in order to bury his son, who had passed away from starvation in that hostile new setting, he was arrested by General George Crook for having left the reservation. With the help of Susette LaFlesche, an Omaha Native American interpreter, and her husband Thomas Tibbles, a journalist and reformer, Standing Bear sued for a writ of habeas corpus. The Standing Bear v. Crook trial (1879) represented the first time a Native American was allowed to advocate for his rights in a court of law, and Standing Bear took advantage of the opportunity, delivering a critical patriotic final speech in which he both defined himself as part of a national community and appealed directly to the judge’s commitment to American ideals: “[My] hand is not the color of yours, but if I prick it, the blood will flow, and I shall feel pain. The blood is of the same color as yours. God made me, and I am a man…I see the light of the world and of liberty just ahead…But in the center of the path there stands a man…If that man gives me the permission, I may pass on to life and liberty. If he refuses, I must go back and sink beneath the flood…You are that man.” Judge Elmer Dundy ruled in Standing Bear’s favor, establishing as precedent that Native Americans were entitled to full legal personhood and thus civil rights under the law; in his decision the judge also symbolically and crucially linked Native Americans to founding American ideals, writing that they “have the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It was a crucial victory, and one that, like Standing Bear’s voice and advocacy, would for years to come shift American conversations as well as influence activists like Jackson.”

In his 1776 pamphlet Common Sense, Tom Paine wrote that “in America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.” In this first year of the second Trump administration, we’ve seen a president and his supporters (and, perhaps worst of all, his Congressional enablers) push, far further than in any prior moment in post-Revolutionary American history, toward a genuinely and horrifyingly monarchical chief executive—which has meant and will continue to mean that one of the central means of resistance to those forces has to be precisely what Paine identified, the law. And that, in turn, means that we must depend on judges to make decisions that both follow and enforce the law and at the same time embody our ideals—not an easy combination, as of course too often our laws have fallen far short of our ideals; but still a crucial goal, and one that Judge Dundy’s 1879 ruling exemplifies as well as any judicial figure and decision ever have.

But important and inspiring as Judge Dundy was in that moment, he was nonetheless the second most important and inspiring voice at that trial (a point with which I know he would fully agree). Standing Bear’s statement, including but not limited to the above quoted section, is not just one of the most eloquent ever expressed in a courtroom; it’s also a reminder that one of the reasons our founding and Constitutional right to a trial by jury is so crucial is that it gives every American the chance to express their own voice and perspective, to advocate for themselves and their equality under the law. Which is why one of the most monarchical and horrifying policies of the 2^nd Trump administration has been the kidnapping and human trafficking of Americans without allowing them this right and opportunity—and for anyone who would respond that the right and opportunity is afforded only to citizens, I would note that Standing Bear was not a U.S. citizen, and thank Law he still got the chance to share his voice and make his case.

Next patriotic model tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Models of patriotism you’d share?