Standing Bear, a Ponca Native American chief, is best known for successfully arguing in U.S. District Court in 1879 that Native Americans are persons within the meaning of the law who have the right of habeas corpus.When playwright Christopher Cartmill returned to his hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska, to write a play about Chief Standing Bear, he unknowingly began a complicated adventure. As he followed the story of the Ponca chief who fought so hard to return from a reservation in Oklahoma to his homeland in northern Nebraska, Cartmill stumbled into the politics of identity, contested notions...