Ponca Tribal Museum

The Ponca Museum and Library houses artifacts, historical archives, a Tribal Library, and a Community Learning Center, and Culture Department offices.  The Museum houses both contemporary and archival photographs. Tribal members and their families have donated numerous pictures. In 1999, the Ponca Tribe repatriated several items from the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. Now on display are two headdresses, tools, beadwork, jewelry, musical instruments, and various carvings.

The Ponca Tribe of Nebraska has been reintroducing the bison to the native homelands since the Tribe was restored in 1990. With assistance from the Intertribal Bison Cooperative (ITBC), the Ponca Tribe now has a herd of more than 300 animals on almost 1500 acres of pasture land. The buffalo that roam the grassy fields west of the Old Ponca Agency appear to be as content as the Ponca ancestors who lie in the Ponca Cemetery overlooking those same grassy fields. The presence of the buffalo brings a calm to the Old Agency and to the people who visit. They remind all Poncas of days long ago when our ancestors sang and danced in the same land.