Standing inside the kitchen of her Lincoln home, making a cup of hot tea one quiet night, Judi gaiashkibos looks out the window into the darkness, realizing how far she has come from her childhood in Norfolk, a descendant of Ponca tribal leaders. Her grandfather Otto Boldwein Knudsen was the last chief of the Northern Ponca, who originally lived in northeast Nebraska, along the Missouri River, where Niobrara now stands.

Life wasn’t easy for the Knudsen clan. The family lived in a small, three-room house. A backyard outhouse presented challenges throughout the year. During summer months, they never knew if a wild animal took refuge in it. They also had to deal with weather conditions and freezing temperatures that arrive each Nebraska winter.

“When I was young, growing up in a family of 10 kids, we were so poor,” said gaiashkibos, who is Ponca and Santee Dakota. “I slept on a roll-away with my grandmother.”

gaiashkibos, pronounced gosh-key-bosh, doesn’t capitalize her last name, “a sign of humility for the two-legged, who are not superior to the winged and four-legged.”

gaiashkibos has taken her past and turned it into a positive in working to address issues confronting Nebraska’s four tribes, as well as the historical nations that called the state home, in almost 30 years as the executive director of the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs. The commission seeks to eliminate barriers preventing equitable treatment of Native Americans across the state when it comes to housing, employment, education, economic development and human/civil rights.

“Part of my job is to make us visible,” said gaiashkibos.

Besides dealing with the prejudice and racist nicknames Native Americans have long endured, gaiashkibos grew up in a tribe that didn’t officially exist. As part of a federal effort to force Indigenous assimilation, Congress passed the Termination Act in 1945. Less than 25 years after approving legislation making Native Americans citizens of the United States, the federal government decided to cease recognizing certain tribes. The Ponca was among 109 tribes designated for termination. Ponca’s termination began in 1962, and by 1966, nearly 450 tribal members were wiped from the enrollment rolls.

“When you’re terminated, nobody knows anything at all about your tribe,” gaiashkibos said.

Despite growing up poor and in a tribe that no longer existed in the eyes of the public, gaiashkibos recalls traditional ways continuing with her family. Helping her grandfather dry corn each summer, her job was to shoo away the flies.

Katie Brossy, gaiashkibos’ eldest daughter, remembers well the day the Ponca became a tribe again. With Nebraska Sens. J. James Exon and Bob Kerrey leading the way, Congress voted to restore federal recognition. While Brossy, an attorney in Washington, D.C., who specializes in Native American law and issues, remembers the celebration, as her mother recalls the challenges the Ponca went through before President George H.W. Bush’s signature restored the tribe to federal status.

Achieving federal status was a long battle fought by Fred LeRoy, who served as the Ponca’s chairman after the tribe was reorganized. He had previously campaigned for state and federal support to unite the tribe and make it whole. The Vietnam veteran, a former Marine, took on the battle to put the tribe back together. LeRoy, so revered that the Ponca health clinic is named in his honor as well as the annual April powwow at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, died in 2012 at age 63.

While the federal legislation didn’t restore reservation land, the Ponca bought traditional land, stretching from its headquarters in Niobrara across eastern Nebraska as well as counties in South Dakota and Iowa, that is now in trust status.

Today, the Ponca own and operate a 70,000-square-foot casino in Carter Lake, Iowa. At 10,000 square feet when it opened in 2018, Prairie Flower Casino initially employed 100 people. With a 60,000-square-foot expansion in 2022, the multi-million dollar casino added 200 new jobs. Over its first five years, the casino attracted more than 800,000 visitors. The revenue has been used to help fund tribal programs.

“Who would have ever thought the Ponca tribe would be where we are at today? We’ve come a long way,” gaiashkibos said. “Prairie Flower is doing way better than we could have imagined.”

While gaiashkibos embraces the recent success of the Ponca, her attention quickly changes to an ongoing effort to right the wrongs of government boarding schools.

A Queensland blue heeler and German Shepherd roam a grassy patch of land near the former Genoa U.S. Indian Industrial School, searching for signs of a long ago cemetery, used to bury the remains of almost 100 Native American children who died while attending the boarding school.

As the search, which later involved ground-penetrating radar, indicated the possibility of bodies in the area, gaiashkibos personally felt a tug at her heart. Not only does she mourn the loss of ancestors, but she also recalls the story of her own mother being a student at the school, about 30 minutes west of Columbus.

“People have no idea about Indian boarding schools,” gaiashkibos said. “And once they learn about boarding schools, they’re either going to help us heal, or they’re going to be complicit in trying to bury that history. Those children need to have their names called out.”

Long before termination and the eventual restoration of the Ponca, the tribe’s children were among those from 40 other tribes across the western United States to be forcibly removed from their homes and sent to the Genoa U.S. Indian Industrial School. For 50 years, from 1884 to 1934, about 4,300 Native American children and young adults lived there, attending school, learning trades.

Forced to cut their hair, wear Euro-American clothing and punished for speaking their traditional language, boarding schools created trauma that has transcended generations, with some still feeling it today.

Eleanor Knudsen, gaiashkibos’ mother, was among the children sent to Genoa. She rarely spoke of her experiences at the school, and when she did, there was always a tinge of sadness. She believes her mother’s experiences at the Genoa school reinforced non-Indian perceptions of Native Americans.

“She always told us to have our hair done and to wear nice shoes,” gaiashkibos said. “She said white people would judge us by that.”

The generational view continued with gaiashkibos’ attitude toward her own daughters, Brossy said. Even though the family didn’t have a lot of money growing up, gaiashkibos always made sure everyone looked nice.

“As Native people, we already come with certain stereotypes built in,” Brossy said, “so we almost always have to go the extra mile to show that we’re not a stereotype.”

gaiashkibos co-chairs the council overseeing Genoa’s Digital Reconciliation Project, which provides a space to tell the stories of the children who attended the school, their communities, as well as their descendants. The ongoing project is a corroboration of the Genoa school, University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the state’s Indigenous nations.

Standing before a group of a few hundred people at Lincoln’s Lied Center, Brossy introduced actor Wes Studi as the first recipient of the Chief Standing Bear Prize for Courage, given by the Chief Standing Bear Project. The event capped Nebraska’s second observance of Indigenous Peoples Day in October.

Studi, an actor and activist, started his acting career in Nebraska, appearing in PBS’ The Trial of Standing Bear in 1988. Studi protested injustices against Native Americans during the 1970s as part of the American Indian Movement and has continued addressing issues.

Recognizing Indigenous Peoples Day was a joint effort led by gaiashkibos and Nebraska state Sens. Patty Pansing Brooks and Tom Brewer, an enrolled citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation. The initial Indigenous Peoples Day celebration took place along Lincoln’s Capitol Mall, near the statue of Ponca Chief Standing Bear, a legend among all Native American nations. A statue of Dr. Susan LaFlesche Picotte, an Umo Hon (Omaha) citizen and the first Native American doctor, joined Standing Bear a year later.

Standing Bear won the first civil rights case in Native American history when he sued the government for denying him the right to return to the tribe’s homeland in Knox County to bury his son, who had requested to be buried there following the tribe’s forced relocation to Oklahoma. The 1879 federal trial in Omaha resulted in Native Americans being considered people under the U.S. Constitution.

The Lincoln sculpture is one of three life-sized statues of Chief Standing Bear; the other two are located in Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., and at the Ponca tribal headquarters near Niobrara.

Brossy’s firm has done pro bono work with the tribe. She and her mother both worked on the project to get the Chief Standing Bear statue in the U.S. Capitol, where it replaced a statue of William Jennings Bryan. gaiashkibos worked with state legislators in the Nebraska Unicameral to help pass the bill to get the statue installed. Brossy then got all the federal approvals to pave the way for the unveiling.

“It was such an amazing opportunity to be able to work with my mom on a project that we both really loved and cared about,” Brossy said.

Besides leading Native American efforts statewide, gaiashkibos’ community work includes several community organizations, such as the Joslyn Art Museum, Rail to Trails Advisory Board, United Way, and CEDARS Home for Children. She has also served as a member of the Nebraska U.S. Civil Rights Advisory board and Omaha Mayor’s Native American Advisory Board.

As the first Native American named as Nebraskan of the Year by the Lincoln Rotary Club in 2022, gaiashkibos was recognized for her ability to culturally bridge government and private organizations. Other awards include the Sower Award and being named as one of the 30 most influential women in Lincoln.

While gaiashkibos has been visible in the community, her work continues to help Native Americans around the state, and the rest of the country, be visible.