[6] According to their written constitution, the seven-member governing council of the Ponca Tribe, called the Business Committee, is democratically elected for four-year terms.

The Ponca and the Omaha tribe split from the others in the early 18th century as they were migrating west from the Great Lakes region prior to the arrival of Christopher Columbus.

[2][15] The forced removal of the Ponca from their former reservation in South Dakota to Indian Territory (in Oklahoma) was unacceptably mismanaged.

Among the repercussions to the Ponca tribe were that they arrived too late to plant crops, the government failed to provide them with adequate supplies, and their assigned location was plagued with malaria.

With help from prominent attorneys working pro bono, Standing Bear filed a habeas corpus suit challenging his arrest.

The US District Court judge's decision in Standing Bear v. Crook (1879) established the right of Indian people to exercise habeas corpus and their legal status as citizens under US law.

[21][2][15] White Eagle, a principal Ponca chief, settled on a 101,000-acre (410 km2) reservation in what would later be organized as Kay and Noble counties in Oklahoma.

In the 1890s missionaries and government agents tried to make the Ponca abandon their traditional tribal dances and ways of life in an attempt to "Americanize" them.

[2] In 1892, under the Dawes Allotment Act, the US government registered the members of the tribe, and allocated individual plots of land to each household.

This was intended to introduce them to fee ownership and subsistence farming, as well as extinguish Indian tribal land claims in Oklahoma prior to its becoming a state.

[2][27][28] In the years since allocation of plots under the Dawes Act, these land holdings and interests became highly divided among heirs.

In addition, the departments of Interior and Treasury were found in the late 20th century to have mismanaged the fee accounts and payments due to holders of land for drilling and mineral leases.

[29][30] The Ponca are participating in the Department of Interior's Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations, developed as part of this settlement.