-Funding for this program was provided in part by... [ Flute playing down-tempo music ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Here in Milford, we're right smack dab in the middle of Lenapehoking, which is the name we give to our homeland... [ Drums playing ] ..."Lenape" being "our people," "hoking" meaning "the place of."

[ Group singing in Native language ] Our people were originally in a large piece of geography from Maryland and Delaware up to and including Manhattan and from the Delaware River west into the Poconos.

[ Birds chirping, music continues ] It will always be our homeland.

[ Wind whistling ] [ Indistinct conversations, engine humming ] [ Mid-tempo introduction plays ] ♪ In the town of Milford, Pennsylvania ♪ ♪ There stands a sorry sight -I love Milford Borough.

I'm very, very proud of it.

But I'm not proud of this particular chapter, when we celebrated and venerated and elevated a serial killer as a hero of the frontier.

To me, this history of celebrating, really, a psychopathic killer is not only painful, I think, to people of conscience, but it was an embarrassment to the town.

Civic and governmental leadership all over is dealing with problematic place names, team mascots, monuments... -Tonight, tensions mounting over monuments.

-...whether they relate to the Confederacy or, in this case, to indigenous people.

[ Tires screeching, screams echoing ] [ Engine idling ] [ Indistinct conversations ] Here was something right in my backyard, you know?

And I was mayor of the town that was celebrating this town, so I was in a position to try and do something.

I didn't know how to address that.

You can't change history, but it was time to put this controversy to rest.

[ Down-tempo music plays ] -The story of Tom Quick is something that Lenape children are often told when we're talking about being bad.

He's referred in other ways, by other names, but he is still the boogeyman who will come take away your mother, your father, or even you at the drop of a dime.

So we've heard the story of Tom Quick reiterated numerous times with different names but the same ending result -- dead Lenape people.

♪♪ -Tom Quick Sr.

was one of the first European settlers in the area, in the early 18th century.

And Tom Quick Jr.

was one of the first children of European descent born in the area.

♪♪ -This is how the legend goes.

Tom Quick Sr., his son-in-law, and Tom Quick Jr.

leave their outpost along the Delaware River on the Milford side in order to collect hoop poles to make barrels.

[ Horse snorts ] Unbeknownst to them, the Indians are lying in wait.

[ Bird caws ] [ Gunshot echoes, horse neighs ] Tom Jr.

and his brother-in-law try and save Mr.

Quick by dragging him to safety, but they have to leave him.

[ Footsteps receding ] They avoid their bullets and hide in the bushes just in time to turn around to see the Indians having some kind of ceremony over Tom Sr.

and scalp him.

And that was when Tom Jr.

decided to lead a life of vengeance and kill as many Indians as he could in his lifetime.

[ Man breathing heavily ] -On his deathbed, he claimed he had killed 99 and begged for one more to be brought to him to make it an even 100.

-Okay.

My name is Donald Quick.

My family has had an intimate interaction with Milford and Pike County.

I've had various roles in the community, in township government and the Milford Police Department.

Tom Quick was a bachelor, had no children, and I am descended from one of his brothers.

By today's standards, at least, he would be a very pathologically disturbed person of some type or another with probably multiple psychoses that led to his activities.

But nonetheless, he was revered in a time when the white man was pushing the Indians further west.

-He was celebrated for this as a hero of the frontier.

He was known as "The Indian Slayer on the Delaware."

-In the wake of the U.S.

centennial in 1876, there was this surge in nationalism, and pioneer families who could drag out an ancestor and claim them frequently did so.

There was a man who grew up in Milford named William Bross, who went west, became president of the Chicago Tribune Company, lieutenant governor of Illinois.

He was a descendant of the Quick family.

And so he paid to build a monument, a zinc obelisk.

It was eight or nine feet tall.

And on the anniversary of the Constitution, the centennial of the Constitution in 1889, it was installed in Milford Borough in a traffic island in the middle of Sarah Street.

♪♪ When Tom Quick died in the late 18th century, the legend -- You know, again, we can't separate fact from fiction, but the legend was that he was dug up by Indians.

They took pieces of his body, leaving scraps -- his skull and the left femur and others -- that was then reburied there at the Rosetown Cemetery, right near Milford.

And then about 100 years later, those were dug up and put underneath the monument in the middle of Sarah Street.

♪♪ -Between 1,500 and 2,000 people were gathered for the dedication, which was said was the largest gathering of people ever in Milford Borough.

It was presided over by the pastor of the local Presbyterian church, young Gifford Pinchot, who then would become known as the father of the conservation movement.

Had just graduated from Yale, and he gave his first public address that day.

-We are met to commemorate by the raising of this flag the loved and honored... -This became so much a part of the local legend that even in the 21st century, I'm told, that in some very rural parts of Pike County, children grow up, they don't play cowboys and Indians.

[ Hoofbeats, men shouting ] They play Tom Quick and the Indians.

[ Shouting fades ] [ Wind whistling, birds chirping ] -My name is Daniel Strongwalker Thomas.

I'm the hereditary chief of the Delaware Nation.

My family has been in a leadership role since time immemorial.

-[ Speaking Lenape language ] ...Deborah Dotson, president of Delaware Nation.

-My name's Larry Heady.

I am the Delaware Tribe's historic preservation officer.

I descend from chiefs and heroes and people that helped explore and settle this country.

[ Down-tempo music plays ] Our name for ourselves is Lenni Lenape.

It means "genuine people" or "genuine human being."

Lenapehoking, where our people lived for not two or three generations or even 10 generations, but 500, 600 generations -- Quite literally, the bones of our ancestors are here.

[ Birds chirping, water flowing ] ♪♪ [ Flute playing down-tempo music ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -The colonizers' history loves to present the way that they dealt with their "American Indian" problem.

But the truth is that we have been ousted from our lands.

We have been removed from our homelands.

Our treaties have not been honored.

-We hear talk of this vast wilderness that was North America.

Well, in reality, it was not a vast wilderness.

The land was utilized by indigenous peoples.

Since about the 1720s, our people have been on a very long forest migration, quite literally at the point of bayonets at times.

-We were forced this way and moved more than any other tribe, all the way from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and then over to Indiana, Ohio, to Texas, and then came back up.

By the time we got here, to Anadarko, there was only 90 of us.

All of what we have now came originally from there.

-Oklahoma is flat.

It's very dry.

It's dusty.

They stuck us there because it was barren land.

-We've been far removed from the places where we used to call home.

♪♪ -We've been put and forcefully removed into territories that we had to adapt to, that we had no clue on how to survive in, that we had to learn how to survive in.

There's power in words.

There's powers in the way that we present things.

We call it reservations, but really, those are concentration camps.

♪♪ We call them forced removal, right?

Or a Trail of Tears.

But really, that was rounding up a population and bringing them to their genocide.

-We don't want to forget the generations of lives that shared this landscape before European settlement and after, 'cause there was a period of time where we lived side by side with really relatively little conflict.

And in our culture, especially our ancient culture, you know, the concept of owning land didn't even exist.

When you made a treaty with another group of people, it was for use.

But it was never about ownership.

And so it was pretty common for one Indian tribe to contract with another either settler nation or another Indian tribe and say, "Sure, you can use this land.

Here's the boundaries."

But there was always this sense that it was still our land.

I mean, not our land in terms of ownership but our land in terms of sharing it, 'cause from European culture, especially from Anglo-European culture, the property rights was the supreme law of the land.

It still is today.

I mean, that trumps everything, right?

Not shared responsibility to the land... but property rights.

"It's my land.

I can do what I want with it."

And our people just didn't understand that.

♪♪ I'd look at the Walking Purchase and say that was probably the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of trust in each other.

-The Walking Purchase occurs in 1737.

William Penn came to Pennsylvania, Penn's Woods, with the idea of his holy experiment, that everybody be treated as an equal, that Native Americans would have the same rights as Europeans.

Pennsylvania was a haven for Native Americans.

But Penn dies.

-William Penn passed away in debt.

And when he passed away in debt, his new wife and his children were handed this debt.

His family needed to pay that off.

-In 1735, they come to the Lenape people and said, "We have found, in the Royal Archive in London, a document.

It's between our father and your chiefs, and it gives us the right to claim all the land from the edge of Philadelphia out as far as a man can walk in a day and a half."

The Lenape looked at this document -- at least some of them saw it -- said, "We don't know any of these people who signed this.

We don't believe that this is a legitimate document.

This is a farce."

-But the Penn brothers got together with others, and through bullying, they threatened the chiefs, and the chiefs eventually agreed to settle it through what's called the Walking Purchase.

-So the Lenape, among themselves, talked about this and said, "Well, how far can a man walk in a day and a half?

Maybe it's not that big a deal.

The Penns have always been good to us.

We'll allow this thing to happen."

And unfortunately, what happened was instead of being a casual walk, like a Native person would walk, looking at the trees and doing a little fishing or enjoying it, first, they cleared a trail these people could walk through and instead of walking, they ran, and they ended up taking all of the land that the Muncies had left in that area.

And that was the result.

That's why it's called the Walking Purchase.

It should be called the Running Purchase, really.

♪♪ -The Walking Purchase originally could have been a moment of honor for colonizer and their people to show how to work with the indigenous people.

But then that inevitable greed kicked in.

And it wasn't much long after that that we begin to see that we're not welcome on those lands to hunt, that we're now being pushed away.

We were robbed.

We are on stolen land.

♪♪ -The Indians sought to redress by persistent efforts, but in vain.

After the lapse of nearly 20 years, their rage found vent in active hostility towards the whites everywhere through the Delaware Valley.

And it was in 1756 that Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter to Captain John Van Etten.

[ Drumroll ] -You are to acquaint the men that if in their ranging they meet with or at any time attacked by the enemy and kill any of them, $40 will be allowed and paid by the government for each scalp of an Indian enemy so killed.

Benjamin Franklin.

[ Down-tempo music plays, group singing in Native language ] -Our hair represents our connection to the creator.

And so when we saw that, it made us very, very angry, and we had no clue why they would mess with our spirituality in that way in war.

We had never done that.

And once we did it back to them, because we were not in control of the media, we were accredited with inventing scalping, as if we were savages.

We didn't create that.

We were scalped.

-What you see when you read Indian history is one betrayal after another, just a litany of betrayals, and it did a huge amount to sour permanently the relationships between Native Americans and white people.

And it was the beginning point of the great exodus.

[ Mid-tempo music plays ] -Newly arrived settlers began entering Lenape lands along the revered river.

Without asking permission from local Indians, they simply clutched a piece of paper, called a deed, believing they had a right to move in, welcome or not.

The beautiful landscape was changing.

Intoxication filled the air.

Almost every settler now thought of himself as the lord of his own manor.

♪♪ In 1755, France and England declared war on each other.

The French began courting the Indians with promises of overthrowing the English.

Late in the year, log cabins of newcomers were burned, and the tomahawk raised its terrifying head.

[ Gunshots echoing ] On January 12, 1756, a militia was organized under Captain Van Etten.

Tom Quick Sr.

joined the militia.

His Indian friends regarded him as a traitor who had betrayed their long-established friendship and broken the bonds of peace.

[ Gunshot ] Historian Donald R. Repsher.

♪♪ -"All true Americans should blush with shame for the injustice done."

Historian B.F.

Fackenthal.

♪♪ -The Natives were kicked out.

Basically, the Walking Purchase happens, this land is extended into that Walking Purchase, and now Tom Quick Sr.

is signing up to remove the Natives that were on this stolen land so that they can reclaim it or claim it as their own.

-Forward march.

-Five days after that, he loses his life.

♪♪ And now that legacy of trauma and pain is passed to his son.

♪♪ -We all have racial memory, And racial memory is actually in some ways an unfortunate thing, because it's how we perpetuate cultural trauma.

We experience it.

And when you come from a cultural background that has experienced extensive generational trauma, it carries on through the generations, that trauma, that scar.

[ Birds chirping ] -Come on.

Okay.

One of the things that has sort of disturbed me since I came to Milford in the mid-'90s was not only this history, this incredibly ugly chapter of local history, but that people would excuse it.

They would say, "Oh, well, he was a product of his time," and, "It was a different time, a different era," and so on.

And in fact, when the monument was dedicated in 1889, there were several local newspapers that ran stories questioning why the good people of Milford were honoring a serial killer.

So it wasn't just something that was universally agreed upon, that this was somehow acceptable.

It wasn't.

There were always people who knew this was wrong.

And in the late 1990s one day, the monument was vandalized.

It was right around the anniversary of the Wounded Knee massacre.

-The monument was defaced by an individual who was never apprehended or charged.

-It became known that we had local activists involved with the American Indian movement and that it was very likely a political act.

When the monument was vandalized, the borough took it down from its public place in Sarah Street and sent it to Milford Architectural Iron Company to be repaired.

Ironically, Milford Architectural Iron was owned by Don Quick, a descendant of the Quick family.

-The borough ultimately asked if we would restore the plaques, and they asked me to put it in the borough garage, where it sat under a blue tarp for many, many years.

[ Down-tempo music plays ] [ Indistinct conversations ] ♪♪ -Change the name.

We're not mascots.

-We're not mascots!

We're still here!

Change the name!

Teach your child some honor and help support change the name.

-There's no honor in the name.

-Find out what it really means.

It's an English word.

It's in your English dictionary.

Those of you who prefer English only.

Go look it up.

-It does take a moment of somebody in a group of people to say, "That's enough."

When you put a bunch of positive ions into one space, nothing happens.

They all bounce off each other.

"Great idea."

"Great idea."

"Great idea."

"Great idea."

Nothing.

No change happens.

[ Drum playing, group singing in Native language ] -...in the streets.

We are indigenous.

That's what we want to be.

We want to be called... -It's when you introduce that negative charge that change begins to happen.

So while my nation was not a part of the desecration of the Quick statue, we're grateful to be here for the moment that that negativity brought, you know?

And now we're here with positive reaction.

We're here with reconciliation.

-You know, I'm a white male and have considerable privilege in our society.

I'm also gay and also have HIV.

It was with the epidemic and realizing there was a government that was perfectly happy to let us die, that my gender and skin color didn't protect me from that kind of government neglect and then realizing other communities had already been accustomed to that.

They knew there was a government that didn't care about them and wasn't serving them.

So I think that as one's eyes become open and you sort of get a sense and you feel that kinship and you feel that sort of shared experience, that it becomes a consciousness that just continues to grow.

-It takes a moment to heal and come to the table and say, "I didn't do it myself, but I benefit from, and this continues on, and this is what my ancestors has been a part of."

It is only then -- it's only then -- that this work can begin.

-I began by reaching out to the three sovereign Lenape tribes.

I was fortunate to get an opportunity to meet with Chief Chester Brooks, who is the chief of the Delaware Tribe of Indians in Oklahoma.

The first time I met Chief Brooks, we met in the Fauchère Meeting Center.

Okay.

So, I was sitting right here.

Chief Brooks was sitting here, at the head of the table, and this was a colleague of his, and sitting here was another colleague.

Actually, Larry Heady was sitting right there.

They had agreed to this meeting not really knowing what it was about other than that it was with the mayor of Milford, who wanted to meet with them.

So I began kind of tentatively describing how I became mayor and how much I love Milford and how proud I am of Milford but how we had this really awful, horrible chapter in our history, which Chief Brooks indicated he was familiar with.

I was really just kind of reaching out to see if there was some interest in working with us to address the history.

We can't change the history, but we can address it today.

And at one point, I had my hands on the table, like this.

Chief Brooks took his right hand, and he put it on top of my left hand, right here, as I'm sort of telling the story to him and his colleagues.

And, you know, at first, it was, you know, sort of a warm, supportive, affirmative gesture.

But then, after, you know, 15 or 20 seconds, it felt a little bit odd, this person's hand on mine.

Was he waiting for me to take my hand away?

Was, you know... So I'm telling this story, but my mind is a little bit on this awkwardness with the hand.

And then I felt a warmth, like...an energy -- It wasn't quite hot, but it was definitely warm.

And not just mildly warm.

It was, like, warm.

...come from his hand into my hand.

And first, I felt it.

Like, there was that.

There was sort of a connection made there.

And then the warmth just went right up my arm at about -- that's just about the speed at which it felt like it was going -- up my arm and came into my chest.

And I was so startled.

It was like something very unusual was happening.

And I looked over at Chief Brooks, and he had a little smile on his face.

It was, like, very knowing, like he knew exactly what he was doing.

And in that moment, it was very comfortable.

I knew that there was a degree of trust that had been established and that he was interested in working with us on something.

And that was the beginning.

-It calls all of the manitowoc.

"Manitowoc" is the word we use for spirits.

-That set the stage, helped introduce us to the other two tribes, and kind of gave guidance on how to approach this and to go about it.

[ Indistinct conversations ] Everyone, I think, came into it with a very sort of pure heart.

It has been a very respectful process.

And for me as an activist and somebody who's been involved in political and activist stuff my whole life, it's about as satisfying as anything I've been involved in.

♪♪ [ Birds chirping ] -My name is Nancy Pinchot.

I'm married to Peter Pinchot, whose grandfather was Gifford Pinchot, the architect of the conservation policy.

He started the Forest Service.

He was also governor of Pennsylvania for two terms.

Pinchots have strong roots in Milford.

-When we settled here, our great-great-grandfather, Cyril, set up a dry-goods business.

But he also went into the business of cutting down the forest and sending logs down the river.

So you look at an ecosystem which had been maintained for 10,000 years by the indigenous communities.

We moved in and took that huge resource, which to them had been sacred and nature, and we converted it into cash.

And that was part of the founding wealth of the Pinchot family.

-This is an amazing photograph.

This is Gifford Pinchot and his brother, Amos Pinchot.

I've never seen this photo.

It's the two brothers.

And they're the two that bought the 1,200 acres in 1910 or '12.

So they bought it because they were fishermen and they wanted to fish on the upper Sawkill.

The piece of land that we live on is about 1,200 acres.

The Sawkill Creek runs right through the property and comes to the great Pinchot Falls that are, I think, the largest privately owned falls on the East Coast.

Being a white colonizer is something that we're all grappling with.

I'm benefiting from the theft of that land, and I'm living it now.

I'm living off unearned money.

So I'm not a saint here.

Obviously, you can't erase the past.

I don't think that there is a "go back and redo it all."

And the land-use patterns in this country are fairly set in stone.

People are not gonna just hand over land hand over fist.

They're just not gonna do that.

[ Indistinct conversations ] [ Mid-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ You start with an attitude change.

And once you develop that empathy, that sense of responsibility for the harm you've caused, then solutions present themselves in different ways.

♪♪ -So, this is the exhibit that we created with the three sovereign Lenape tribes, the Pike County Historical Society, where it's on display, Milford Borough, and the Quick family.

And the panels were written in conjunction with Lenape historians.

And it's really in four parts, one talking about this area before the European colonization, then the era of colonization and the removal and slaughter of the indigenous people, and then the era of removal, when the Indians were pushed to the west and the three tribes -- two are in Oklahoma now and one in Wisconsin -- and then this is really about what the Lenape are doing today.

And then we have some artifacts, most notably the Tom Quick monument itself, which for 110 years stood on a traffic island in the middle of Sarah Street in Milford Borough.

♪♪ [ Applause ] -[ Speaking Lenape language ] So, we're very honored to be back in our homelands.

I actually represent our community and our historic preservation work.

-Oftentimes, we find ourselves having to get the attention of decision-makers, whereas here in Milford, we're seeing the exact opposite.

We're being invited to the table.

Good evening.

♪♪ -We have to know the true history that our people went through.

No matter how painful it was, we have to know it, and we have to understand it and accept it.

The power of an exhibit, an art exhibit, a picture, a story, that emotion, which is actually negative when we take it in, we realize that the ones who went before us went through that times what?

A hundred?

A thousand?

And we're still here.

We're still here.

We're still us.

♪♪ -My name is Lori Strelecki, and I'm the museum director of the Pike County Historical Society and Museum.

The amazing thing I find is that when people walk into the exhibit, even though it's the elephant in the room, nobody really comments on it.

That's not what's important.

What's important is what they're reading on the panel boards and the history that's unfolding about the Lenape.

That's what makes the exhibit important.

What happened behind the exhibit is more important than the exhibit itself.

♪♪ [ Indistinct conversations ] ♪♪ [ Birds chirping ] -And now we're at a point where that story and energy hold some real emotional, spiritual weight for the descendants of the Quick family.

While they may not think about it every day, that cloud is over their descendants.

And what I am looking forward to, what my nation is looking forward to, is releasing them from that cloud and having a new day of understanding and a friendship between us.

[ Insects chirping, birds crying ] -As a kid, you know, 12 years old and under, probably, you know, there was a certain pride that this family forbear, if you will, had done this sort of thing.

But this is also at a time, in the '50s and early '60s, of, you know, Davy Crockett and "Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier."

And, of course, he's dealing with Indians, and then the Lone Ranger's dealing with the... -Seventh Michigan!

Charge!

[ Dramatic music plays ] ♪♪ -...to lightning attacks against the warring Indian tribes of Dakota's Black Hills, it's Errol Flynn in his greatest role... -I mean, as I grew older, I realized, "Wait a second.

This is nothing to be proud of in any way, shape, or form."

[ Indistinct conversations ] -Now, what is this exactly?

-So, these are prayer ties.

It doesn't matter which creator, how you choose to -- It doesn't matter.

It's okay.

What we would have typically done is brought our weapons, put them into a pre-dug hole, put some medicine in that hole, said some prayers, and then issued this proclamation, which would say each side, what are they willing to give up, what are they willing to bring, what are they doing for their side to facilitate this peace and reconciliation?

But because we were never at war with the Quick family and it was Tom Quick Jr.

who felt the need to be at war with us, only one hatchet will be buried in this ceremony... So we're grateful for your attendance, and we hope that you're here with an open heart and an open mind.

And as we look to the past to heal some wounds... ...and it is them showing that they're burying the hatchet, that they are no longer at war with us, and that their family no longer considers us enemies of their family.

And in that proclamation, what we will also be doing is saying, "We no longer hold your family accountable for what has happened."

So the Delaware Nation, we have five different tribal communities in the Lenape community.

We have two representatives from two of our other communities here in the United States, and this is an agreement that the Delaware Nation has entered into with the Quick family to end this.

So please put the ax in the ground and let us never go at war again with each other.

-The hatchet was placed in the hole, and we literally encased it in concrete and so that it would be relatively close to whatever the remnants of Tom Quick are, not to infuriate his spirit, as it were, but to make a solid connection, so to speak, as close as we possibly could.

I actually felt a great sense of relief and hope as we buried the hatchet -- literally -- because I had and have and will probably forever hold the hope that what was accomplished by the tribes and the mayor and our branch of the family puts a very, very distasteful part of the history of our family to rest.

-And just as quick as war can begin, war has ended.

-Nothing will ever change what was done, but I feel a sense of peace in knowing that the matter has been literally put to rest in a good and positive way and not left for some future generation in which the process of injury, so to speak, would still be there and go on and on and on and on and on.

♪♪ -The act of burying the hatchet, in the moments after that, I felt kind of an elation.

And part of it was the sense of accomplishment.

This was a milestone.

We've been working, you know, on this reconciliation process.

But then another part of it that really I felt since then -- and I've talked to other people -- I found that all sorts of people of conscience, you know, people who are committed to social justice and are committed to taking responsibility have felt something lifted, like a dark cloud, an oppressive sense that maybe they wouldn't have been able to articulate beforehand.

But the absence of it is something that people feel.

[ Bird crying ] -My old friend Sean Strub and I got together.

Sean said, "We're bringing representatives from the Delaware Nation, and can we go to the falls?"

[ Water flowing ] And we did.

[ Indistinct conversations ] I was unprepared for how emotional that scene was.

I had this amazing experience of seeing through their eyes.

This was something amazing.

-The Delaware Water Gap is the hub of the Lenape people's beginning and existence.

[ Water flowing ] It is the hub of Lenapehoking.

So many of my ancestors are buried here.

This dirt responds to our Lenape feet very kindly, and it remembers us, whereas the colonizer feet are relatively new here.

And no disrespect to families who've been living in harmony and living the best way they can on these lands for hundreds of years.

They are still relatively new to these lands considering how long this land has been a big part of the Lenape people.

-Around here, we have to look for our medicine.

We have to search.

Back in our homelands, where we're actually from, it's just right there, waiting for us.

We can just step outside of our doors, pick medicine up off the ground, and use it in that way like it was meant to, like the creator meant for us to.

There were places where there was just big bushels of strawberries, sage growing everywhere, flat cedar, things that we use that people send to us, actually, from out of state sometimes because we can't get it so easily here.

-Even though we're here and we've been encamped with Plains tribes and others that have been relocated here, you still can differentiate which tribe is which with your patterns.

We've taken and we've put it into our regalia.

We've put it into our beadwork.

We've put it into our appliqué on our skirts.

You can tell that there's just a certain style about the woodland tribes that come from back there.

You make that connection with the things that we find in nature.

This is where it all began.

-When we come home and we stand at this land, it's like when you grew up somewhere and you move to another country and then you come back to that country and it feels like home.

So it feels like home here to us.

[ Birds chirping ] -That's a profound experience.

-Going down to the falls and seeing the unbelievable emotion, it was overpowering.

-Just something got set off right there.

-It just opened up the possibility of something really wonderful happening.

We'd been searching for the next -- What is the meaning of putting a conservation on a piece of land?

Okay.

It's our land.

It's got an easement on it.

It won't get developed.

Big whoop.

I mean, that's a great thing, but what's the next step?

-Our goal is to donate 10 acres at the top of the 1,200 acres, which happened to not be in the easement, so it could be freely donated without restrictions, and at the same time to rewrite the easement on the 1,200 acres so that it actively includes various activities that Native American people would like to do on a large piece of land.

If we can do something, we will.

And we can, so we will.

♪♪ [ Laughter ] ♪♪ [ Birds, insects chirping ] -To have this land back and to be able to bring elders up here and youth up here so that they can see what our homelands look like... ♪♪ ...they will get more involved in the tribe and more involved in the government, and we can grow and become a stronger tribe.

That's my hope.

♪♪ Society likes to tell you who you are.

If you know where you came from and who you came from, then nobody can tell you who you are.

Nobody can ever take that away from you.

I came from very strong women, so no, you can't tell me who I am.

♪♪ -[ Speaking Lenape language ] ...Taniah Kay Owings, the '23-'24 Delaware Nation princess.

[ Speaking Lenape language ] Hello.

Welcome, all my relatives, family, and all my relations.

I am Delaware, Kiowa, Comanche, and Wichita.

I come from the Turtle people, and you honor me with this gift.

Thank you.

[ Drums playing, group singing in Native language ] What being a princess means to me is being a voice for the voices that cannot be heard and being a leader for the people who feel they cannot be a leader.

[ Music continues ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -My grandmother was a boarding school survivor.

She still spoke her language.

She still did a lot of her songs and her dances, and that was dangerous for them to do that.

♪♪ It was wrong to be Native American.

It was wrong to speak your language.

It was wrong to do any type of ceremonies or songs or dances or any of that.

It was wrong, and you would get punished for it.

And for her to hang on to that and to pass it down to me and now I'm passing it down to my children, I feel like we owe it to them.

[ Music continues ] -For me, it's been a sense of longing to know, just trying to gain the knowledge and find out how I came to be and how my people came to be so I can teach that to my children.

[ Music continues ] ♪♪ -We're just one person.

We're one humble person trying to do what's best in life, honor our ancestors, protect our families, and heal Mother Earth.

And so by showing the children that there's a better way, a different way, and with that connection, when they go out into this world, it'll protect them.

It'll keep them moving.

They'll always have who they are.

Say they have a sweat lodge.

If they know about the sweat lodge, they can build a sweat lodge wherever they are in this world, and it'll protect them.

It'll take care of them in that way.

You're able to take that with you because you know it.

[ Wind blowing, bird cawing ] [ Drums playing, group singing in Native language ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Powwows are really social -- to build bridges, to rebuild connections, to rekindle old relationships.

♪♪ They're crying, in a sense, like crying to Creator, crying for the people and getting that emotion out there and really putting it in their voice.

♪♪ Sometimes you'll hear parents say it to their children -- "Find your step.

Find your step.

Get in step."

Finding your own step is a part of what makes your dance unique.

Boom, ba-boom, ba-boom.

And that drum represents the heartbeat of the earth.

[ Music continues ] [ Music fades ] See, I was told by some of our elders that unity is something we'll never have.

[ Down-tempo music plays ] And I was a little upset at that, and I said, "Uncle, why will we never have unity?

I'm working so hard for unity."

And he laughed one of those Indian laughs from the deep stomach, and he says, "Nephew... Indians will never have unity because unity, you need to give something up to come to the table.

Now, solidarity is something that we have in spades."

♪♪ Come as you are.

Come as you are because you believe in the topic at hand and you support it the way you do.

-When I broached this idea, Don was immediately receptive, and he has shown humility and grace throughout the project.

-It is a great time to be Indian, a great time to have these conversations, a great time to be a servant leader in the community, to be able to mix and speak with the people whose hearts are in the right place.

They're really looking to reconcile what their ancestors may have been a part of and be released, like we're doing with Tom Quick, be released from this energy.

♪♪ This Milford project is the most recent, the most poignant moment that we could have to show how municipalities can work in unison with indigenous people of their area to heal and to find a way to move forward together.

♪♪ -While it began with me wanting to address this really, you know, ugly chapter in Milford's history with the problematic monument, it evolved into something much bigger, far beyond anything I ever hoped to achieve.

This is a... I couldn't have anticipated and I couldn't have gone out and found it if I was looking for it, but... there it is.

[ Indistinct conversations ] And then just sign it and pass it to Peter and then to President Dotson.

♪♪ -We're in a new time and a new age, and it's a beautiful time to be Indian.

You know, the Trump appointee to the Supreme Court who ended up voting on the side of Native Americans and walking that line was a big shock to our community -- a well-received shock.

-The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that about half of Oklahoma remains Native American land.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, who joined the court's liberal wing, wrote the majority opinion.

-We have Auntie Deb Haaland, who is a White House appointee, the first ever in charge of Native American affairs here in the country.

-My ancestors migrated to this area of New Mexico in the late 1200s, which makes me about a 35th-generation New Mexican.

-Well, it's done.

-Hey.

-That is done.

Yay!

♪♪ -There's individual work being done on land giveback.

I cannot tell you how grateful we are that Creator has spoken to the souls and spirits of individuals who have been the power behind this land-giveback movement.

-Signs have been good.

I'm so excited.

-Whoo-hoo!

Whoo!

Whoo!

-You scared me to death, Daniel.

[ Indistinct conversations ] ♪♪ -Our legacy is that although we've traveled so many places, we've never taken our eyes off of home -- Lenapehoking, our place of beginning.

♪♪ -Hello, my relatives, American Indians of the United States of America.

My morning prayers to the Great Mystery always include you.

Hau mitakuyepi, miye malakota.

Maje tahan ki ne zi tiyospaye ki le hesa woke lila wakan.

Mitakuye ate tasunka witko tiyospaye.

Mitakuye ina wanbli zuya tiyospaye.

This is the traditional greeting of my people that I am bound to give -- albeit it's a short version.

[ Music continues, woman singing in Native language ] ♪♪ ♪♪ The American Indian movement is a very proud, continuing part of American Indian society.

I thank you.

-Funding for this program was provided in part by...