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The First of Two Articles On the SandHill Documentary Movie "Diligence" [1]

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Date: 2025-06-18

When did the destruction of their way of life truly begin for the Aboriginal peoples of the world? When did their world, as they knew it, begin to change? When did their kingdoms collapse in Africa, Europe, the Americas, Asia, the Middle East, and Polynesia? Why did the ancient medical knowledge die with them? Why was it necessary to commit genocide against the Aboriginal peoples?

Everything changed for all the indigenous peoples when the Europeans came with their guns, cannons, bullets, and diseases. Had the Europeans not had such weapons of what could only be described as weapons of mass destruction for that time in history, then the world as we now know it may have been very different.

North America alone had over 50 million indigenous people at that time. Could you imagine Columbus landing on the shores of North America and being greeted by ten thousand armed warriors with weapons equal to his artillery? It would have been a massacre, and we would learn that he was killed for attacking the indigenous peoples and never returned to his country.

However, none of that happened, and the Indigenous people were at the mercy of a conquering civilization that had learned how to use gunpowder and metal to make weapons.

It took hundreds of years for the Europeans to destroy the Indigenous peoples. In North America, it was a calculated and well-thought-out tactic. The greatest tactic was exposing them to the rampant illnesses in Europe: the common cold and the more deadly measles, typhus, smallpox, and chickenpox.

The indigenous peoples of the Americas were not immune to these diseases, as those illnesses did not exist in their nations. The diseases caused widespread epidemics and devastated their populations, causing them to lose millions of people. The weakening of the tribes through illness was one factor that led to the victory of colonization.

The indigenous nations no longer had the manpower to fight the massive numbers of Europeans settling in North America.

The Indigenous peoples were put onto reservations, and some of the *women had unknown sterilization done to them well into the 1970s. After all, the US Government could not send the army to kill them but needed some way to either successfully assimilate them into American society or prevent them from multiplying.

The Government took their children, some as young as four years old, and placed them into Christian boarding schools where they were forced to cut their hair and forbidden to speak their language and their Indigenous names. They were not allowed to practice their religion or return home until adulthood. They were given English names and clothing.

Thousands upon thousands of Indigenous children died in those schools, frightened and alone, only to be buried in mass graves. The school officials and the Government had hoped that the unmarked graves that held those helpless bodies would remain undiscovered.

The children who survived to adulthood came home with the scars of whippings and tales of the abuses they experienced, which eventually led to an **investigation into what had taken place in the schools.

They returned to a culture they no longer remembered. They had to relearn their history, language, culture, religion, and reconnect with nature and their ancestors.

By the end of the 1970s, the once mighty kingdoms of the Indigenous peoples were long gone, along with much of their culture, language, and history. Gone were the burial grounds that once held the bones of their ancestors, as modernization and the erection of buildings soon covered the once sacred grounds.

Those Indigenous Tribes that hid in the different urban communities had melted into the woodwork. They observed their cultures behind doors, hiding from State interference. Their children attended the city schools and learned the ways of both their tribal customs and American customs.

Regardless of what the Indigenous people experienced, they were careful in how they began to reclaim some of what had been stolen from them. They were persistent in their legal defenses to reclaim lands, their culture, and their right to exist and to fight to protect their sacred burial grounds through the court system.

This rang true for the SandHill Band of Lenape and Cherokee Indians (NY, NJ, PA). When the Trail of Tears occurred, they hid in cities. If they were dark-skinned, they hid with people of color. If they were light-skinned, they lived with the pale-skinned people. They also settled in different counties throughout New Jersey. Some maintained and retained their ancestors' land, which is the case in Monmouth County.

Today, many of the Indigenous people are educated and well-equipped to fight for their lands and what was illegally taken from them.

The SandHill never left New Jersey and was diligent in protecting what was their land. They are sovereign, having never surrendered their territories to the US government.

This article gives a brief historical account of the Indigenous people's experiences from Columbus to the present day. It also alerts people to the reality that the Indigenous people would fight long and hard in the court system to protect their sacred sites.

Writing two articles regarding the SandHill documentary movie called Diligence was necessary. One article gives a shortened history that explains the loss of burial grounds due to the United States' growing population, greed, and the desire to remove all traces of the Indigenous people.

The movie depicts a SandHill Family's battle in the Courts to reclaim the ancestral burial ground they owned, which had been fraudulently sold.

The movie "Diligence" is about the first SandHIll Councilwoman, Carrie Jones, who, representing herself and her family members, took on a corporation that had illegally purchased her family-owned burial ground in Monmouth County, New Jersey. She was diligent in gathering the necessary papers and learning the proper legal terms and how to present her arguments in court.

***Brooklyn Demme and SandHill Council member Norris Branham documented her persistence and determination to win her case. The combined efforts of Council Tribal members Carrie Jones and Norris Branham and Film Producer Brooklyn Demme to tell of her journey to reclaim her family's burial ground created the movie "Diligence," which has been premiering at Indigenous events in the United States and Canada.

The second article will document the battle to win Council member Carrie Jones' family burial ground.

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Footnotes:

* The women who had undergone sterilization were not told the truth. They had been told something was wrong and needed a small procedure to correct the problem. Only after the procedure did they learn that they could not have children.

**The United States government launched the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative in June 2021.

***Brooklyn Demme is the son of Movie Producer Jonathan Demme, who produced more than 70 films prior to his death in 2017. “The Silence of the Lambs”, “Philadelphia”, and “The Manchurian Candidate were among his movies.

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