Personal Reparations: A Path to Mutual Healing and Liberation – A WTR Network Webinar

Event Overview

“The midpoint between truth and reconciliation is reparations.”
Dr. David Ragland, Co-Founder and Co-ED, The Truth Telling Project; Director, Grassroots Reparations Campaign; Lecturer on Reparations as Spiritual Practice, Harvard University

In settler-colonial nations like Australia, Canada, and the United States, the historical and ongoing ramifications of land theft, slavery, white supremacy, wealth inequity, and harmful government policies mean that reparations are needed.  However, national dialogues about reparations can often be fraught with denial and resistance.  Too often, reparations are associated with shame and punishment rather than mutual healing and liberation.  Frequently, institutional and governmental reparations stall out before they even begin.  

Elyshia Holliday and Hilary Giovale have been cultivating a solution to this complex problem over the last six years, by supporting settlers of European descent in designing personal reparations plans and bringing them to life within their families and communities.  Their methodology leans into truth-telling about our families’ and nations’ histories, honest self-reflection, and ritualized apology and forgiveness.  Elyshia and Hilary have guided hundreds of people through this process.  As a result, many have developed a newfound sense of right relations, purpose, and joy.

In this interactive session, Elyshia and Hilary will compassionately guide the group to courageously draw on our strengths, interests, and histories and begin developing personal reparations plans that are sustainable for the long-term.  Everyone who has the capacity to attend webinars also has the capacity to begin this process, one step at a time.

Saturday, July 25, 2026
4 – 6pm PDT (UTC-7)

**Check your time zone here.**

REGISTER HERE

In advance of this webinar, we encourage you to orient yourself by viewing the recording of Becoming a Good Relative: Calling White Ancestors to Truth, Healing and Repair. Reading Hilary’s book Becoming a Good Relative: Calling White Settlers toward Truth, Healing, and Repair is also recommended.

Event logistics

Translated subtitles will be available for this event

This event will be recorded. The recording will be available three days after the live event and will be sent by email to all those who are registered.

If you are in China and having difficulty registering for this event, please contact Helen Sui 海静.

A portion of the donations for this event will go to the facilitators of the event to honor their work and contribute to their livelihood. Donations also cover the tools, resources and staff hours each event requires. Whatever is donated above and beyond these expenses will go to the general operating fund of the Work That Reconnects Network so it can continue to provide support, networking and programing for our global WTR community.

The suggested requested donation for this webinar is between $25-$35USD

However, no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Please donate generously within your means and feel free and welcomed to join us even without a donation.

About the Presenters

Hilary Giovale is a writer, community organizer, facilitator, and white American settler who lives on Indigenous land in Flagstaff, Arizona. As an active reparationist, she seeks to follow Indigenous and Black leadership in support of human rights, environmental justice, and equitable futures. She is the author of the award-winning book Becoming a Good Relative: Calling White Settlers toward Truth, Healing, and Repair, now in its second edition. Learn more about Hilary’s work here: https://www.goodrelative.com/

Elyshia Holliday is the Executive Director of the Organization of Nature Evolutionaries, a Naturopath, community facilitator, and mother committed to restoring the human–Earth relationship. For more than two decades, she co-led work rooted in ecological restoration and ceremonial practice. For the past six years, she has co-facilitated the Rekindling Ancestral Memory Circle, supporting European-descended settlers in recovering Earth-honoring ancestral ways, acknowledging historic harm, and practicing reparations. She lives on the ancestral lands of the Yakama people in Washington state .Learn more about Elyshia’s work here: https://www.natureevolutionaries.com/vision-mission