Becoming a Good Relative Webinar

September 13, 2025 – Foundational to the Work That Reconnects are Deep Time practices that activate our moral imagination and bring us into relation with our ancestors and future ones. This work can reveal painful truths about past and present generations that call for acknowledgement, grief and reparations as we actively work toward a more just and regenerative future.

In this webinar, Hilary Giovale shares the story of learning that she descends from early Euro-American settlers who received grants of stolen Indigenous land and enslaved people of African descent. As she grappled with these difficult ancestral legacies, the support of diverse communities encouraged her to write a book entitled Becoming a Good Relative: Calling White Settlers toward Truth, Healing, and Repair.

Realizing that she is a ninth-generation beneficiary of this colonial legacy inspired Hilary to rethink everything she had been taught about her family’s history, whiteness, the Doctrine of Discovery, and American exceptionalism. Ultimately, her decision to face the past led her to develop practices of ancestral healing, divesting from whiteness, personal reparations, and following the leadership of Indigenous and African-American communities toward co-creating more peaceful and equitable futures.

During the interactive portions of this webinar, participants take part in community-based ancestral storytelling and learn a universal practice to honor their ancestors. Participants also learn about creating reparation plans for their own ancestral healing work.

Connect with Hilary:
Hilary Giovale is a mother, writer, community organizer, and ninth-generation American settler who lives 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 Becoming a Good Relative: Calling White Settlers toward Truth, Healing, and Repair. Learn more about Hilary’s work at: www.goodrelative.com.

Note from Hilary with some support and resources:
During our time together, we talked about many things, including the value of grief, the cultural and spiritual void of whiteness, and the healing power of ceremony. Here are some ideas to support you on your journey:

• Make a space in your home to honor the ancestors of the land where you live as well as your own ancestors. Make offerings and ask for their help and guidance on your path.
• Listen to “Myrddin of the Wildwood,” (Part 1 and Part 2) for an ancestral story about grief from the land now called England. Consider: what does Myrddin teach us about the transformative power of grief?
• Consider ritualizing your grief. You can respectfully ask a small stone permission to work with it as an ancient being. Holding the stone in your hand, ask it to help carry your grief. Then set the stone in a bowl of salt to cleanse it. You can return to this ritual as often as needed.
• Many emotions can accompany looking at our ancestral legacies, opening our eyes to the harm of settler colonialism, and wit(h)nessing the violence surrounding us. Try allowing these emotions to move through your body with drumming, dancing, wailing, singing, or walking in nature. Allow your body to release the emotions and ask the emotions to become compost that nourishes life.
• In his book My Grandmother’s Hands, Resmaa Menakem writes about the need for white people to develop a new culture for ourselves, devoid of supremacy. Consider journaling or discussing with a friend: how would you like this new culture to look, feel, sound, and taste?
• Consider taking the class Building Solidarity with Indigenous Communities.
• Reference page 48 of Becoming a Good Relative: Calling White Settlers toward Truth, Healing, and Repair for some guidelines white settlers can use to engage in respectful cross-cultural learning. Consider: what are your insights into cultural appropriation and cultural sampling?

Hilary returns all the proceeds she receives from book sales to Decolonizing Wealth Project and Jubilee Justice. The book can be ordered from independent booksellers listed HERE, as well as all major retailers.

Additional resources shared:

• The Spell Bowl Prayer by Justine Epstein, Morgan Curtis, Will Scott, and Ahlay Blakely
• Rekindling Ancestral Memory with Hilary Giovale and Elyshia Holliday
• Guide to Making a Personal Reparations Plan by Hilary Giovale
• Building Solidarity with Indigenous Communities – a course with Lyla June Johnston
• Acts of Reparation
• Ahlay Blakely – song circles and maker of Hilary’s bowl
• Sìne McKenna
• Reparations 4 Slavery
• Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead – Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
• Coming to the Table
• Salish and Kootenai Housing Authority

Thank you for joining us for the Webinars and Conversation Café Program where we are providing a wide range of rich educational and supportive online events for our global WTR community.