63. “Healing The Legacy” with Hilary Giovale, Becoming a Good Relative. Calling White Settlers toward truth, healing and repair.
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Welcome to episode 63 of the Nurtured by Nature podcast, today I’m delighted to be joined in conversation by Hilary Giovale, author of the recently published book, Becoming A Good Relative, Calling White Settlers toward Truth, Healing and Repair.
As Maya Angelou famously said: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
Now is our time to do better, to step forward courageously, with open hearts, humility and perseverance to do the work to say this stops now, to play our part in healing and repairing the past to ensure a shift of path for our future.
In this deeply thought provoking conversation and through her book, Hilary gently encourages us to reflect on our society and our ancestry to understand the two sided coin of white privilege and white peril, alongside the far reaching impacts of colonisation that have imprinted trauma on Indigenous societies around the world for millennia. She shares the wisdom she has gained over her almost decade long journey, that started with a revelation that held such guilt and shame it literally brought her sobbing to her knees in the snow. Through cultivating a way of being that shows up with a generous heart, listens and is responsive to what is asked and not what you believe is wanted, she has been blessed by an incredible diversity of people who have generously guided her journey and allowed her to offer their wisdom to us. She goes on to demonstrate the routes for repair, partly through addressing the continued systemic divide that is stubbornly resilient in our societies and is evident in the fact that only 0.04% of Philanthropic dollars in the US benefit Indigenous communities. But also through powerful private ceremonies offering us space for reflection, apology and forgiveness.
My hope is that this episode sparks conversation, that you listen with kindness and compassion as I do my best to hold space for these often confronting and challenging conversations that offer us all a place of beginning. I invite you to please share this conversation and join me as we take a first step together and then a second to play our part in raising awareness and then in taking action to unravel and repair the legacy we have inherited but also remember we have the power to redirect the future trajectory of our societies evolution as we come to understand and embody the reality that we are all connected.
Learn more about Hilary
HILARY GIOVALE is a mother, writer, and community organizer. A ninth-generation American settler, she is descended from Celtic, Germanic, Nordic, and Indigenous peoples of Ancient Europe. As an active reparationist, her work is guided by intuition, love, and relationships.
Becoming A Good Relative: https://www.goodrelative.com/book
“With a voice of intuitive compassion, Becoming a Good Relative will open your heart’s eyes. This book offers a physical and spiritual prescription for the awakening paradigm shift that is calling all of us into Divine Alignment. Hilary has been welcomed into the ancient ceremonies of Indigenous cultures. She has come to understand the disruption of the sacred natural order of the Universe and its remedy: the principle that everything is related and connected.”
—Basil Brave Heart – Oglala Lakota Elder, Korean War Combat Veteran, Boarding School Survivor, and author of The Spiritual Journey of a Brave Heart
“Hilary Giovale unpacks the legacies of historical harm that continue to afflict American society and shows us a way forward toward healing. This book is for people who want to be better and do better for the sake of generations to come.”
—Sharon Leslie Morgan – Founder, Our Black Ancestry and Co-Author, Gather at the Table: The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery and a Son of the Slave Trade
In relationship with Indigenous peoples, places, and movements, the author discovers her identity as a ninth-generation American settler whose ancestors benefitted from grants of stolen land, the stolen lives and labor of enslaved peoples, and systemic racism. She invites readers into stories of ancestral memory, intuitive knowing, relationships with water and land, grieving, truth-telling, apology, and forgiveness. The journey culminates with reparations.
This book is at the forefront of a budding genre: white women writing about their ancestors’ history as colonizers and enslavers. With accountability to historical context, it offers insight into how racial healing for white people can look and feel. It includes vulnerable personal stories about decolonization, divesting from whiteness, truth-telling, and redistributing wealth and power.
Becoming a Good Relative shares remedies for the debilitating shame that can overtake white Americans when we face our peoples’ colonial past and our current complicity with systemic white supremacy. It offers a unique methodology, supported by African American and Indigenous Elders. To counteract cultural appropriation, the book includes stories of reclaiming European ancestral memory. The appendices contain historical notes, questions for reflection, practical skills and rituals, and recommendations for further reading.
This memoir offers practical strategies for wealth redistribution as well as spiritual teachings on mutual liberation. In addition, it encourages Americans of modest income levels to engage in reparative actions and giving. The author returns all proceeds from the book to the Decolonizing Wealth Project and Jubilee Justice.
Website: goodrelative.com
Instagram: @hilarygiovaleauthor
Other Useful Resources:
Guide to Personal Reparations Plan
Links to Independent Booksellers
Thank you for being a part of this journey with me.
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