How a White Woman Moves Towards Truth, Healing, & Reparations with Hillary Giovale

This episode is specifically for the white folks who listen to this podcast, and especially white women, because Hillary has written a powerful invitation to her own community to step into deep, ongoing reparative work.

We talk about what it means to be in right relationship, with the land, with ancestors, with communities of color, and how her journey of waking up to the truths of colonization, white supremacy, and historical harm has transformed her life. Hillary shares personal stories, dreams, tears, and the practices that helped her move from guilt to grounded action.

This isn’t a guilt trip, it’s a call to courage. If you’re ready (or even just curious) about what it means to be a better relative in these times, this one’s for you.

Tap in. Reflect. And take action.

Black, Indigenous, and people of color, you’re of course welcome to listen, but feel free to skip this one if your energy’s needed elsewhere.

Grab Hillary’s book + check out resources at goodrelative.com

Guide to Making a Personal Reparations Plan

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• 12:26 (Cont.) How a White Woman Moves Towards Truth, Healing, & Reparations with Hillary Giovale

Transcript

Speaker 0 00:01
So this episode was originally supposed to air before Juneteenth as a way for white people to engage in meaningful reparations work on that day and beyond. But because of the ICE raids and kidnappings that have been going on in Southern California, that's where my energy has been. So hence the delay. I detail a lot of what's been happening here in my experience, helping community, and that in the episode previous to this, in this podcast feed, or wherever you're listening or watching. But even though Juneteenth has passed today and every day is still a really good day for white folks to think about what it means to be a good relative and a good relationship with people around you in the times that we're in. So enjoy. Hi, I'm David Ryan Barcega Castro Harris. All five names for all the ancestors. And welcome back to the Amplify RJ podcast. I rarely say things like this, but this podcast episode today is for white women and white men. So if you're a black indigenous person of color who's listening to this, which I know many of you are, feel free to skip this one. You have a lot of things that you could be doing in the world. And while I appreciate every download, share and listen through, today we're discussing a book called Becoming a Good Calling White Settlers Towards Truth, Healing and Repair. And so in my conversation with Hillary, the white woman who wrote this book, it is her call to her community. So unless you have a lot of curiosity about what's being said or you're someone who is actively inviting other white folks into doing this kind of healing work, you might not need to listen to this one all the way through. And to the white women and to the white men who are the vast minority of this audience, dig in, listen and hear this. Not just as a podcast to put in the background as entertainment, but, but as an invitation to deeper work. Through Amplify rj, I'm inviting people to build and strengthen relationships rooted in equity and trust and repair relationships when harm occurs. And that's all part of becoming a good relative, which Hilary details so beautifully in her book and in this conversation. So with all that being said, here's the invitation to lock in and let's get into it. Hillary, welcome to the Amplify RJ podcast. I want you to be known here in the ways that you want to be known. So who are you? 

Speaker 1 02:23
Who am I? I am a 9th generation American settler of Nordic, Germanic, Celtic descent, which in this country has come to be known as white. And I am a Mother and a writer and a cook for. For friends and family and a walker of forests. And I live beside a mountain of kinship in what is now called Northern Arizona. 

Speaker 0 02:59
That was like seven responses in one. Are you down to go deeper and say, who are you? 

Speaker 1 03:08
Who am I? I am a dreamer. A dreamer about past and also a dreamer of the future. Dreaming back into ancestors and trying to understand who they were, and then dreaming forward into future generations and trying to step up and be a good ancestor in the making. 

Speaker 0 03:35
Who are you? 

Speaker 1 03:38
I am a human being who's connected to Earth and sustained by earth and all of her waters. 

Speaker 0 03:52
Who are you? 

Speaker 1 03:56
I am a creation made of stardust that has come down here on Earth to have an experience in a human body and will someday be going back to the space stars. 

Speaker 0 04:12
Who are you? 

Speaker 1 04:15
I am a friend and a mother and a wife and a sister and a daughter and a relative to many beautiful people and beings. 

Speaker 0 04:37
Who are you? 

Speaker 1 04:43
I am an ever evolving, complex and imperfect child of creation. 

Speaker 0 04:55
And finally, for now, you gave us a lot. Who are you? 

Speaker 1 05:02
I'm an author and a teacher. 

Speaker 0 05:06
Yeah. And that precisely is why we're here. You wrote the book Becoming a Good Relative, and I happened across it, I think from an email from one of your publicist agents, outreach people saying, like, hey, would you like to take a look at this book? And red flags went up, like white woman talking about race. Right. What is this? I did get a copy. I have read it through. I have deeply appreciated the process in which you've really gone on your own journey with this and documented some of it along the way. In our first conversation, you also talked about how you're not making money off of this money. The proceeds from this book are going to reparations funds, which is wonderful. But the book is titled Becoming a Good Relative. And when I think about restorative justice. Right. It is, yes, that repair of harm process. When harm occurs, how do we repair relationships? But how do we also build and strengthen relationships rooted in equity and trust? Leaning on indigenous values of interconnection, including Mithampiyasin, which you talk about. But in La Quecha, again, like all these ideas from indigenous cultures across the world about how to be in good relationship with each other. So to open the conversation, I'm curious, what does Becoming a Good Relative mean to you? 

Speaker 1 06:42
Oh, wow. I love it that you just mentioned all those words, too. I feel like they. They carry such an imprint with them, those. All of those words and concepts from around the world, and they're so important and so, for me, becoming a good relative, one really important part of it is the word becoming, because it's not done. It will never be done. It's a. It's a work in progress, and it is an effort to build relationship and move within relationship in a way that is reciprocal and honoring. And for me, especially right now, the. One of the most important keys to becoming a good relative is to understand the past. And, you know, in the political climate that we're in right now, there's a concentrated effort to erase the past, to deny the past, to cover up the past, to whitewash the past, et cetera. But that is antithetical to where we need to go, in my opinion, because we can't become good relatives without understanding what came before. And the challenge is that many of us in the United States have not been taught accurate histories at all. You know, and so many of us, even if we're highly educated, have gone through the whole system of education and come out with a very different perception that's maybe partially true in parts, but is largely untrue. And so becoming a good relative, one of the first steps for me is that process of re. Education. 

Speaker 0 08:38
Yeah. And, you know, many people. Maybe most people. Most people listening to this already have, like, some inkling of what you're talking about, but most of the white women who this conversation is intended for were socialized, educated, without this consciousness, as were you. Right. What were the moments or what were the relationships that helped you start to unravel these threads of, like, oh, what I thought was true is not true. 

Speaker 1 09:13
Right. Yeah. I. So I live in Flagstaff, Arizona. I've lived here for over 30 years, and I was living here for 20 years with no clue about the indigenous community around here. And there's. The indigenous community is significant because we're right next to Navajo Nation and Hopi land, and I had somehow managed to be living here for two decades, raising children, part of an extended family, et cetera, without understanding that I was on indigenous land and without having relationships with those communities and basically being in complete segregation in a little white bubble. And about 10 years ago, that started to change for me because I started to build relationships with various people in the indigenous community here, and I started to hear these stories that I had never heard before, and they were stunning. They were heartbreaking to me. They were stories about what is known as the Navajo Hopi land dispute, for example, which was actually a conflict that was manufactured by a corporation called Peabody Coal and the United States government to divide and conquer the Dene and Hopi people, you know, and to get. Get a hold of their land so that they could mine coal on that land and make a profit off that land. And so I started to hear all of these stories of displacement and historical trauma and boarding school and, you know, the shame that people feel from having lost their ancestral language, which is the legacy of the boarding schools, etc. And I was just. I just remember feeling like I was being punched in the gut over and over and over. Not that people were being cruel to me at all. Not at all. But it was my conscience responding because I love people, you know, I love them. And I was building these friendships and I was seeing how these situations have hurt my beloveds. And that is what really propelled this journey for me, because I couldn't. I just couldn't stomach it that I had gotten that far in my life at 40 years old and not understood any of that. 

Speaker 0 11:49
Yeah, I mean, what happens in some of those moments, I imagine, are tears. And you mention in the book, and, you know, it's in popular discourse, like how white women tears can be so unhelpful towards our movements for justice. And you offer a slightly different framing for the usefulness of tears and where they're useful and when they might not be. 

Speaker 1 12:16
Right. Yeah, yeah, I. I can share a little bit about that. I. Along the way, you know, there's been a lot of popular discourse about white women's tears, and it's for a very good reason, because white women have used weaponized tears to cause tremendous amounts of harm and terror for communities of color throughout the history of this country. And white women still can use weaponized tears in mixed race movement spaces to do similar forms of harm. But there's another kind of tears that are absolutely necessary because we have to grieve what has happened and we have to process the fact that many of us have been lied to our entire lives. We've been indoctrinated and enculturated into a system of white supremacy that doesn't make space for our full humanity or the humanity of others. Right. And so crying is a natural response. When you realize that and when you start to feel the impacts of that, it is a completely natural and necessary response. And we do need to cry. And so I did a lot of my crying out on the land here in the woods. I did it by the ocean. I did it lying down on the ground. I did it in the snow. I did it at my altar at home. Sometimes I did it with other white people. But even that was seldom but all of that is okay. All of that is perfectly needed and. Okay. But, you know, we. We do need to be careful about using our tears in a way that derails conversations about race or inequity or, you know, puts ourselves at the center of a conversation that's trying to happen. 

Speaker 0 14:10
Yeah. The times where I've been in space where, like, the energy gets sucked out of the room or channeled to, like, the person who's having this realization about, like, oh, I had no idea. I feel so guilty. Like, good. Have those feelings. 

Speaker 1 14:26
Right. 

Speaker 0 14:27
We're trying to do something else here right now. Right. And, like, I have sympathy, empathy for, like, that is a human having a human experience. And it is good that you feel the guilt. It is good that you feel the. Whatever feelings are coming. Right. Feel your feelings. I struggle with that too. And so, like, who am I to say, like, don't feel your feelings, but where you express them and who you expect to do the emotional labor to hold space for you is one of the problems in that. And, you know, you were fortunate enough to come into a relationship with a bunch of people, and you detail so many of these relationships in the book. Who helped guide you towards your relationship with the land, relationship with ancestors, and your altar. How did some of those teachers come into your life when you were coming to these realizations? And just a timestamp. Right? Like 2015ish. Right? 

Speaker 1 15:25
Right. Yeah, yeah. Some of them came into my life. Like, one, for example, is my friend Marie. And we started having conversations about historical trauma because she descends from Dine people. They're a matriarchal culture who were forced to go on the Navajo long walk, which was like an unbelievably traumatic forced march at gunpoint. And they were sent to the Bosque Redondo in Over by Oklahoma, on the edge of New Mexico. And they were put in a concentration camp for four years. And so when Maria and I started talking, we. We had this shared interest in historical trauma. I was a dance teacher at the time, and she was interested in using her cultural frameworks to facilitate healing circles. And so it was in that context of collaborating with each other and designing workshops that that conversation started. Another one was Yay Tish, who wrote the foreword in the book, who's an African American elder. She's an IFA priestess. And. And, you know, she and I struck up this conversation. We were introduced by a mutual friend. And, you know, it was like, right after I met her, I started having these strange ancestral experiences and interventions, and I didn't know who to ask. So I asked her. And lo and behold, she knew what to do to manage these ancestral interactions that were happening in my house. And so that's how our friendship began. And so, you know, when I look back on it now, I just, I constantly reflect on how generous these people have been. It is, it blows my mind. It is unbelievable that they would extend so much of themselves and their generosity and their kindness towards someone who carries the legacy that I do. And yet that has been the story over and over. There has been so much generosity extended to me. And so in some ways, like, you know, I can't even think of this as my book or my work because it's, it's the work of an entire community. 

Speaker 0 17:48
Yeah, yeah. And there does need to be a messenger and someone who, like, puts pen to paper. And anyone who has attempted to write or has written a book, like, knows the labor of love. And I don't know about blood, but definitely sweat and tears. That goes, that goes into it. I want to go back to the teachers, though. I know a lot of people come to this realization and might not know where to go, who to connect with. They don't know. And I think one of the important things that was told to me in a moment where I was looking for connections to ancestors by Fanya Davis, and you can share the story of the specific phase that I'm about to share is pray for your teachers. Like to reveal themselves. Right. And I'm curious what that process looked like for you and how that manifested. 

Speaker 1 18:46
Oh, my gosh, I love it that Fania told you that because those are the exact same words that were said to me. 

Speaker 0 18:52
Yeah. 

Speaker 1 18:53
I was invited to a ceremony on the sacred mountain here that was attended by a bunch of different indigenous folks and like one or two white people. I was extremely intimidated. But. But I had been told the day before, pray for your teacher to find you. And so I put down this very humble offering during the ceremony, made a silent prayer. And that very day I was invited into an indigenous led fasting ceremony. And. And it was a four year commitment to do that. And so I, um. When you pray for your teacher to find you, one thing that's important in my experience is to make an offering because the ancestors want to help us, but we have to ask and we have to show them good faith and reciprocity, generosity and respect. And so, you know, when I put my offering down on that mountain, it took me a long time to understand what had happened. But I believe that she is a teacher an elder, a grandmother. She's very wise. She's known by all the indigenous peoples of this region as a being of kinship. And so that's what she started to do. She started to weave these connections and relationships. And I really feel that that's how I encountered all these people. It was with her help. 

Speaker 0 20:22
Yeah. And, you know, all the people who you've encountered so far are people who have, like, consented to that relationship, who have been generous of spirit, who have been resourced enough themselves to be able to step into that. It is not the move to find your nearest spiritual guide and be like, be my teacher, or, you know, your nearest black woman who, like, wears some traditional garb or like, your nearest indigenous person who is seen as, like, the spiritual person. Like, that's. That's not the move. Right. And be like, can you please be my teacher? 

Speaker 1 21:01
No, definitely not. 

Speaker 0 21:05
But making sure that you're going in with that intention and the openness and like, being willing to follow up on the things that are being asked of you is super important. Right. Because, you know, as we set intentions before we started recording this conversation, there are many people, and I'll say there are many white women who are open to these ideas, and then when they understand what's being asked of them, to be a good relative, to confront their history, to make changes in their day to day life, to make uncomfortable choices that will have impact on their relationships with their family and their chosen and socialized community. Like, a lot of people aren't willing to go there. What gives you or what has given you the courage to make the changes that you've made? Seek out the people that you've been able to seek out. Go on that journey that you've been on for the last decade. 

Speaker 1 22:00
Yeah. You know, I really feel like it is my ancestors driving me forward. It's not even. It's not me as an individual human being. But it's like when I opened a book of family genealogy in 2015, and that's when I learned that some of my ancestors had come here in the 1700s from Scotland, and then they had received land grants and enslaved people in Mississippi. And the realization that I'm a ninth generation beneficiary of that legacy, it just, like lit this fire under me because I realized this has been known in the family for decades. By the time I found that book, it had been known for decades. My great uncle did that research and he wrote that book and he put all that information in there in the 90s, but still nobody was talking about it. In the family. And so it occurred to me, I have to be the one who starts talking about it. And this cycle of silence and amnesia and denial is going to end with me because I'm going to tell my children about it, too. And so it's hard work. It's confronting work. It's not. You know, I've been through many iterations of this that are not pleasant or fun at all. But on the flip side, there, I just feel like we are in the moment right now where this is what the ancestors are asking us to do. And so I'm continually propelled forward by that imperative that they've given me, you know, and sometimes I have to say to them, okay, I need a minute. Let me. Let me take a break for a second. I need to take a breath. I need to go, like, sit down and calm down for a minute. But I always come back to it because it's so compelling to me. 

Speaker 0 24:09
Yeah. I'm reading from the. I'm picking words from the book. Knowing that you carry the epigenetics of the oppressor was a shaking experience for you. Right. You laid down staring at the ceiling for hours before broken sleep finally came to you. And then you woke up with rage. Right. And those feelings can carry us so far. And then those feelings dissipate after time if you decide not to continue to engage or when moments get difficult, when there are challenges and uncomfortable conversations, uncomfortable choices to make. You also mentioned dreams, like in your. Who are you? You're a dreamer. I'm curious how, you know, both your ancestors and your dreams confronted you or have continued to push you to engage in those difficult moments where it's like, you know what? I don't have to do this. 

Speaker 1 25:13
Right. Right. 

Speaker 0 25:13
I can continue my life as an improv group dance teacher. Right? 

Speaker 1 25:21
Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, some of the dreams that I've had that are detailed in the book have also had that effect of, you know, really holding my feet over the fire. Like, there was one in particular where I was. I was taught a practice of praying with a bowl of water and asking the water and a dream to reveal what needs to be seen, and then putting the water under the bed before you go to sleep. And that very night, I had a crazy dream about poisoning ants. I had a huge salt shaker full of white poison, and I was poisoning ants all over the land, all over the tables and the cars and the chairs in preparation for my child's birthday party. And I had been told a long time ago that I needed to make sure that the ants wouldn't ruin the party, and I needed to oppress them and kill them all. And in the dream, at some point, I started to say, oh, no, this is. This is a horrible thing. I shouldn't be doing this. But then the answer was, well, you don't know what else to do. And this is what we've always done, so keep doing it. And then more poison appeared. And so when I woke up that morning, I just. I had. I felt like. I felt like I had lead in my stomach because it was like, oh, no, I. That dream was crystal clear, you know, and. And because I had asked for it through the. The spiritual medium of water and because I had made a prayer, this is kind of what I've been taught. It's like, you have to take that seriously. You can't just abandon that. You know, you. This. This has come to you as a sacred communication, and so you. You have to follow through. And so a lot of the. The insights in the book have been like that. It's been like, you. You have to do it. Like, bowing out is not an option. You know, forgetting about this is not an option. You. You have got to engage. 

Speaker 0 27:42
Yeah. And I was reading, like, where I'm bookmarked right now, like, there's a different dream in this space, but I think, like, the connection is still there. When you are sharing with a friend who's a Hobie Farmer about, like, this experience that you have with confronting the epigenetics of the oppressor in your lineage, his message to you was, and I'm just going to read it verbatim, to love yourself, it's the most important thing because you're the one who can stop the cycle. You must learn how to talk about this in a good way and still not everyone will want to hear it. I'm curious how the not everyone will want to hear it has manifested for you as you've continued to go on this journey. Talk about it in a good way, sometimes talk about it imperfectly and still choose to show up. And I'm asking this for the people listening who are like, I believe in this and like, I've done some of my work, and my community around me does not support me. 

Speaker 1 28:47
Oh, yeah. 

Speaker 0 28:48
How have you navigated that with that message in your ears? 

Speaker 1 28:53
Yeah. That is a common experience. A lot of us who are really committed to this, who are white, find ourselves isolated, find ourselves being ostracized. We're. We're the person who makes everybody uncomfortable at the party, you know, we're the. We're the family member who people are a little bit wary of sitting down with at Thanksgiving. We are that person. We are the. The one that brings up all the shadow material that people are. White culture is very adept at completely ignoring, completely sweeping under the rug. And so I've heard this. This story many times. I've experienced it myself, too, where, you know, you're bringing forward a very uncomfortable message and not everybody wants to talk to you about it. And so they're going to say, oh, not. 

Speaker 0 29:47
It's not the time and place. 

Speaker 1 29:49
Right? It's not the time and place. It's rude. And probably the number one thing I've heard is you shouldn't feel guilty about that. Which is. I've. I've heard that so many times that I've come to realize that that is almost like a script of whiteness that we have all been taught that is totally misguided because nobody's asking us to feel guilty. That's not. That's not the goal. The goal is not to feel guilty. You know, the goal is to move through our guilt and move into accountability, you know, and so it's. But it's. It's like we've all been trained as part of our, you know, acculturation into whiteness, that it stops there. 

Speaker 0 30:42
And how do you press forward? 

Speaker 1 30:45
Well, I mean, for me, the ways that have been most effective in pressing forward are through ritual and prayer and embodied practice. So, like, all kinds of somatic stuff. Moving the body around, dancing, drumming, stomping on the floor. I've done so much lying on the ground and wailing and writhing around and. And then also a lot of ritual. That's. That's about, you know, prayers of forgiveness, prayers of apology, prayers of, like, trying to bring forth the world that we want to see. All of these things are, for me, have been the most helpful things because we can't just do it with our minds. We can't just do it with talking or analysis or, you know, writing or, you know, trying to, like, be right. It's like all of this stuff has gotten stuck in our bodies and we've got to get it out somehow. And so those are the ways that have worked for me. 

Speaker 0 31:54
Yeah, that was a beautiful, practical, grounded answer. And I should have been more specific in my follow up. How do you press forward in relationship with those people or not, who are confronting or antagonistic or dismissive? 

Speaker 1 32:11
Oh, I see. Well, you know, for a while I was getting a little bit stuck because I heard the call that you know, white people need to organize your own. You come and collect your people and like deal with each other and get this done. Right. And so I took that very seriously and I think I pushed too hard in some cases and I alienated people. And then I looked at what was going on and I thought, okay, in some ways it, the, the script gets flipped. Like you're trying to be anti racist, right. You're trying to be a good white person or a good ally, but you're, you end up employing the tools of white supremacy to try to convince and coerce and manhandle people into understanding you. And so it's kind of a paradox, right, because at some point you have to stop if, if people are not ready to hear you. You're, you're just creating harm to yourself and others if you keep pushing. Right? 

Speaker 0 33:22
Yeah. 

Speaker 1 33:23
So I experienced that and then, and then I recalibrated a little bit and I thought, okay, I'm not going to sit in judgment of folks who aren't ready for this conversation, but I, what I am going to do is move toward those who are and I'm going to engage with the groups and the individuals who are ready. And so that is like a full time practice for me now, you know, of working with groups of people, working with individuals and, and just creating a sense of belonging and community around this new identity that is we are all birthing, you know. 

Speaker 0 34:01
Yeah. And one of the things that occurred to me as well is like, yes, it's important to confront the history. Yes, it's important to do the inner work. And I know we're like skipping all the way around this stuff, but even when I think about what it takes to hire black women in leadership, you don't need to know the history and you don't need to have a personal reckoning with your ancestors and relearn the history of this country to see that the black woman in front of you is the most qualified for this job. If you're having conversations, and I don't know how often this is something that you were confronted with interpersonally, but if you, in the space that you're in listening, are having conversations or in positions where you can be influential in decision makings towards equity, have the conversations based on merit, right? If we say that this is a meritocracy, if America is a place where everyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps or whatever, let's evaluate these people based off of what they can bring to the table and the different experiences. And on top of like the qualifications that they're bringing. Right. But let's have a conversation about why over policing not just is like, oppressive to like black and indigenous people, but, like, why do we need more police in our community when those things could be gone to other. When that money could go to other people. Right. You don't have to full on have the conversation about defund the police and abolition, but XYZ overtime money. 

Speaker 1 35:44
Right. 

Speaker 0 35:45
Compared to like, what it would take to house this person. 

Speaker 1 35:47
Right. 

Speaker 0 35:49
Like, it's just a math problem. And if we're having this argument on the, in the term, in the, in the arena of like, meritocracy and like, responsible use of funds, we can organize with people, we can get people to be on, quote, unquote, our side without necessarily having to have like, deep philosophical agreement and like, go on this long spiritual journey together. 

Speaker 1 36:12
Right. 

Speaker 0 36:12
Sometimes, like, the actions are good enough for the moment and we can do the deep work later. 

Speaker 1 36:21
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. Especially if there's an openness to hearing that. 

Speaker 0 36:27
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, there are, like, so many avenues into introducing people to these ideas that aren't just about, like, shame on us for our ancestors and what they did. Right. And like, I'm not saying that that's what you did, and like, that's not the approach that everyone who's listening to this might take. But, you know, sitting where we are in 2025 and people having their consciousness raised, let's say, over the last decade, similar to you, like, I imagine there are lots of similarities along the journey and the struggles of doing this within the context of a community that's not ready for that. I think something that has also helped you. Right. Is the connection not only to the dishonorable ancestors, but ancestors who were honorable. And I would love for you to share a little bit about your exploration into that and how you started that journey. Because a lot of white people, like, I don't know, I'm just white, or like, I'm German and English or whatever, but, like, don't really have connection to what that means. Whiteness strips people of their culture. Right. And you are from somewhere and you are from a place. Right. Like a. Specifically a place and a land. And I'm curious if you'd be willing to share some of those things that you discovered and how that's helped you. 

Speaker 1 37:49
Oh, yeah, for sure. And also I want to mention that it was, you know, indigenous mentors, especially indigenous women, encouraging me over and over to, you know, go learn some of your ancestral language, go find what their Songs were, go find out who they were and what happened to them and why they came over here. It was receiving those kind of messages over and over. And I had a huge resistance to it. I did not want to do it. I was digging my heels in for years. And then finally, I had heard it so many times. And one of my readers on this book was like, this book is not complete until you write the third part. And the third part needs to be about the recovery of your ancestral understanding and your memory. Right. So at that point, I had to go. I really had to begin. And I think what I learned, if I could sum it up, is just I learned that I descend from people both from Celtic and Germanic as well as Nordic culture, who were connected to the earth, who knew how to honor the earth, who had lifeways that were reciprocal and were sustainable and were totally connected to the land. You know, who had thousands and thousands of years of developing their language in relationship with the land, developing their cosmologies and their stories and their archetypes, their deities. And once I began that learning process, and some of it was, you know, learning traditional songs in Irish and Gaelic, I also, I still study with Healing Roots Community, which is a wonderful group. I encourage everybody to check out. And I started to see that, like, this mantle of whiteness and colonizer is not who we always were. Not at all. We had thousands and thousands and thousands of years of history in which that is not who we were. And it's a relatively recent invention. All of that whiteness is an invention. And it was so healing. And it gave me a place to feel really rooted and grounded in myself and who my people once were. And I noticed as I started doing that, even though I wasn't talking about it in the indigenous led community organizing spaces I was in, people could tell. People could tell that I was showing up differently. And that tells me something about the importance of that, because I believe it makes us more trustworthy when we do the work to find out who our people were, what happened to them and why they came over here. 

Speaker 0 40:53
Yeah. Showing up as a. When. When indigenous people introduce themselves. Right. They introduce themselves often in the way that you started with who are you? Right. Talking about their ancestors and the land. And when you show up as that. Not just Hillary from Northern Arizona. Right. There's a. There's a difference there, even in the introduction. And of course, the energy that you carry as you interact in the space, not as a voyeur, a tourist, or as a savior. Right. But as someone who is in community and Is following leadership and in relationship in the best way that you can be a good relative. Just sliding the title of the book in one more time. What has that brought out for you? Because, you know, there's so much that we've talked about, like the struggle, the wailing, the heartache. And of course, there's the flip side to that. Right. There is joy in discovery. There is. I mean, there are other things. So I'd love for you to share, like, the positives of what has come out, not like totally on the other side, but along the journey as you continue to discover. 

Speaker 1 42:10
Right. Oh, yeah. You know, this is the thing. There is so much joy. There's so much joy on this path. There's a process, like you said, of grieving. But then there's something about once you clear enough of those weeds and. And especially for me, moving into reparations is the ultimate joy. It is. It is such a powerful practice. And I have a guide to personal reparations plan that I'll share with you for the show. Notes that anybody can use. It's a Google Doc and, you know, it's accessible to anyone who has, you know, basically anyone who has the capacity to listen to this podcast has the capacity to make a personal reparations plan. And they. They are individual. They come from the heart. They come from your unique interests, assets, skills, talents, passions. They are tailored to you and what matters to you. And so, you know, in my personal reparations plan, I focus a lot on land tax programs. I focus on programs that are maternal health programs for women of color. I focus on, you know, showing up for my local community here, and the list goes on and on. But there is something so healing, so generative, so joyful about that process. And, you know, I facilitate that. Co. Facilitate that for other white people. And people get stuck. It happens all the time. But we tell them you have to keep going. You might feel stuck, you might feel shame or guilt, but keep going, because once you break through those blockages, you will be so such a feeling of liberation. It's unbelievable. Yeah, so there's that and then also the ancestral recovery work that's ongoing. For me, that is a huge source of joy to, like, learn these little tidbits about my people and what they used to do and who they were and, you know, the strengths that they had and the. The plant medicine that they knew about and all the things. So both of those things are sources of joy for me. 

Speaker 0 44:30
Yeah, I appreciate, like, reparations is money. Like, let's not get that Twisted. And that is not the extent of what people are being asked to step into, because it's the relationships like. But being in relationship not as, like, here I'm throwing money, like, let's be friends now. It's, this is where I come from. This is the lineage that I come from, and this is the way that I want to be in relationship. Moving forward, what are you open to? How can I help if at all? And I think, like, that if at all is really important because that gives people choice. Can you talk about the importance of the if at all? 

Speaker 1 45:12
Yes, absolutely. That is a question that was taught to me by Lila June Johnston. She's a dine scholar, musician, artist, speaker. She's an amazing person, and she wrote the closing words in the book, and she taught me that question years ago. And it just became such an aha moment for me, because this is one of the things that we are compelled to do through whiteness is to go in and fix and save people. Right. And the truth is, we don't know what needs to happen most of the time. And so. But we're conditioned to think that we know everything about what needs to happen. And so the if at all on that question is the. Is the recognition that the relationship needs to be consensual. It needs to be reciprocal. It needs to be respectful. And these communities that have been marginalized around this country are not always looking for, you know, a white person to come in and offer them anything at all. And sometimes they're looking for us to come and clean up the trash after an event or do something really humble like, you know, fold the diapers or scrub the pots. And those types of activities are incredibly important. If something like that is asked of you in that. In sitting with that question, how can I help, if at all? It is so valuable to show up and scrub those pots and take out the trash and fold the diapers, because it's a recalibration of the dynamic that is set up here, and it's healing for all the parties involved. That's been my experience. I've witnessed that. It's healing for everybody. 

Speaker 0 47:06
Yeah. It's. Can you be responsive to people's needs? And like you were saying, nope, that's not the best use of my skills. 

Speaker 1 47:14
Right. 

Speaker 0 47:15
What is that doing to the relationship? 

Speaker 1 47:16
Right. 

Speaker 0 47:17
Yeah. You know, within, like, the frameworks of restorative justice and again, repair of relationships. We are not, in our personal reparations plan, saying, how can I go to the descendant for. For most people listening to this, how can I Go to the descendants of the people that my people, my ancestors enslaved or subjugated or oppressed in some way, shape or form, and making direct reparations in that way. There are specific programs around that. Coming to the table is one that I can think of and I'm sure that there are others and there are a handful that you mentioned. But if you think of local, in the community that you exist in, on the land that you inhabit, thinking about the space that you occupy and think about who else is in that space with you, those are often really good places to start. Do you have any recommendations for people who are like, really just trying to make that first step of like, I don't even know like where to begin, who to begin with. 

Speaker 1 48:23
Right. Yes, I would recommend starting locally. I think that's really strong. And you know, do a Google search, find out who the communities of color are around you. Are there any organizations that are working on an issue or some kind of project? You know, reach out to them and you could start. One great way to start is by making a monthly recurring donation on the website. And then, you know, send an email and say, I am interested in offering support. Is there any way that I could support you and wait and hear what that answer is. My experience here has been that when I asked that question right off the bat, I was invited into the meeting and I was asked to take notes. And in my very first meeting with the indigenous community led organization here, I took the notes, which meant that I had to learn everyone's names and how their names are spelled and track what's going on in the meeting. And then at the end of the meeting, one of one of the attendees, who's now a good friend of mine, said, good job. You sat through that whole meeting without trying to take over. So I had to laugh, right? Because it's like, this is what we do. So learn how to laugh at yourself, learn how to take a joke and know that it's not personal, you know, and, and so yeah, just one step at a time like that. And in the book I do talk about people who have had, you know, other ideas of. There are many creative things you can do. I mean, maybe if the community doesn't invite you to show up for the meeting, you offer to drop food off for the meeting or you offer to clean up after the meeting, you know, and so the, the key point is, is to be humble and to be consistent and to keep showing up. Don't bail when it gets uncomfortable. When it's uncomfortable is when you know you're on the right track. 

Speaker 0 50:32
Yeah. Yeah. What world is possible if white women who are listening to this conversation, who engage in your book, who are gonna swipe on the things that we share on Instagram, what world is possible if they take this journey seriously? 

Speaker 1 50:51
You know, I think it's a world where all of our children and our descendants, as well as the children of all the species on this planet can be fed, can be fed spiritually, can be fed literally in terms of everyone has enough food in their bellies and has clean water to drink, where it's a world without war, without this white, heteronormative patriarchy that is killing us all. You know, it's a world without this extractive capitalism that is so harmful. I mean, I know that is a little bit idealistic and pie in the sky, but I really feel like that is possible. If we go through these really difficult topics and we learn how to make reparations with each other and we become a strong, united human family, all of that is possible someday. 

Speaker 0 52:00
Yeah. When you think about your kids, what do you hope that you're passing on to them? 

Speaker 1 52:09
I hope I'm passing on courage. The courage to do difficult things, to look at things that are hard, and to keep going anyway, to persevere and to keep going and to live with a sense of purpose. 

Speaker 0 52:35
Let that be a message to everyone who's hearing your voice right now. Thank you so much. Hilary, how can people support you, your work, this book, and the broader version of this work in the ways that feel generative? 

Speaker 1 52:51
Well, the book is available on my website. I've got two independent booksellers listed there because that is important to support them. And also, you know, I want to mention all of the proceeds from the book sales are going to Decolonizing Wealth Project and Jubilee Justice. So in a way, by purchasing this book, you are making your first reparative action, because those organizations, that's exactly what they do. And so my website is goodrelative.com and I love to hear from people. I love to hear from readers. I'm also on Instagram and Facebook and. And, yeah, I teach classes and workshops occasionally, and those are always on the events page of my website. So would love to see you and chat. 

Speaker 0 53:41
Beautiful. Of course, all of those things are linked below wherever you're watching and or listening to this. I hope this was helpful and I hope you take action from our lips to your ears. Go and build the world that we want to see. Thank you all so much.