“How can I become a good relative?” is the inquiry that guides Hilary Giovale’s work in writing, teaching, and reparative philanthropy. It’s a concept Hilary first became familiar with while building relationships with Indigenous communities; a goal to strive toward where we operate in support of the collective human community and of the Earth.
In her book, Becoming a Good Relative: Calling White Settlers toward Truth, Healing, and Repair, she shares with warmth, compassion, and vulnerability her journey as a ninth-generation American settler reckoning with the realities of whiteness; the destructive impact its wreaked on Black and Indigenous communities; and walking the path of healing.
This week, Andy and Hilary discuss divesting from whiteness; the humanizing power and spirit of storytelling; the importance of fostering a connection to the land as a foundation of this work; and ways listeners can commit to practicing reparations in our day to day lives.
All proceeds of Becoming a Good Relative go to Jubilee Justice and the Decolonizing Wealth Project.
"A New National Anthem" by Ada Limón The truth is, I’ve never cared for the National Anthem. If you think about it, it’s not a good song. Too high for most of us with “the rockets red glare” and then there are the bombs. (Always, always, there is war and bombs.) Once, I sang it at homecoming and threw even the tenacious high school band off key. But the song didn’t mean anything, just a call to the field, something to get through before the pummeling of youth. And what of the stanzas we never sing, the third that mentions “no refuge could save the hireling and the slave”? Perhaps, the truth is, every song of this country has an unsung third stanza, something brutal snaking underneath us as we blindly sing the high notes with a beer sloshing in the stands hoping our team wins. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the flag, how it undulates in the wind like water, elemental, and best when it’s humbled, brought to its knees, clung to by someone who has lost everything, when it’s not a weapon, when it flickers, when it folds up so perfectly you can keep it until it’s needed, until you can love it again, until the song in your mouth feels like sustenance, a song where the notes are sung by even the ageless woods, the short-grass plains, the Red River Gorge, the fistful of land left unpoisoned, that song that’s our birthright, that’s sung in silence when it’s too hard to go on, that sounds like someone’s rough fingers weaving into another’s, that sounds like a match being lit in an endless cave, the song that says my bones are your bones, and your bones are my bones, and isn’t that enough?
Show Notes:
Becoming A Good Relative: Calling White Settlers Toward Truth, Healing, and Repair by Hilary Giovale
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