E34 - Becoming a Good Relative: Calling White Settlers Toward Truth, Solidarity, and Reparations
September 9, 2025
What does it mean to face the truth of your ancestors’ role in colonization and take responsibility for repair?
Hilary Giovale has spent the last decade tracing her family history back to stolen Indigenous land and the enslavement of African people, and transforming that reckoning into a lifelong practice of reparations, solidarity, and truth-telling.
In this episode of Everlutionary, Hawah Kasat sits down with writer, community organizer, and author of Becoming a Good Relative: Calling White Settlers Toward Truth, Healing, and Repair, Hilary Giovale, to explore the personal and collective work of becoming a “good relative” to the land, to one another, and future generations.
What does it mean to face the truth of your ancestors’ role in colonization and take responsibility for repair?
Hilary Giovale has spent the last decade tracing her family history back to stolen Indigenous land and the enslavement of African people, and transforming that reckoning into a lifelong practice of reparations, solidarity, and truth-telling.
In this episode of Everlutionary, Hawah Kasat sits down with writer, community organizer, and author of Becoming a Good Relative: Calling White Settlers Toward Truth, Healing, and Repair, Hilary Giovale, to explore the personal and collective work of becoming a “good relative” to the land, to one another, and future generations.
What We Explore:
- How Hilary’s life changed after uncovering her family’s colonial past
- Why grief and shame are necessary, but not enough, on the road to repair
- The difference between performative apology and radical apology
- How “white innocence” is constructed, and what it takes to dismantle it
- Why personal storytelling can open conversations that lectures can’t
- The role of discomfort in building meaningful solidarity with Indigenous and BIPOC communities
- How wealth redistribution ties into becoming a good relative
- Why Hilary is donating all book proceeds to the Decolonizing Wealth Project and Jubilee Justice
- A hopeful reminder that healing begins from the inside out and ripples outward
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Find Hilary Giovale:
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Previous guests include: Kerry Docherty of Faherty Brand; Cindy Forde, author of “Bright New World,” and the Founder of Planetari; Dr. Joanna Grace, the Founder of The Sensory Projects; Prince Haru, the recognized leader of the Kuntanawa Nation
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