Becoming a Good Relative: Calling White Settlers toward Truth, Healing, and Repair (second edition)

Becoming a Good Relative is a courageous and deeply personal exploration of what it means to live in right relationship in a world shaped by settler colonialism, racial hierarchy, ecological crisis, patriarchy, and wealth inequity. In this intimate and unflinching memoir, Hilary Giovale-a white American settler-turns toward the buried histories of her ancestors and the privileges inherited through whiteness. As she confronts ancestral amnesia, land dispossession, and racial injustice, she embarks on a four-year journey of truth-telling, spiritual inquiry, and reparative action.

Drawing on Indigenous teachings, ancestral memory, philanthropy, dreams, ritual, and diverse networks, Becoming a Good Relative weaves together personal narrative and cultural reflection to ask:

• How can descendants of settlers face historical harm without collapsing into guilt or denial?
• How does decolonization look in lived practice?
• How might we move from extraction and hierarchy toward reciprocity and repair?

Through stories of ancestral healing, cross-cultural relationships, earth-based ceremony, land return, and reparations, Giovale invites readers into a process of transformation that is both personal and collective. With a foreword by Yeye Luisah Teish and closing words by Dr. Lyla June Johnston, this book calls readers-especially those of European descent-to step into discomfort, accountability, and courageous love.

Becoming a Good Relative is not a manual for perfection. It is an offering-a pathway toward solidarity with Indigenous and African American communities, racial healing, and a collective future that is rooted in relational belonging. For readers of Robin Wall Kimmerer, adrienne maree brown, Resmaa Menakem, Patty Krawec, Edgar Villanueva, Lynne Twist, Sherry Mitchell, Amanda K Gross, Basil Brave Heart, Alexis Bunten, Louise Dunlap, Annette McGivney, Sarah Augustine, and Nina Simons, this book offers a heartfelt and grounded invitation to re-member who we are-and who we might yet become.