“Becoming a Good Relative offers a pathway for settler colonial peoples to comprehend other ways of seeing and feeling the world, and to unlearn the deeply misguided values inherited from a culture of violence. I highly recommend Hilary’s book and the practices within it as a tool to help reclaim soulfulness and grow a culture of peace and caring love for self and others.”

Elder Kathy WanPovi Sanchez, Sayain Circle of Grandmothers Coordinator, Tewa Women United

“Becoming a Good Relative is a prayer and manual for societal change, urging us to reexamine our relationships with history, culture, and each other. Hilary’s exploration serves as a blueprint for engaging in the world with reverence, love, and a deep sense of responsibility towards fostering equitable relationships across difference.”

Taij Kumarie Moteelall, Intersectional Feminist Writer, Director, and Producer

"Readers of this book will embark on an unlearning and learning adventure - unlearning the status quo created by the harm inflicted upon Indigenous peoples by colonial systems, and learning to heal the wounds of colonialism through relationality, respect, and personal reparations." 

Edgar Villanueva, Author of Decolonizing Wealth and Founder and CEO, Decolonizing Wealth Project and Liberated Capital

“Hilary’s journey is supported by deep community, ancestral figures, and liminal experiences.  This is the meaningful and transformational work the world needs, rooted in action while engaging the head, heart, and hand.”

Jude Lally, Scottish Cultural Activist and Artist

“In a world built on and still profiting from slavery, genocide, as well as other forms of incomprehensible settler violence, Hilary offers the most sane advice - to lean into that which gives life: community, our planet, and the ways of being interconnected.”

Dr. David Ragland, Co-Founder and Co-ED, The Truth Telling Project; Director, Grassroots Reparations Campaign; Lecturer on Reparations as Spiritual Practice, Harvard Divinity School

“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 of Gather at the Table: The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery and a Son of the Slave Trade

“Hilary Giovale models courageous exploration of truth telling, healing, and repair. This book is a must read for anyone grappling with their own relationship with cultural identity, race, and colonization.”

Kevin Eppler, Co-Founder, White Men for Racial Justice

“In her groundbreaking book, Hilary encourages us to re-member who we have come from and honor today’s Elders, who are breathing new life into our ancestors’ treasured languages, songs, and stories.”

Sìne McKenna, Scots Gaelic Songs and Stories Teacher

“Hilary Giovale initiates white, European-descended people into the work of stepping into their collective power to dream and to build a different way of living. She provides knowledge and actions white settlers can use to reclaim their full humanity.”

Dr. Anita Sanchez, Nahua (Aztec and Toltec), Award-Winning Author of The Four Sacred Gifts: Indigenous Wisdom for Modern Times

“To write this book Hilary literally climbed, fasted, and prayed in sacred places. All the while she was open to mentors, some of whom serendipitously showed up to help guide her. She is bold, courageous, and most timely in sharing this work of reconciliation.”

Steven A. Darden, Diné Traditional Practitioner

“Becoming a Good Relative offers an invitation for collective liberation. Hilary has beautifully and carefully crafted an offering - a model of how we can create a just economy.”

Dr. Aisha Nyandoro, CEO, Springboard to Opportunities

“With a fearless spirit and authentic boldness, Giovale embarks on an introspective journey, unraveling the intricate layers of her ancestral past to forge a path illuminated by truth—a path aimed at propelling all those who surround her towards an infinite future guided by love, intention, and responsible action.”

Beatrice A. Woody, Global Philanthropic Strategist 

“With a voice of intuitive compassion, Becoming a Good Relative will open your heart’s eyes.  Hilary has come to understand the sacred natural order of the Universe, 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

“This is a profoundly brave book. In sharing her journey, in all its pain and revelation and imperfectness, Hilary has woven both a reckoning and a calling-home that is essential for a shared future of wellbeing and liberation.”

Joanna Levitt Cea, Co-Author of Beloved Economies: Transforming How We Work

“Giovale offers her own story as a pathway for settlers to reach into their own stories for the tools they need to become whole. This book is a beautiful invitation to transform settler histories and live alongside Indigenous peoples.” 

Patty Krawec, Ojibwe Anishinaabe/Ukrainian Author of Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future

“Becoming a Good Relative is an invitation to walk out the door, take a long, slow breath, humbly listen to the people and lands outside, and let our hearts break open with their stories of what we and our ancestors have done. Hilary is holding the door open for all of us.” 

Morgan Curtis, Ancestors and Money Coach and Author of Decolonial Dames of America

“Told with utter honesty, humility, and profound respect, Becoming a Good Relative should be required reading for anyone embarking on a journey toward healing and right relationship. This book humanizes brutal historical legacies, resulting in a journey that’s been blessed by many relatives and alchemized by love.”

Nina Simons, Author of Nature, Culture & the Sacred, and Co-Founder, Bioneers 

“Becoming a Good Relative comes from a place of individual and collective blood memories of acknowledging, healing, and honoring. It offers a guide to first steps in committing to living in Right Relation with our past, present, and future generations.”

Tia Oros Peters, CEO, Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples

“Becoming a Good Relative is a call for all people to come together and honor each other as humans. The author bravely examines her positionality within the cultural and racial divides created to maintain the White supremacy that hurts us all.” 

Alexis Bunten, Award-Winning Author of What Your Ribbon Skirt Means to Me: Deb Haaland’s Historic Inauguration  

“Hilary Giovale and her writing are a breath of fresh air and a clarion call to white folks committed to justice and solidarity. Rather than seeking to become anti-racist in thought, she has done the hard, deeper, alchemic work of what truly lies ahead of us - an undoing of spiritual and mental conditioning that will lead to true liberation.”

Brittíni Gray-Chiquillo, Founder and ED, Mama Scrap’s Incorporated

“The heartfelt stories, raw vulnerability, and hard truths contained in these pages move the reader to a breaking point, where instead of being knocked down they find themselves breaking open and moving toward a more balanced possibility of relationship with the entire living world.”

Sherri Mitchell (Weh’na Ha’mu’ Kwasset - She Who Brings the Light), Author of Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change

“Hilary's story helps other settlers imagine what reconnection can look like for us in the context of forging alliances across the settler-Indigenous divide, and really showing up - moving resources, taking action, and being a dependable ally - for decolonization in the world.”

Eleanor Hancock, Director and Founder, White Awake

“Few Anglo authors are willing to turn the mirror on themselves and face how centuries of settler colonialism has benefitted them personally in the way Hilary has done with this heart-felt, courageous memoir. Ultimately, this book teaches us something hopeful and beautiful — that true happiness is not about having it all, but about giving it all away.” 

Annette McGivney, Author of Pure Land: A True Story of Three Lives, Three Cultures, and the Search for Heaven on Earth, Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award

“Besides being a pleasure to read, Becoming a Good Relative will be a resource for many settler-Americans who are ready to look back for answers. This brave and honest book brought me a lightness of spirit I wasn't expecting.” 

Louise Dunlap, Active Elder and Author of Inherited Silence: Listening to the Land, Healing the Colonizer Mind

“Hilary  joins a growing decolonial movement of folks who are courageously facing the historical wrongs that their ancestors have participated in and making sure that the unearned privileges that have accrued from their actions will not be passed on to future generations.” 

Leny Mendoza Strobel, Founding Elder, The Center for Babaylan Studies, and Editor of Babaylan: Filipinos and the Call of the Indigenous

“Giovale encourages readers to reimagine more equitable and sustainable models of community engagement and solidarity.  Becoming a Good Relative is a timely invitation to embark on a journey of self-discovery, accountability, and collective healing.” 

Erika Danina Williams, Philanthropic Advisor, RSF Social Finance 

"From the vantage point of the Earth and its sacred waters, Giovale’s work clearly explains that challenging the assumptions of hierarchy, extractive logic and White supremacy is in the interest of every one of us: all of humanity, and all of creation. At a moment when ecological overshoot evidenced by climate change makes it clear that we all bear the consequences of colonial logic and the fallacy of perpetual growth, Becoming a Good Relative signals a way to change course."

Sarah Augustine, ED, The Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery and Author of The Land is Not Empty (2021), and So We and Our Children May Live (2023)