Becoming a Good Relative: Calling White Settlers toward Truth, Healing, and Repair

Hilary Giovale never intended to write a book. However, in 2016, after taking a walk near her home in Flagstaff, Arizona, she heard a whisper: “You need to write a book.” In time, she realized that the journey she had undertaken to discover her ancestors as settlers and immigrants, and to relate that history to the place she called home, was the subject of a book that only she could write.

Giovale’s desire to be a good relative to those who came before her and for those who will come after her drove her to engage in a years-long process to reestablish relationships that are ignored in colonizer cultures. After all, she says, “we are all related: waters, rocks, mountains, oceans, butterflies, trees, birds, flowers, and all people.” What she learned about the history of colonization and its effects on Indigenous, Black, and People of Color cultures (IBPOC) is instructive for others.

Becoming a Good Relative is structured around Giovale’s experiences listening to IBPOC, mostly Dinê (Navajo) friends, observing and participating in their rituals, researching her own ancestors, and finding intersections between colonizers and those who are harmed by colonization. As an American with both a white European settler and native peoples history, she pursued reconciliation between the harm done by her ancestors who owned slaves with the harm that had been done to them by the settlers who drove them from their ancestral lands in Ireland. At the same time, Giovale participated in ancient rites, annual hunger festivals, and national and international conferences for those interested in honoring their relationships with each other and the natural world. Giovale ultimately put into context the histories of her ancestors and her own actions to forgive her ancestors and herself for past harm.

The book is well-organized and structured in a way that allows readers to flip to appendices while reading the narrative to check a historical note or the definition of a term used. The author also includes practices or questions for readers who seek their own transformations to being good relatives.

Vocabulary is important to understanding the story. For instance, Giovale refers often to “teaching dreams,” in which she awakens with a new insight or in which an ancestor or a natural element like water or the mountain has spoken to her. She uses the term “wit(h)nessing” to describe the relationship between knowing and seeing. Referring to the United States as “Turtle Island” reflects the term original inhabitants of the land mass used. The Glossary provides a handy reference section in this regard. I also appreciated the extensive resource list.

This book is relevant to the ongoing conversations about racism, white privilege, and white people’s relationships with people of color. Since the Covid pandemic I have been a member of a book club focused on books that provide new perspectives on Black or Indigenous perspectives, so this book was of great interest to me. It demonstrates how one might become a better ally to those communities. I highly recommend Becoming a Good Relative to readers who wish to become more respectful inhabitants of the world.