“Those who have descended from the colonisers, we carry privilege but we also suffer the need to apologise” 

Landscapes can etch into your very being & create a remembering. Making us feel whole & reminding us that we are just a thread in the complex web of the natural world. While somewhat insignificant your thread has a role to play as a relative to the threads it lies next too. The way we all interact with each other - both human and other than human, will be our making or our undoing.

Hilary Giovale, author of “becoming a good relative” is based in the ponderosa pine forests of Arizona, opposite a reservation & lives next to the sacred mountain of kinship which she now considers to be her most important teacher. This feels like an important conversation to have had - as two white women without indigenous heritage -  it feels uncomfortable to have, and we will forever be learning, but Hilary (a 9th generation settler in the United States) begins the process of unpacking what it means to be in right relationship with the people & place that we each call home - pushing past the burden of white fragility to build pathways of robust healing & reconnection to our landscapes - to reconciliation with first peoples.

She shares what it means to create ancestral alters & how to connect with these elders who’s stories she tells us, are still unfolding.

She reminds us that while the work we have to do is exceptionally confronting, grief won’t kill us & that the time to heal in the bosom of natural landscapes is now.

"Elders are always identified by the community, never by the individual - they are usually unwilling but always shows up for the community, is wise, is generous, is funny, is humble,  Our communities can guide us to where the elders are."

Loved this? Try another:    Indira Naidoo

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We talked about

Being fed a whitewashed mythology that was a narrative constructed to serve the cultivation of industrialisation.

Realising she had been segregated from the truth of her countries culture

Intergenerational task of building right relations - backwards with her parents & forwards with her children

Creating ancestral alters

Eldership

Healing rituals/programs - ritualised apology & forgiveness

The history of settler colonialism has created trauma, damage, theft of knowledge, land & culture.

“Grief won’t kill you”

The relief of grief through letting tears flow

Common threads of wisdom which runs through indigenous cultures regardless of the continent

Going to the land in a reciprocal & respectful way & asking permission to be guided

Asking “how if at all can I help” informs how to be in right relationship

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