June 10, 2025 • 56 mins
In this episode of Cults and the Culting of America, host Scot Loyd and Daniella Mestyanek-Young (KnittingCultLady) sit down with Hilary Giovale—a ninth-generation settler living among Indigenous communities in Northern Arizona. Hilary opens up about her journey from segregation to engaging deeply with Native communities, emphasizing how re-education and personal healing can unravel the lasting wounds of colonialism.
Hilary discusses the trauma inflicted by Indigenous boarding schools and the persistent impact of white supremacy on both marginalized communities and white culture. By practicing ancestral reverence and focusing on actionable reparations—like supporting sacred landscape protection and Indigenous-led initiatives—Hilary and her guests illustrate the transformative power of honest dialogue and community-based healing. For more on Hilary’s work, listeners are encouraged to visit her website, GoodRelative.com.
Hilary's Links:
- Her Book: Becoming a Good Relative
- Guide to Making a Personal Reparations Plan
- An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States, by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
- My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, by Resmaa Menakem
- Reclaiming Our Indigenous European Roots, by Lyla June Johnston
- Listeners can donate to the Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition to support the continued research and documentation
Daniella's Links:
You can read all about my story in my book, Uncultured-- buy signed copies here. https://bit.ly/SignedUncultured<
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Cults and the Culting of America podcast.
(00:02):
My name is Scott Lloyd along with my friend, Daniella Mestenec Young, knitting cult ladyherself.
And Daniella, it looks like you've got the thread actually going off screen there.
I'm imagining a big ball of yarn, like sitting just off camera and you're kind of pullingit as we go.
Am I right?
(00:23):
it's in my purse actually, but yes, that is how it goes.
Very cool.
Well, it's good to uh see you again.
It's good to have all of our viewers tuning in.
And I'm thrilled for our guests to be joining us.
uh Hillary, it's a pleasure to have you tonight.
We're glad that you're here.
Why don't you take a moment and introduce yourself to our audience?
(00:48):
Sure.
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm delighted to be with you.
And let's see, I am a ninth generation settler of various European lineages.
I come from Celtic, Germanic and Nordic peoples and the very ancient indigenous peoples ofEurope.
(01:08):
I live on Hopi, Havasupai, Dene, Apache, Pueblo land among other nations in what is nowcalled Northern Arizona.
And here in this community, we live at the base of a sacred mountain of kinship.
And this mountain has been revered by all the nations of this region since the beginningof time.
(01:32):
And she is known to be a female presence and she is a being of kinship.
And where I'm sitting right now, she is directly over my right shoulder to the north.
So.
uh
I always like to honor her and acknowledge her because I feel like I wouldn't have gotteninto this path that I'm on if it weren't for living at the foot of this mountain.
(01:57):
And speaking of your path, tell folks what you do and who you serve.
Well, you know, what I do is really interdisciplinary.
It has many legs that go out in different directions.
But um this path started for me about a decade ago.
And it began when I began building relationships with Indigenous members of the communityhere in Flagstaff.
(02:25):
And prior to that time, I had been living here for over 20 years and living in totalsegregation.
Like so many communities in the United States, it's possible to live here in a completelysegregated way where the communities are not having any contact with each other at all.
And so once I started having relationships with indigenous community members here,everything started to rapidly change for me and I started to see everything really
(02:55):
differently.
And so um since then I have...
uh
I've been supporting a lot of Indigenous community-led organizing here.
I have started a path of Repair to Philanthropy, and I wrote a book which was published inlate 2024, and the title is Becoming a Good Relative, Calling White Settlers Toward Truth,
(03:22):
Healing, and Repair.
And so I've been facilitating groups based on that book.
and teaching classes and just having my finger in all kinds of pots.
Very good.
What made you decide to write the book?
Like, you know, it's always such an interesting question of like, where, like what wasthat journey like?
(03:46):
And what was the point that you felt like you had something you needed to say?
Yeah, you know, it's such a good question.
It's like writing this kind of book is terrifying for a well-behaved white lady.
You're not supposed to do this, right?
And so and I have always been a well-behaved white lady.
(04:07):
And, you know, about 10 years ago, things started to happen where, you know, furniture wastipping over, books were falling off shelves.
I was having these really intense dreams and I reached out to a friend of mine whose nameis Yaya Louis Satish.
She's a high priestess of the Ifa or Risha tradition.
(04:30):
I said, these things are happening, what do I do?
She suggested a Dilugun reading, which is a divination with Calrishel's and her tradition.
She began the divination and she said right away, your ancestors are whispering in my earabout a book that you've already written.
(04:51):
And I hadn't written a book.
And so I told her, know, I can't do that.
I don't know what you're talking about.
And she said, um they're telling me it's already written and you need to get out of theway.
And then she herself is a very prolific.
author and teacher and storyteller.
(05:12):
And so she supported me by giving me some writing prompts, giving me a deadline andbasically saying, you have to do this because it's already been ah dictated by the
ancestors and you are just standing in the way of it happening.
You know, I'm really impressed that you have the ability to move within these communitiesbecause I think oh as we talk a lot on this program about the meta cult of white
(05:44):
supremacy, a lot of times we talk about the problematic issues that we face as a nation,but rarely do you hear people actually making inroads into those communities, endeavoring
to heal.
the wounds of the past.
And I think just from what you briefly described, you sound like someone who has theability to do that or is endeavoring to make the effort to do that.
(06:13):
Absolutely, I'm making the effort all the time.
And you know, I make a lot of mistakes too.
And I've had to look at myself many times.
It's an ongoing process to look and go, well, did I miss the mark there?
Yes, I did.
You know, and then try to self-correct and do better the next time.
(06:35):
And so I think that's one of the issues with the cult of white supremacy is that we've allbeen
brainwashed to think that um we can't do those things.
We don't have the skill to do those things.
People are going to get mad at us if we try that.
that's just false.
mean, we just...
(06:55):
yeah, perhaps like me, you've discovered uh people are going to get mad at you whether youdo anything or you don't do anything at all.
So you might as well do something and try something, right?
But that is a great attitude.
And that is a way that all of us who happen to look like the three of us should approachcommunities that are different than us with a posture of humility and
(07:23):
genuine intellectual curiosity, because that is something that helps us navigate the worldin which we live.
And certainly that attitude that says, I don't know what I don't know, but I'm here tolearn.
That's right, that's right.
And also another thing I have found really helpful is that, know, I, like many otherchildren who were brought up to be white, we were indoctrinated into a certain set of uh
(07:54):
historical myths about this country, about who we are, about who our ancestors were.
And I have had to very intentionally and purposely go back and re-educate myself.
And that is a uh critical step, I think, in beginning to engage with communities of color.
(08:16):
Because if we haven't taken, put our work in to re-educate ourselves and re-examine theassumptions that we were given as children, then we are really going to be putting our
foot in it all the time and creating a lot of harm.
even when we're not meaning to create harm, we will, you know?
(08:36):
Yeah, you know, I think it's really important, a couple of the things you mentioned onthis journey.
So, you I talk about in my 10 part model of cults that you have this skinny white woman incults.
And I say, you know, good women in America are supposed to be quiet, skinny, and a lightshade of beige.
You know, and I think at some point when we wake up to the cult of white supremacy, we'relike, ew, I don't want to do that anymore.
(09:02):
But then like,
we can kind of just start going crazy, spraying color everywhere, just kind of doing abunch of stuff if we don't take the time to educate ourselves.
that, I know it comes from a good place, but I think we can get very white savory, right?
(09:23):
White savory about wanting to help once we realize there is inequality.
without taking the time to really educate ourselves first, because obviously theseconversations have been going on for such a long time.
Right, exactly.
And you know, too, like in my reevaluation and relearning, I've come to see that whitenesshurts us too.
(09:51):
And unless, until we get to the point where we realize how much whiteness is actuallyhurting us and keeping a lid on us and preventing us from living into our full capacity.
then it's very easy for us to fall into that savior mode.
(10:12):
And we really need to take whiteness and white supremacy apart.
It's an outdated system and it's a system that's always been based on power over andcruelty and hoarding wealth and resources and land.
Yep.
Yeah, I think you're exactly right.
was speaking with someone yesterday and we were talking about this false idea that isthrown around a lot, especially in the political atmosphere, which all of us are enduring
(10:44):
at the moment.
And this gentleman was talking about the fact that for so long, people have lamented thisquote unquote idea of identity politics and that somehow
people lead with their race or their sexual orientation or their ethnicity or their genderin an effort to identify who they are.
(11:11):
And what I pointed out to this gentleman is that, well, as a white person, we do this allthe time.
We don't have to say it because it's assumed.
We all are born into a world that is made
by people who look like us for people that look like us.
(11:33):
And you know this especially well dealing with indigenous populations that the horribleatrocities that were committed by white people, uh basically stealing nations, decimating
populations, uh relocating people uh out of
(11:57):
their ancestral homelands, all of that compounds over time.
And just because it happened in the past doesn't mean that it doesn't impact us today.
So as someone who has gained some inroads into these communities, what kinds of questionsdid you ask?
(12:19):
uh What kinds of mistakes did you make?
What did this learning process look like for you specifically?
Well, you know, I have definitely made the mistake many times of thinking I know best, ofjumping in and behaving like a white savior and trying to dictate what needs to happen and
(12:44):
when.
And that's an impulse I still fight with all the time.
It is like hardwired into my psyche.
And I think that's just from the process of having been
brought up and acculturated into whiteness.
I mean, it's something I'm going to be struggling with probably as long as I live.
But at least I know now to look for it.
(13:06):
And I know I've learned to keep my mouth shut until I've had some time to kind of filterdown through the layers.
um You know, in the beginning, I did what, you know, Robin D'Angelo calls white womentears.
(13:26):
of hearing really sad stories and being in witnessing situations that are super traumaticand then immediately reacting with emotion.
um And I've learned how to kind of moderate that.
And sometimes those tears need to be saved for later.
(13:49):
It's not that we shouldn't be crying those tears.
definitely have to.
clean our hearts and let that emotion out because this colonial project is soheartbreaking.
But, um you know, doing it uh in a mixed race group is not always a good idea.
It's often not a good idea.
um And, you know, just so many things along the way.
(14:15):
One thing that I've learned that is a helpful tool that I like to share with people
This was taught to me by a Dene woman named Lila June Johnston.
She wrote the closing words in my book and she was also a tremendous mentor and uh gave alot of input on the manuscript as it was being written.
And uh she taught me this question of how, if at all, can I help?
(14:42):
And what that looks like is when if you are invited into a community space that is
with another community other than a white one, you can simply just sit with that questionin your mind, in your heart, and wait and see what shows up.
(15:02):
And sometimes you can actually ask that question too, verbally, out loud.
But that question is kind of a guiding inquiry to live with when you're making theserelationships, when you're beginning.
um
honestly, as you continue as well.
It's a guiding principle to sit with that.
(15:24):
And the thing is about that question, how, if at all, can I help is a lot of time theanswer is not what we think it will be.
You know, like I might think that I'm really good at, you know, building websites and thatthis this group needs a website built by me.
(15:44):
But in reality,
maybe what they need is someone to come and wash dishes after the community meeting, youknow, or bring a dish to share or take notes at the meeting.
And so those are the types of things that I have found myself doing a lot.
you know, it's easy to sometimes think, well, this isn't a good use of my time or, youknow, I have more skills than this, etc.
(16:11):
But
But the truth is there's something super healing about showing up with humility and thatlevel of service.
Yeah, and I also think that like, once you're deeply embedded in that community, you'regoing to understand what you can do to help and like what, what the struggles are, right?
(16:35):
If that makes sense.
And you know, I, I have another podcast called Hey White Woman, and it's me and a blackwoman and we are deconstructing the cult of white supremacy kind of precursor, I feel like
to what you've done with, with your book.
But, um,
my, where was I going with this?
no.
(16:56):
It ran away with me.
Oh yeah, it was just, we were saying how, you know, so often, right, when people sort ofhave the crack in the brainwashing with, my gosh, like this is white supremacy, we live in
this system, then it's immediately, how can I help?
And sometimes it's just like, it's hard to explain.
(17:18):
to people I think, because it comes from such a good place.
But even that impulse that immediately, like we're the person that can help, is part ofthat white supremacy that we've been taught.
like so, so often I think the answer is just like, just sit, let's just learn.
ah In.
(17:38):
a better question might be, what can I learn?
What is it that I need to learn from you?
And I'll shut up and listen.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yeah.
And also, I think the realization that if you sit with that question, if what I learnedfrom you might be something that makes me super uncomfortable, right?
(18:01):
Like talking about manifest destiny and westward expansion and the Native Americanboarding schools in which children were kidnapped and put in these institutions and
experienced.
horrific abuse.
And um I can't tell you how many times I've heard stories that just like gut me to thecore.
(18:25):
um But that's part of what we have to do because those stories haven't been told.
White supremacy totally erases those stories, denies those stories, wants to pretend thatnone of this happened.
I'm in the process right now of working with a group of folks
to organize a fundraiser for the National Native American Boarding School HealingCoalition because all of the federal funding was cut that Congress awarded to research and
(18:56):
document those boarding schools.
And this is an example right here where our current regime is actively trying to suppressand undermine histories that are still totally alive and impacting families.
all over this country.
It's unbelievable how profound that wound still is.
(19:22):
And it was on purpose, too.
It was done to purposely assimilate them, take away their culture, their identity, theirlanguage, their land, et cetera.
And so we can't let that happen.
you know, so I mean.
(19:42):
That's another thing too, is that there are ways that that organization I mentioned is anindigenous led organization that needs to raise this money that was taken away.
So that's an example where there is a call being made for support and we can all step into that type of request.
(20:04):
And I think you make an incredible point there, especially during times uh in which itseems like uh from the loudest podiums in our nation, the truth uh is no longer relevant.
uh I think the most revolutionary thing that we can do in times like this is tell thetruth, tell the stories, uh communicate to others, to anyone who is willing to listen uh
(20:32):
about what
actually happened uh in our nation.
I'll never forget uh the profound uh sadness that swept over me the first time I saw thatfamous picture, you mentioned Manifest Destiny.
So there's that, I forget the name of the picture and the artist, but there's that angelicbeing, uh porcelain white that is leading the way.
(21:00):
The settlers are coming behind her.
and she's driving out the darkness.
And of course, the darkness is represented by indigenous populations and things of thatnature.
And that is one of the most famous paintings of that era to represent the history of theUnited States.
(21:22):
And it's a lie, right?
It's based on a lie.
And then, of course, I believe it was during uh Trump's first term.
He got up and famously
made that speech about, you know, Western expansion and all of the wonderful things, quoteunquote, the wonderful things that our ancestors did to found this nation and all of it
(21:48):
again, a lie.
So in moments like this, one of the greatest things that any of us can do is to tell thetruth, repeat the truth, repeat it again.
That's right, yeah.
And I have found too, the culty nature of this culture, this whitewashing, is one thattends to shut us down as white people.
(22:21):
We tend to become very analytical and intellectual about it, right?
And that's one reason that we always like to argue.
with when presented with uncomfortable facts, with things that make us feel shame.
And part of undoing the brainwashing of that cult narrative is to actually feel it.
(22:44):
And so that has been a big part of what I've learned to do over the last decade is toreally let it in, let it in and feel how depraved it really was and is, continues to be.
and really give that grief back to the earth and ask for help from the earth in buildingresilience to keep going.
(23:10):
Because, you know, this is another aspect of whiteness is that we're told that, you know,we don't have to feel uncomfortable things.
We don't have to feel the sadness.
We don't have to grieve.
But in reality, we do need to grieve because
This system is hurting us.
It's taking away our humanity too.
(23:32):
When we're always numbed out and not engaging with all of the horrible things that weredone in our name.
Our ancestors did these things in our name.
We're the beneficiaries of what our ancestors did for us.
And so um that to me is a really important piece of that is that we need to do our ownhealing work.
(23:55):
Yeah, that's very important.
um I have been in my series reading through this book called White Women Get Ready, HowHealing Post Traumatic Mistress Syndrome Leads to Anti-Racist Change.
It was pretty great how it happened because I got your book and I got this book basicallyat the same time.
And so I've been like, like learning really in tandem.
(24:19):
And what both of you have emphasized is
we have to heal, right?
And you said this earlier about kind of the lies of white supremacy or like how we're notbetter off.
And I get asked this question, like, you're a white person, right?
(24:39):
So why would you want to take down white supremacy?
And I always say, like, the promise of the cult is always a lie, right?
And the promise of the cult of white supremacy is that white people will be better off.
And while we are better off than other people who weren't socialized as white, we're notbetter off altogether, right?
(25:02):
So it's like exposing this lie.
And then to your point, what has that done to us, right?
Just the three of us sitting in this room, all of that generational trauma being handeddown.
from the violent side, from the abuser side, from the side of the people taking advantage.
(25:24):
Right, exactly.
I just finished reading that book by Amanda K.
Gross, too, and I love it.
I love her book.
I love how there are many similarities between our books and then there are alsodifferences, too.
yeah, uh one of the things for me that really sticks out is this connection with land.
(25:54):
Because if you think about where did our people come from?
They came from Europe, right?
But we all descend from people who prior to the 1600s, the concept of whiteness didn'texist.
It was written into law here in the colonies that would eventually become the UnitedStates.
(26:15):
And our people, when they were living in England and Germany and Spain and France, werenot considered white.
They had whole other identities and cultures that became lost and broken and severedthrough the process of assimilation when they moved over here.
(26:36):
so um for me, looking back in history is really important because this white people get sothreatened, right?
We get very threatened when we're faced with these topics over here.
But that's because we've been drinking the Kool-Aid of
this is all we've ever been and all we can be.
And that's not true.
(26:59):
We can be somebody else.
Like Resma Menakim says in his book, um My Grandmother's Hands, he calls on white peopleto create a new culture for ourselves and one that is based in somatic awareness and
embodiment and expressing our emotions, et cetera.
(27:21):
um
So we have that capacity and I hope that with Amanda's book and my book and many otherbooks that are coming out right now, this new culture is going to start to build and these
discussions will start to happen.
A moment ago, you mentioned a really important concept that I want to follow up on, andthat's this idea of resilience in times of adversity.
(27:45):
And certainly by no means am I or any of us saying that, uh you know, as white folksliving in this culture, that we're having a hard go of it, especially compared to people
of color, black people, people being summarily, uh you know, uh taken out of this countryand shipped to other places.
(28:06):
Um, but I do want to say that, you know, I find it difficult sometimes to stay engaged andI, Danielle, I'll direct this to you as well, because I know that, that you're someone who
deals with content like this on a daily basis and you're immersed in it.
Where do you find, how do we find resilience to stay the course during these difficultdays?
(28:33):
Um, to me, I feel like.
If I wanted to, right, there's something that happens every day that I could post about,that I could talk about, that I could lament uh every single day.
oh June is mental health awareness month.
But there are times, right, that I've got to take a break for my own mental well-being.
(28:53):
So talk a little bit about resilience and the work that you do and why also self-care isimportant in that process.
Yeah, would you like to say anything first, Daniela?
No, I'll let you go first.
Ha ha ha!
well, I can share that um one of, I totally agree with you.
We cannot flame out.
(29:15):
This is a long process and we've got to stay strong and grounded and toe the line, youknow?
And so um I think for each person, each one of us will have something different that isthat source of self-care and being grounded in resilience.
For me,
um Strangely enough, one of the things that gives me the most strength is I've got anancestor altar in my dining room.
(29:45):
And, you know, early on in my journey 10 years ago, I found out that I had ancestors whohad moved from the Scottish Highlands to North Carolina in 1739.
They received land grants and then they went down to Mississippi three generations laterand began enslaving people and received more land grants.
(30:07):
There was one signed by Andrew Jackson that I know about.
And so I'm a direct descendant of both the colonial land grab and slavery projects.
um
It's ironic, right?
Because why would someone like me want to honor and sit with their ancestors?
(30:29):
But it's kind of a paradox.
Sitting with my ancestors and working with my ancestors and listening to them and feelingthem and, you know, learning to sing some songs in Gaelic and Irish and bringing them
flowers and asking for their help in
unraveling this legacy they left me is actually one of the things that gives me the moststrength.
(30:54):
And so, um you know, that altar that has a rocking family rocking chair in front of it isone of my most important places.
Another important place for me is going out in the woods and sitting with the trees.
You know, I've learned that on the Nordic and Germanic side of my family, in thatmythology, we are descended from trees.
(31:18):
we are actually the children of the trees.
So when I go out in the Ponderosa pine forest here, I'm sitting with my people and youknow, the tree people and the ancestor people and you know, the river people and the ocean
people, the mountain people, the grasses, the flowers, all of these people are a lot moresane than we are right now.
(31:43):
And so I like to sit with them.
and listen to them and be in silence with them um because the human world is extremelychaotic right now.
you know, for me, it's a balance of that quiet time, that listening time, and then findingthings that are really purposeful and moving into very intentional action, maybe on one or
(32:08):
two specific issues, you know?
Like this boarding school issue for me is something I'm
deeply passionate about.
And so I'm putting my energy there.
And I'm also putting my energy into the protection of sacred sites.
And those are my two big issues right now.
And so there are 10,000 other issues, but my hope is that each one of us will pick acouple and really focus.
(32:39):
Yeah, I love that.
em I was gonna say that one of the things that gives me strength is that I live inMaryland and I am surrounded by incredibly strong communities of black women.
like with some of them I am invited to engage and with some of them I'm just observing,but.
(33:01):
You know, this is a community of women who have always suffered incredible hardships inthis country and they know how to survive and thrive and push back.
And that has been like such good learning for me going through all of this.
um And it really has helped me see kind of the whiteness and the, you know, some of thestuff that we really don't wanna unpack.
(33:30):
So I'm really grateful for where I live and I wonder if I would be freaking out a lot moreif I wasn't somewhere that kept me so grounded, honestly.
And then also, I just think, yeah, when you're gonna do this kind of work, I think anykind of social justice work, you are going to have to figure out your balance, whatever
(33:55):
that means.
I'm a kind of person that likes to do
the same things every day, because I like that comfort.
But I also like to be done working at 3 p.m.
almost every day, except right now.
um And I tune out and I craft and I hang out with my family, you know, and I go outsideand we have real connections in our community of like real people that we talk to.
(34:24):
So this kind of like.
because in my work I have to be so connected to all the bad stuff that's going on.
I mean, I'm a scholar of tyrants and bad guys, but it doesn't have to be this verynegative thing, I guess, if you are engaging intentionally as your job, like you said, as
(34:47):
the couple things you care about, but you also have to make sure you have balance.
And this is another thing that I have really learned from communities of color, which is,know, white people act like everything is a big deal.
Everything is some big thing and everything is so important when like the reality is likefortunes rise and fortunes fall.
(35:08):
And like this is the fight in America, right?
Like, or progressives and people who want equality for everyone are always fightingagainst the people that want to drag us backward.
And it's not gonna happen, like one of us is not gonna come save the world, like it's notgonna happen quickly.
(35:28):
It's gonna be all of these little pushbacks.
um And I think just, you know, just understanding that, right?
That there's no line when we're like, okay, there never was.
It's just now things seem a lot more kind of important, like they're blowing up, but thisis what America always has been.
(35:49):
And honestly, I wonder what you think about this, but honestly, I kind of feel like we hadto have this administration to just blow up all of the cracks and put everything in
people's faces.
Yes, I agree.
You know, I remember on the election day in 2016, I was at an inter-tribal gathering.
(36:14):
And so there were Indigenous people from all over the United States, Canada, SouthAmerica, and then there were maybe five white people there.
And we all came down after getting the results of the election in the morning down to thehotel ballroom.
for the conference to start.
(36:35):
And the white people are all crying.
They're all beside themselves.
Everyone's freaking out.
And I'm just watching like, how is this gonna unfold today?
And you know, it was an entirely indigenous led event.
So what happened is that one after the other, the elders got up, the speakers got up, weprayed.
(36:59):
We put the offerings down, the cornmeal down.
We spoke about beauty, the Dene concept of Ho-Jon, beauty before me, behind me, above me,below me, et cetera.
And so that schooled me so deeply in 2016 because I was in this little bubble for aboutthree days after the election.
(37:26):
And then we drove home and progressive white America is freaking out, right?
And then it's been the same thing this time too, in this election cycle.
the calmness that I've seen friends of color holding, the calmness and the joy, therefusal to participate in the chaos is truly inspiring to me.
(37:56):
Because I'm still finding it very easy to freak out, right?
Because I've been...
I've been brought up this way.
I've brought up to be responsive and reactive, but I'm really trying to follow theirexample.
Well, thank you both for sharing that.
That's incredibly helpful.
I think it will be helpful to a lot of our listeners.
It's certainly helpful to me.
(38:18):
Hillary, a moment ago, you mentioned two particular issues that you're uh endeavoring tostay focused on, the boarding school issue.
And I forget the other one that you mentioned, but talk a little bit about those and tellus why they're important to you at this moment.
(38:40):
Yeah, okay.
Well, the boarding school issue is important to me because of being in relationship withIndigenous peoples, which I know many of us in this country do not have access to those
communities because those communities have been pushed to the margins in a lot of casesand we're not integrated.
We're segregated.
(39:01):
So I live right by Navajo Nation, right by Hopi land.
And so I have access to a lot of those relationships.
And in those relationships, I have heard it over and over that um the boarding schooltrauma is extremely deep and profound.
um I'm friends with a 91-year-old Oglala Lakota elder in Pine Ridge.
(39:27):
He was sent to a Catholic boarding school in 1938 where he was punished for speaking hislanguage.
He was beaten.
He was shamed.
for his culture and spiritual practices, et cetera.
There were children being pulled out of the dorms by priests at night and being molested.
(39:49):
They were living in a military style, like a concentration camp.
Forced labor, children disappearing, no one knows where their child went and if they'redead or alive.
All of these are part of the stories of that legacy.
And there are people alive today who went to those schools, or in many cases, whoseparents and grandparents did, and they broke people.
(40:22):
They hurt people so deeply um by taking away culture and language and identity.
And so that really matters to me because that is a deep traumatic wound that is still.
just under the surface for a lot of Indigenous communities.
And um we are not going to be able to heal until the truth is told, until all the missingchildren have been identified and, you know, their remains have been brought home, until
(40:55):
the stories have been told, until all of the records have been digitized so that everybodycan access them, until all the oral histories are collected from all of the elders, etc.
So it's really to me, it's really about healing.
We cannot move on until the truth is told.
So that's one thing.
And then the other the other issue I'm really uh passionate about is the protection ofsacred landscape.
(41:22):
So like I mentioned, I live next to a sacred mountain of kinship.
And on this mountain, there is a ski resort that is manufacturing snow out of reclaimedsewage water.
So imagine.
If in your synagogue, your cathedral, people were dumping toilet water into the middle ofit.
(41:43):
That is it's the equivalent.
Right.
And so I've been working with, um you know, the indigenous community here for the lastdecade on the protection of that mountain, on trying to get the ski resort to, you know,
show some respect to not keep expanding their business.
(42:05):
based on artificial snow in a changing climate, et cetera.
So um that's an important issue to me.
Another issue that's important in Arizona is the protection of Oak Flat, which ishappening with Apache Stronghold and Dr.
Winsler Nosey and his family.
They just uh appealed to the Supreme Court to protect that land and they refused to takethe case.
(42:31):
So there's our federal government once again.
um you know, siding on behalf of white supremacy and settler colonialism.
For those that may not know, uh correct me if I'm wrong, but the history of the atrocitiesof boarding schools, that was an effort on part of the United States government to
(42:54):
assimilate these communities.
Am I right?
Can you fill in some of the gaps maybe for our listeners?
Yeah, that's right.
It was a collusion between the federal government and religious institutions.
So all kinds of Christian denominations participated.
They often received payment from the feds in order to do this.
(43:16):
And children, know, four, five years old, six years old, were literally kidnapped.
put in wagons and taken away from their families.
Their families often wouldn't know where they were.
Or if they did know, they were prohibited from coming within distance of the school.
(43:38):
They were not allowed to visit their children.
My friend Basil Braveheart in Pine Ridge, um he was taken to a school that was only twomiles from his home.
but he might as well have been in another country because he was not allowed to go homefor nine or 10 months out of the year.
(43:58):
And then when he would go home, his grandmother would basically help undo the brainwashinghe had received in Catholic boarding school and say, no, we don't believe in sin and
punishment and hell.
that's not part of our cosmology, that's not part of our way, things like that.
(44:22):
And she made sure that he learned his language and um was kept intact as a human being.
uh But many children didn't have that opportunity.
Many of them weren't able to go home and were deeply assimilated.
And that's one of the hallmarks of um the problematic nature of the history of the UnitedStates is that once that decision was made to uh put ethnicities in two categories, either
(44:58):
white or black, white or brown, white or people of color, um there was
this decision that was made on a policy level by the United States that we're going totreat people that we perceive to be white different than those that we look at and label
(45:20):
brown or black.
The brown and black people, the people of color, cannot hold on to any of their culture orany of their roots because we
fear or we deem that to be detrimental to our unity as a nation.
But for those ethnicities, those cultures that we labeled white, we celebrated themreturning to their roots or their particular uh cultural aspects, whether it's food or
(45:55):
music or language even.
uh Whereas we did not give those freedoms and liberties
to people that we labeled black, brown people of color.
And I think that's one of the sad legacies that our nation refuses to acknowledge.
That's right.
And you know, there was even a time too where, you know, immigrants from Southern Europeand Eastern Europe, like Italians and Greeks, were treated very much like that too.
(46:25):
They were forced to assimilate.
They were shamed for their clothing, their language, their food.
They were meant to assimilate into a WASPy identity, you know?
And so um it's happened to many groups.
But more recently, all of us basically who are fair complected get the advantages and theprivileges of whiteness bestowed on us in some way or another.
(46:51):
Yeah, that's the reality.
hard concept for people to accept.
That can especially be a very hard concept for trauma survivors to accept who are whiteand who have not been privileged by any means other than their whiteness, right?
(47:14):
And I know like that's something.
We talk to a lot to my audience, Scott talks a lot about it to his audience, justre-emphasizing that even though we might have come from poverty or from incredibly abusive
situations, we have that collective advantage of, I mean, quite literally what whitesupremacy built.
(47:38):
um And that is just the reality.
And I think that, you know, it's amazing that people are starting to look at it.
um I have this secret plan that we can demilitarize, give land back, because guess wherewe got the land from every time we upped our military, and then pay reparations, right?
(48:01):
And we could just sort of do all of this.
um And I think that we will.
I have a lot of hope for future generations, honestly, and I think that so many of us aretrying now to like,
learn the real history, what has been hidden from us, and we can't undo it, but like, howdo we go back and heal the collective trauma, right?
(48:30):
And I wanna come back to that, that you said, because it's not just the indigenous peoplewho were traumatized.
It was also our people who did violence to them.
And like,
how violently we were ripped away from our cultures in order to be part of whiteness.
(48:53):
And this was something I always thought of as like something that the cult took from mewas my culture.
Because my parents were, or my grandparents' parents were Slovakian immigrants.
And so, you know, I didn't get to have that.
But come to find out, like,
the ones that weren't in the cult, didn't last either.
(49:16):
They were assimilated into whiteness.
And now it's this process, going back to, I can't remember which one of you said it, butlike white people, like American white people, we're gonna have to build our own cultures.
And to me, this is very similar, again, to the process of being out of the cult.
(49:38):
especially if you were a cult baby like me or Scott, like that was all you knew sincegrowing up.
You're having to take off that cult personality, like that white supremacy personality,but you're also having to figure out like who that person is and try to connect
authentically with, know, where we're from.
(49:59):
I love your ancestor's approach.
I don't have this spiritual component myself, but I...
and fascinated that so many different traditions have this connection to our past being soimportant.
Can you say just like a little bit more about that?
Yeah, you're right.
(50:21):
It is a very universal concept that the ancestors are with us, that they exist in order tohelp us and guide us on our path that one day we will all become ancestors.
There are very universal principles of ancestral reverence like lighting candles to themor making offerings of food to them.
(50:43):
um
And that was originally taught to me by Yéyétiche.
And since then, I've learned it and practiced it in other ways and with other people.
And I've developed a really simple practice.
It's a universal ancestral reverence practice.
So I'm not appropriating from anyone else's culture.
(51:05):
And one thing I want to say about this too is that building a relationship with ourancestors
is very helpful in moving into reparations.
And when I work with groups, we almost always uh work on personal reparations plans.
(51:27):
And there is a guide that I've written up and I can share it with you for the show notesabout making a personal reparations plan.
And there's something that is a very powerful uh form of healing because
It helps us kind of get our feet on the ground of the reality that everyone else is livingin.
(51:53):
And it brings us down to earth and puts us into action no matter what kind of situationwe're in.
You don't have to have a lot of money.
You don't have to have a lot of free time to be able to do it.
Everyone designs their own based on their own circumstances.
But um making personal reparations plan, I've seen it.
(52:18):
I've seen people kind of resist and drag their feet and procrastinate.
And then when they finally bust through and do it and begin moving into action, that iswhere the healing comes from.
Yep, you gotta do the work.
Thank you so much for that, Hillary.
For those in the few minutes that we have remaining, for those that want to find you orfind your work or find your book, what's the best way to get in touch with you and to
(52:49):
support you?
okay, so I have a website, GoodRelative.com, and on that page, you can get my book at anymajor retailer, but I have two independent booksellers in specific who carry it on my
website to try to support them.
(53:09):
And um I'm also on Instagram at HillaryJavaliAuthor, and I'm also on Facebook.
I have a form on my website and people are welcome to reach out and message me.
I love to hear from readers.
um I also want to let people know that all of the income from book sales that I receive,half of it goes to the Decolonizing Wealth Project and half of it goes to Jubilee Justice.
(53:37):
These are BIPOC-led organizations that are re-granting and giving out funding to thosecommunities, those communities of color.
that have been so marginalized through the colonial project.
And so, you know, that's really important to me because I can't, I feel like I can'tprofit off this book, you know, and I don't want to, I want it to go back to those
(54:06):
communities to really walk the talk.
So that's an important thing to share.
And also just, I just welcome hearing from people and, you know, would love for people toengage.
That's beautiful, Hillary.
Thank you so much for being with us.
And I feel like we've just scratched the surface.
So perhaps we can have you back in the future and learn more about what you're doing andcontinue to support your efforts in these particular communities.
(54:33):
Because honestly, think I need to know more about it personally.
I think all of us would certainly benefit from a collective understanding, not only of ourproblematic past,
but the beautiful story of these indigenous communities.
So thank you so much.
We'll be sure and put all of that information you mentioned in our show notes.
(54:59):
Thank you.
And you know, I will provide a couple of titles too that might be helpful for people toread when they embark on their re-education process.
Yeah.
Thank you, Hillary.
Thanks for doing the work.
Thanks for sharing it with us and being out there doing what you do every day.
Thank you so much.
(55:20):
It's pleasure to visit with you.
Absolutely.
And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in and for Daniela Mestenec Young,Knitting Cult Lady.
I'll see you on the next episode of Cults and the Culting of America.
Welcome to Cults and the Culting of America podcast.
(00:02):
My name is Scott Lloyd along with my friend, Daniella Mestenec Young, knitting cult ladyherself.
And Daniella, it looks like you've got the thread actually going off screen there.
I'm imagining a big ball of yarn, like sitting just off camera and you're kind of pullingit as we go.
Am I right?
(00:23):
it's in my purse actually, but yes, that is how it goes.
Very cool.
Well, it's good to uh see you again.
It's good to have all of our viewers tuning in.
And I'm thrilled for our guests to be joining us.
uh Hillary, it's a pleasure to have you tonight.
We're glad that you're here.
Why don't you take a moment and introduce yourself to our audience?
(00:48):
Sure.
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm delighted to be with you.
And let's see, I am a ninth generation settler of various European lineages.
I come from Celtic, Germanic and Nordic peoples and the very ancient indigenous peoples ofEurope.
(01:08):
I live on Hopi, Havasupai, Dene, Apache, Pueblo land among other nations in what is nowcalled Northern Arizona.
And here in this community, we live at the base of a sacred mountain of kinship.
And this mountain has been revered by all the nations of this region since the beginningof time.
(01:32):
And she is known to be a female presence and she is a being of kinship.
And where I'm sitting right now, she is directly over my right shoulder to the north.
So.
uh
I always like to honor her and acknowledge her because I feel like I wouldn't have gotteninto this path that I'm on if it weren't for living at the foot of this mountain.
(01:57):
And speaking of your path, tell folks what you do and who you serve.
Well, you know, what I do is really interdisciplinary.
It has many legs that go out in different directions.
But um this path started for me about a decade ago.
And it began when I began building relationships with Indigenous members of the communityhere in Flagstaff.
(02:25):
And prior to that time, I had been living here for over 20 years and living in totalsegregation.
Like so many communities in the United States, it's possible to live here in a completelysegregated way where the communities are not having any contact with each other at all.
And so once I started having relationships with indigenous community members here,everything started to rapidly change for me and I started to see everything really
(02:55):
differently.
And so um since then I have...
uh
I've been supporting a lot of Indigenous community-led organizing here.
I have started a path of Repair to Philanthropy, and I wrote a book which was published inlate 2024, and the title is Becoming a Good Relative, Calling White Settlers Toward Truth,
(03:22):
Healing, and Repair.
And so I've been facilitating groups based on that book.
and teaching classes and just having my finger in all kinds of pots.
Very good.
What made you decide to write the book?
Like, you know, it's always such an interesting question of like, where, like what wasthat journey like?
(03:46):
And what was the point that you felt like you had something you needed to say?
Yeah, you know, it's such a good question.
It's like writing this kind of book is terrifying for a well-behaved white lady.
You're not supposed to do this, right?
And so and I have always been a well-behaved white lady.
(04:07):
And, you know, about 10 years ago, things started to happen where, you know, furniture wastipping over, books were falling off shelves.
I was having these really intense dreams and I reached out to a friend of mine whose nameis Yaya Louis Satish.
She's a high priestess of the Ifa or Risha tradition.
(04:30):
I said, these things are happening, what do I do?
She suggested a Dilugun reading, which is a divination with Calrishel's and her tradition.
She began the divination and she said right away, your ancestors are whispering in my earabout a book that you've already written.
(04:51):
And I hadn't written a book.
And so I told her, know, I can't do that.
I don't know what you're talking about.
And she said, um they're telling me it's already written and you need to get out of theway.
And then she herself is a very prolific.
author and teacher and storyteller.
(05:12):
And so she supported me by giving me some writing prompts, giving me a deadline andbasically saying, you have to do this because it's already been ah dictated by the
ancestors and you are just standing in the way of it happening.
You know, I'm really impressed that you have the ability to move within these communitiesbecause I think oh as we talk a lot on this program about the meta cult of white
(05:44):
supremacy, a lot of times we talk about the problematic issues that we face as a nation,but rarely do you hear people actually making inroads into those communities, endeavoring
to heal.
the wounds of the past.
And I think just from what you briefly described, you sound like someone who has theability to do that or is endeavoring to make the effort to do that.
(06:13):
Absolutely, I'm making the effort all the time.
And you know, I make a lot of mistakes too.
And I've had to look at myself many times.
It's an ongoing process to look and go, well, did I miss the mark there?
Yes, I did.
You know, and then try to self-correct and do better the next time.
(06:35):
And so I think that's one of the issues with the cult of white supremacy is that we've allbeen
brainwashed to think that um we can't do those things.
We don't have the skill to do those things.
People are going to get mad at us if we try that.
that's just false.
mean, we just...
(06:55):
yeah, perhaps like me, you've discovered uh people are going to get mad at you whether youdo anything or you don't do anything at all.
So you might as well do something and try something, right?
But that is a great attitude.
And that is a way that all of us who happen to look like the three of us should approachcommunities that are different than us with a posture of humility and
(07:23):
genuine intellectual curiosity, because that is something that helps us navigate the worldin which we live.
And certainly that attitude that says, I don't know what I don't know, but I'm here tolearn.
That's right, that's right.
And also another thing I have found really helpful is that, know, I, like many otherchildren who were brought up to be white, we were indoctrinated into a certain set of uh
(07:54):
historical myths about this country, about who we are, about who our ancestors were.
And I have had to very intentionally and purposely go back and re-educate myself.
And that is a uh critical step, I think, in beginning to engage with communities of color.
(08:16):
Because if we haven't taken, put our work in to re-educate ourselves and re-examine theassumptions that we were given as children, then we are really going to be putting our
foot in it all the time and creating a lot of harm.
even when we're not meaning to create harm, we will, you know?
(08:36):
Yeah, you know, I think it's really important, a couple of the things you mentioned onthis journey.
So, you I talk about in my 10 part model of cults that you have this skinny white woman incults.
And I say, you know, good women in America are supposed to be quiet, skinny, and a lightshade of beige.
You know, and I think at some point when we wake up to the cult of white supremacy, we'relike, ew, I don't want to do that anymore.
(09:02):
But then like,
we can kind of just start going crazy, spraying color everywhere, just kind of doing abunch of stuff if we don't take the time to educate ourselves.
that, I know it comes from a good place, but I think we can get very white savory, right?
(09:23):
White savory about wanting to help once we realize there is inequality.
without taking the time to really educate ourselves first, because obviously theseconversations have been going on for such a long time.
Right, exactly.
And you know, too, like in my reevaluation and relearning, I've come to see that whitenesshurts us too.
(09:51):
And unless, until we get to the point where we realize how much whiteness is actuallyhurting us and keeping a lid on us and preventing us from living into our full capacity.
then it's very easy for us to fall into that savior mode.
(10:12):
And we really need to take whiteness and white supremacy apart.
It's an outdated system and it's a system that's always been based on power over andcruelty and hoarding wealth and resources and land.
Yep.
Yeah, I think you're exactly right.
was speaking with someone yesterday and we were talking about this false idea that isthrown around a lot, especially in the political atmosphere, which all of us are enduring
(10:44):
at the moment.
And this gentleman was talking about the fact that for so long, people have lamented thisquote unquote idea of identity politics and that somehow
people lead with their race or their sexual orientation or their ethnicity or their genderin an effort to identify who they are.
(11:11):
And what I pointed out to this gentleman is that, well, as a white person, we do this allthe time.
We don't have to say it because it's assumed.
We all are born into a world that is made
by people who look like us for people that look like us.
(11:33):
And you know this especially well dealing with indigenous populations that the horribleatrocities that were committed by white people, uh basically stealing nations, decimating
populations, uh relocating people uh out of
(11:57):
their ancestral homelands, all of that compounds over time.
And just because it happened in the past doesn't mean that it doesn't impact us today.
So as someone who has gained some inroads into these communities, what kinds of questionsdid you ask?
(12:19):
uh What kinds of mistakes did you make?
What did this learning process look like for you specifically?
Well, you know, I have definitely made the mistake many times of thinking I know best, ofjumping in and behaving like a white savior and trying to dictate what needs to happen and
(12:44):
when.
And that's an impulse I still fight with all the time.
It is like hardwired into my psyche.
And I think that's just from the process of having been
brought up and acculturated into whiteness.
I mean, it's something I'm going to be struggling with probably as long as I live.
But at least I know now to look for it.
(13:06):
And I know I've learned to keep my mouth shut until I've had some time to kind of filterdown through the layers.
um You know, in the beginning, I did what, you know, Robin D'Angelo calls white womentears.
(13:26):
of hearing really sad stories and being in witnessing situations that are super traumaticand then immediately reacting with emotion.
um And I've learned how to kind of moderate that.
And sometimes those tears need to be saved for later.
(13:49):
It's not that we shouldn't be crying those tears.
definitely have to.
clean our hearts and let that emotion out because this colonial project is soheartbreaking.
But, um you know, doing it uh in a mixed race group is not always a good idea.
It's often not a good idea.
um And, you know, just so many things along the way.
(14:15):
One thing that I've learned that is a helpful tool that I like to share with people
This was taught to me by a Dene woman named Lila June Johnston.
She wrote the closing words in my book and she was also a tremendous mentor and uh gave alot of input on the manuscript as it was being written.
And uh she taught me this question of how, if at all, can I help?
(14:42):
And what that looks like is when if you are invited into a community space that is
with another community other than a white one, you can simply just sit with that questionin your mind, in your heart, and wait and see what shows up.
(15:02):
And sometimes you can actually ask that question too, verbally, out loud.
But that question is kind of a guiding inquiry to live with when you're making theserelationships, when you're beginning.
um
honestly, as you continue as well.
It's a guiding principle to sit with that.
(15:24):
And the thing is about that question, how, if at all, can I help is a lot of time theanswer is not what we think it will be.
You know, like I might think that I'm really good at, you know, building websites and thatthis this group needs a website built by me.
(15:44):
But in reality,
maybe what they need is someone to come and wash dishes after the community meeting, youknow, or bring a dish to share or take notes at the meeting.
And so those are the types of things that I have found myself doing a lot.
you know, it's easy to sometimes think, well, this isn't a good use of my time or, youknow, I have more skills than this, etc.
(16:11):
But
But the truth is there's something super healing about showing up with humility and thatlevel of service.
Yeah, and I also think that like, once you're deeply embedded in that community, you'regoing to understand what you can do to help and like what, what the struggles are, right?
(16:35):
If that makes sense.
And you know, I, I have another podcast called Hey White Woman, and it's me and a blackwoman and we are deconstructing the cult of white supremacy kind of precursor, I feel like
to what you've done with, with your book.
But, um,
my, where was I going with this?
no.
(16:56):
It ran away with me.
Oh yeah, it was just, we were saying how, you know, so often, right, when people sort ofhave the crack in the brainwashing with, my gosh, like this is white supremacy, we live in
this system, then it's immediately, how can I help?
And sometimes it's just like, it's hard to explain.
(17:18):
to people I think, because it comes from such a good place.
But even that impulse that immediately, like we're the person that can help, is part ofthat white supremacy that we've been taught.
like so, so often I think the answer is just like, just sit, let's just learn.
ah In.
(17:38):
a better question might be, what can I learn?
What is it that I need to learn from you?
And I'll shut up and listen.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yeah.
And also, I think the realization that if you sit with that question, if what I learnedfrom you might be something that makes me super uncomfortable, right?
(18:01):
Like talking about manifest destiny and westward expansion and the Native Americanboarding schools in which children were kidnapped and put in these institutions and
experienced.
horrific abuse.
And um I can't tell you how many times I've heard stories that just like gut me to thecore.
(18:25):
um But that's part of what we have to do because those stories haven't been told.
White supremacy totally erases those stories, denies those stories, wants to pretend thatnone of this happened.
I'm in the process right now of working with a group of folks
to organize a fundraiser for the National Native American Boarding School HealingCoalition because all of the federal funding was cut that Congress awarded to research and
(18:56):
document those boarding schools.
And this is an example right here where our current regime is actively trying to suppressand undermine histories that are still totally alive and impacting families.
all over this country.
It's unbelievable how profound that wound still is.
(19:22):
And it was on purpose, too.
It was done to purposely assimilate them, take away their culture, their identity, theirlanguage, their land, et cetera.
And so we can't let that happen.
you know, so I mean.
(19:42):
That's another thing too, is that there are ways that that organization I mentioned is anindigenous led organization that needs to raise this money that was taken away.
So that's an example where there is a call being made for support and we can all step into that type of request.
(20:04):
And I think you make an incredible point there, especially during times uh in which itseems like uh from the loudest podiums in our nation, the truth uh is no longer relevant.
uh I think the most revolutionary thing that we can do in times like this is tell thetruth, tell the stories, uh communicate to others, to anyone who is willing to listen uh
(20:32):
about what
actually happened uh in our nation.
I'll never forget uh the profound uh sadness that swept over me the first time I saw thatfamous picture, you mentioned Manifest Destiny.
So there's that, I forget the name of the picture and the artist, but there's that angelicbeing, uh porcelain white that is leading the way.
(21:00):
The settlers are coming behind her.
and she's driving out the darkness.
And of course, the darkness is represented by indigenous populations and things of thatnature.
And that is one of the most famous paintings of that era to represent the history of theUnited States.
(21:22):
And it's a lie, right?
It's based on a lie.
And then, of course, I believe it was during uh Trump's first term.
He got up and famously
made that speech about, you know, Western expansion and all of the wonderful things, quoteunquote, the wonderful things that our ancestors did to found this nation and all of it
(21:48):
again, a lie.
So in moments like this, one of the greatest things that any of us can do is to tell thetruth, repeat the truth, repeat it again.
That's right, yeah.
And I have found too, the culty nature of this culture, this whitewashing, is one thattends to shut us down as white people.
(22:21):
We tend to become very analytical and intellectual about it, right?
And that's one reason that we always like to argue.
with when presented with uncomfortable facts, with things that make us feel shame.
And part of undoing the brainwashing of that cult narrative is to actually feel it.
(22:44):
And so that has been a big part of what I've learned to do over the last decade is toreally let it in, let it in and feel how depraved it really was and is, continues to be.
and really give that grief back to the earth and ask for help from the earth in buildingresilience to keep going.
(23:10):
Because, you know, this is another aspect of whiteness is that we're told that, you know,we don't have to feel uncomfortable things.
We don't have to feel the sadness.
We don't have to grieve.
But in reality, we do need to grieve because
This system is hurting us.
It's taking away our humanity too.
(23:32):
When we're always numbed out and not engaging with all of the horrible things that weredone in our name.
Our ancestors did these things in our name.
We're the beneficiaries of what our ancestors did for us.
And so um that to me is a really important piece of that is that we need to do our ownhealing work.
(23:55):
Yeah, that's very important.
um I have been in my series reading through this book called White Women Get Ready, HowHealing Post Traumatic Mistress Syndrome Leads to Anti-Racist Change.
It was pretty great how it happened because I got your book and I got this book basicallyat the same time.
And so I've been like, like learning really in tandem.
(24:19):
And what both of you have emphasized is
we have to heal, right?
And you said this earlier about kind of the lies of white supremacy or like how we're notbetter off.
And I get asked this question, like, you're a white person, right?
(24:39):
So why would you want to take down white supremacy?
And I always say, like, the promise of the cult is always a lie, right?
And the promise of the cult of white supremacy is that white people will be better off.
And while we are better off than other people who weren't socialized as white, we're notbetter off altogether, right?
(25:02):
So it's like exposing this lie.
And then to your point, what has that done to us, right?
Just the three of us sitting in this room, all of that generational trauma being handeddown.
from the violent side, from the abuser side, from the side of the people taking advantage.
(25:24):
Right, exactly.
I just finished reading that book by Amanda K.
Gross, too, and I love it.
I love her book.
I love how there are many similarities between our books and then there are alsodifferences, too.
yeah, uh one of the things for me that really sticks out is this connection with land.
(25:54):
Because if you think about where did our people come from?
They came from Europe, right?
But we all descend from people who prior to the 1600s, the concept of whiteness didn'texist.
It was written into law here in the colonies that would eventually become the UnitedStates.
(26:15):
And our people, when they were living in England and Germany and Spain and France, werenot considered white.
They had whole other identities and cultures that became lost and broken and severedthrough the process of assimilation when they moved over here.
(26:36):
so um for me, looking back in history is really important because this white people get sothreatened, right?
We get very threatened when we're faced with these topics over here.
But that's because we've been drinking the Kool-Aid of
this is all we've ever been and all we can be.
And that's not true.
(26:59):
We can be somebody else.
Like Resma Menakim says in his book, um My Grandmother's Hands, he calls on white peopleto create a new culture for ourselves and one that is based in somatic awareness and
embodiment and expressing our emotions, et cetera.
(27:21):
um
So we have that capacity and I hope that with Amanda's book and my book and many otherbooks that are coming out right now, this new culture is going to start to build and these
discussions will start to happen.
A moment ago, you mentioned a really important concept that I want to follow up on, andthat's this idea of resilience in times of adversity.
(27:45):
And certainly by no means am I or any of us saying that, uh you know, as white folksliving in this culture, that we're having a hard go of it, especially compared to people
of color, black people, people being summarily, uh you know, uh taken out of this countryand shipped to other places.
(28:06):
Um, but I do want to say that, you know, I find it difficult sometimes to stay engaged andI, Danielle, I'll direct this to you as well, because I know that, that you're someone who
deals with content like this on a daily basis and you're immersed in it.
Where do you find, how do we find resilience to stay the course during these difficultdays?
(28:33):
Um, to me, I feel like.
If I wanted to, right, there's something that happens every day that I could post about,that I could talk about, that I could lament uh every single day.
oh June is mental health awareness month.
But there are times, right, that I've got to take a break for my own mental well-being.
(28:53):
So talk a little bit about resilience and the work that you do and why also self-care isimportant in that process.
Yeah, would you like to say anything first, Daniela?
No, I'll let you go first.
Ha ha ha!
well, I can share that um one of, I totally agree with you.
We cannot flame out.
(29:15):
This is a long process and we've got to stay strong and grounded and toe the line, youknow?
And so um I think for each person, each one of us will have something different that isthat source of self-care and being grounded in resilience.
For me,
um Strangely enough, one of the things that gives me the most strength is I've got anancestor altar in my dining room.
(29:45):
And, you know, early on in my journey 10 years ago, I found out that I had ancestors whohad moved from the Scottish Highlands to North Carolina in 1739.
They received land grants and then they went down to Mississippi three generations laterand began enslaving people and received more land grants.
(30:07):
There was one signed by Andrew Jackson that I know about.
And so I'm a direct descendant of both the colonial land grab and slavery projects.
um
It's ironic, right?
Because why would someone like me want to honor and sit with their ancestors?
(30:29):
But it's kind of a paradox.
Sitting with my ancestors and working with my ancestors and listening to them and feelingthem and, you know, learning to sing some songs in Gaelic and Irish and bringing them
flowers and asking for their help in
unraveling this legacy they left me is actually one of the things that gives me the moststrength.
(30:54):
And so, um you know, that altar that has a rocking family rocking chair in front of it isone of my most important places.
Another important place for me is going out in the woods and sitting with the trees.
You know, I've learned that on the Nordic and Germanic side of my family, in thatmythology, we are descended from trees.
(31:18):
we are actually the children of the trees.
So when I go out in the Ponderosa pine forest here, I'm sitting with my people and youknow, the tree people and the ancestor people and you know, the river people and the ocean
people, the mountain people, the grasses, the flowers, all of these people are a lot moresane than we are right now.
(31:43):
And so I like to sit with them.
and listen to them and be in silence with them um because the human world is extremelychaotic right now.
you know, for me, it's a balance of that quiet time, that listening time, and then findingthings that are really purposeful and moving into very intentional action, maybe on one or
(32:08):
two specific issues, you know?
Like this boarding school issue for me is something I'm
deeply passionate about.
And so I'm putting my energy there.
And I'm also putting my energy into the protection of sacred sites.
And those are my two big issues right now.
And so there are 10,000 other issues, but my hope is that each one of us will pick acouple and really focus.
(32:39):
Yeah, I love that.
em I was gonna say that one of the things that gives me strength is that I live inMaryland and I am surrounded by incredibly strong communities of black women.
like with some of them I am invited to engage and with some of them I'm just observing,but.
(33:01):
You know, this is a community of women who have always suffered incredible hardships inthis country and they know how to survive and thrive and push back.
And that has been like such good learning for me going through all of this.
um And it really has helped me see kind of the whiteness and the, you know, some of thestuff that we really don't wanna unpack.
(33:30):
So I'm really grateful for where I live and I wonder if I would be freaking out a lot moreif I wasn't somewhere that kept me so grounded, honestly.
And then also, I just think, yeah, when you're gonna do this kind of work, I think anykind of social justice work, you are going to have to figure out your balance, whatever
(33:55):
that means.
I'm a kind of person that likes to do
the same things every day, because I like that comfort.
But I also like to be done working at 3 p.m.
almost every day, except right now.
um And I tune out and I craft and I hang out with my family, you know, and I go outsideand we have real connections in our community of like real people that we talk to.
(34:24):
So this kind of like.
because in my work I have to be so connected to all the bad stuff that's going on.
I mean, I'm a scholar of tyrants and bad guys, but it doesn't have to be this verynegative thing, I guess, if you are engaging intentionally as your job, like you said, as
(34:47):
the couple things you care about, but you also have to make sure you have balance.
And this is another thing that I have really learned from communities of color, which is,know, white people act like everything is a big deal.
Everything is some big thing and everything is so important when like the reality is likefortunes rise and fortunes fall.
(35:08):
And like this is the fight in America, right?
Like, or progressives and people who want equality for everyone are always fightingagainst the people that want to drag us backward.
And it's not gonna happen, like one of us is not gonna come save the world, like it's notgonna happen quickly.
(35:28):
It's gonna be all of these little pushbacks.
um And I think just, you know, just understanding that, right?
That there's no line when we're like, okay, there never was.
It's just now things seem a lot more kind of important, like they're blowing up, but thisis what America always has been.
(35:49):
And honestly, I wonder what you think about this, but honestly, I kind of feel like we hadto have this administration to just blow up all of the cracks and put everything in
people's faces.
Yes, I agree.
You know, I remember on the election day in 2016, I was at an inter-tribal gathering.
(36:14):
And so there were Indigenous people from all over the United States, Canada, SouthAmerica, and then there were maybe five white people there.
And we all came down after getting the results of the election in the morning down to thehotel ballroom.
for the conference to start.
(36:35):
And the white people are all crying.
They're all beside themselves.
Everyone's freaking out.
And I'm just watching like, how is this gonna unfold today?
And you know, it was an entirely indigenous led event.
So what happened is that one after the other, the elders got up, the speakers got up, weprayed.
(36:59):
We put the offerings down, the cornmeal down.
We spoke about beauty, the Dene concept of Ho-Jon, beauty before me, behind me, above me,below me, et cetera.
And so that schooled me so deeply in 2016 because I was in this little bubble for aboutthree days after the election.
(37:26):
And then we drove home and progressive white America is freaking out, right?
And then it's been the same thing this time too, in this election cycle.
the calmness that I've seen friends of color holding, the calmness and the joy, therefusal to participate in the chaos is truly inspiring to me.
(37:56):
Because I'm still finding it very easy to freak out, right?
Because I've been...
I've been brought up this way.
I've brought up to be responsive and reactive, but I'm really trying to follow theirexample.
Well, thank you both for sharing that.
That's incredibly helpful.
I think it will be helpful to a lot of our listeners.
It's certainly helpful to me.
(38:18):
Hillary, a moment ago, you mentioned two particular issues that you're uh endeavoring tostay focused on, the boarding school issue.
And I forget the other one that you mentioned, but talk a little bit about those and tellus why they're important to you at this moment.
(38:40):
Yeah, okay.
Well, the boarding school issue is important to me because of being in relationship withIndigenous peoples, which I know many of us in this country do not have access to those
communities because those communities have been pushed to the margins in a lot of casesand we're not integrated.
We're segregated.
(39:01):
So I live right by Navajo Nation, right by Hopi land.
And so I have access to a lot of those relationships.
And in those relationships, I have heard it over and over that um the boarding schooltrauma is extremely deep and profound.
um I'm friends with a 91-year-old Oglala Lakota elder in Pine Ridge.
(39:27):
He was sent to a Catholic boarding school in 1938 where he was punished for speaking hislanguage.
He was beaten.
He was shamed.
for his culture and spiritual practices, et cetera.
There were children being pulled out of the dorms by priests at night and being molested.
(39:49):
They were living in a military style, like a concentration camp.
Forced labor, children disappearing, no one knows where their child went and if they'redead or alive.
All of these are part of the stories of that legacy.
And there are people alive today who went to those schools, or in many cases, whoseparents and grandparents did, and they broke people.
(40:22):
They hurt people so deeply um by taking away culture and language and identity.
And so that really matters to me because that is a deep traumatic wound that is still.
just under the surface for a lot of Indigenous communities.
And um we are not going to be able to heal until the truth is told, until all the missingchildren have been identified and, you know, their remains have been brought home, until
(40:55):
the stories have been told, until all of the records have been digitized so that everybodycan access them, until all the oral histories are collected from all of the elders, etc.
So it's really to me, it's really about healing.
We cannot move on until the truth is told.
So that's one thing.
And then the other the other issue I'm really uh passionate about is the protection ofsacred landscape.
(41:22):
So like I mentioned, I live next to a sacred mountain of kinship.
And on this mountain, there is a ski resort that is manufacturing snow out of reclaimedsewage water.
So imagine.
If in your synagogue, your cathedral, people were dumping toilet water into the middle ofit.
(41:43):
That is it's the equivalent.
Right.
And so I've been working with, um you know, the indigenous community here for the lastdecade on the protection of that mountain, on trying to get the ski resort to, you know,
show some respect to not keep expanding their business.
(42:05):
based on artificial snow in a changing climate, et cetera.
So um that's an important issue to me.
Another issue that's important in Arizona is the protection of Oak Flat, which ishappening with Apache Stronghold and Dr.
Winsler Nosey and his family.
They just uh appealed to the Supreme Court to protect that land and they refused to takethe case.
(42:31):
So there's our federal government once again.
um you know, siding on behalf of white supremacy and settler colonialism.
For those that may not know, uh correct me if I'm wrong, but the history of the atrocitiesof boarding schools, that was an effort on part of the United States government to
(42:54):
assimilate these communities.
Am I right?
Can you fill in some of the gaps maybe for our listeners?
Yeah, that's right.
It was a collusion between the federal government and religious institutions.
So all kinds of Christian denominations participated.
They often received payment from the feds in order to do this.
(43:16):
And children, know, four, five years old, six years old, were literally kidnapped.
put in wagons and taken away from their families.
Their families often wouldn't know where they were.
Or if they did know, they were prohibited from coming within distance of the school.
(43:38):
They were not allowed to visit their children.
My friend Basil Braveheart in Pine Ridge, um he was taken to a school that was only twomiles from his home.
but he might as well have been in another country because he was not allowed to go homefor nine or 10 months out of the year.
(43:58):
And then when he would go home, his grandmother would basically help undo the brainwashinghe had received in Catholic boarding school and say, no, we don't believe in sin and
punishment and hell.
that's not part of our cosmology, that's not part of our way, things like that.
(44:22):
And she made sure that he learned his language and um was kept intact as a human being.
uh But many children didn't have that opportunity.
Many of them weren't able to go home and were deeply assimilated.
And that's one of the hallmarks of um the problematic nature of the history of the UnitedStates is that once that decision was made to uh put ethnicities in two categories, either
(44:58):
white or black, white or brown, white or people of color, um there was
this decision that was made on a policy level by the United States that we're going totreat people that we perceive to be white different than those that we look at and label
(45:20):
brown or black.
The brown and black people, the people of color, cannot hold on to any of their culture orany of their roots because we
fear or we deem that to be detrimental to our unity as a nation.
But for those ethnicities, those cultures that we labeled white, we celebrated themreturning to their roots or their particular uh cultural aspects, whether it's food or
(45:55):
music or language even.
uh Whereas we did not give those freedoms and liberties
to people that we labeled black, brown people of color.
And I think that's one of the sad legacies that our nation refuses to acknowledge.
That's right.
And you know, there was even a time too where, you know, immigrants from Southern Europeand Eastern Europe, like Italians and Greeks, were treated very much like that too.
(46:25):
They were forced to assimilate.
They were shamed for their clothing, their language, their food.
They were meant to assimilate into a WASPy identity, you know?
And so um it's happened to many groups.
But more recently, all of us basically who are fair complected get the advantages and theprivileges of whiteness bestowed on us in some way or another.
(46:51):
Yeah, that's the reality.
hard concept for people to accept.
That can especially be a very hard concept for trauma survivors to accept who are whiteand who have not been privileged by any means other than their whiteness, right?
(47:14):
And I know like that's something.
We talk to a lot to my audience, Scott talks a lot about it to his audience, justre-emphasizing that even though we might have come from poverty or from incredibly abusive
situations, we have that collective advantage of, I mean, quite literally what whitesupremacy built.
(47:38):
um And that is just the reality.
And I think that, you know, it's amazing that people are starting to look at it.
um I have this secret plan that we can demilitarize, give land back, because guess wherewe got the land from every time we upped our military, and then pay reparations, right?
(48:01):
And we could just sort of do all of this.
um And I think that we will.
I have a lot of hope for future generations, honestly, and I think that so many of us aretrying now to like,
learn the real history, what has been hidden from us, and we can't undo it, but like, howdo we go back and heal the collective trauma, right?
(48:30):
And I wanna come back to that, that you said, because it's not just the indigenous peoplewho were traumatized.
It was also our people who did violence to them.
And like,
how violently we were ripped away from our cultures in order to be part of whiteness.
(48:53):
And this was something I always thought of as like something that the cult took from mewas my culture.
Because my parents were, or my grandparents' parents were Slovakian immigrants.
And so, you know, I didn't get to have that.
But come to find out, like,
the ones that weren't in the cult, didn't last either.
(49:16):
They were assimilated into whiteness.
And now it's this process, going back to, I can't remember which one of you said it, butlike white people, like American white people, we're gonna have to build our own cultures.
And to me, this is very similar, again, to the process of being out of the cult.
(49:38):
especially if you were a cult baby like me or Scott, like that was all you knew sincegrowing up.
You're having to take off that cult personality, like that white supremacy personality,but you're also having to figure out like who that person is and try to connect
authentically with, know, where we're from.
(49:59):
I love your ancestor's approach.
I don't have this spiritual component myself, but I...
and fascinated that so many different traditions have this connection to our past being soimportant.
Can you say just like a little bit more about that?
Yeah, you're right.
(50:21):
It is a very universal concept that the ancestors are with us, that they exist in order tohelp us and guide us on our path that one day we will all become ancestors.
There are very universal principles of ancestral reverence like lighting candles to themor making offerings of food to them.
(50:43):
um
And that was originally taught to me by Yéyétiche.
And since then, I've learned it and practiced it in other ways and with other people.
And I've developed a really simple practice.
It's a universal ancestral reverence practice.
So I'm not appropriating from anyone else's culture.
(51:05):
And one thing I want to say about this too is that building a relationship with ourancestors
is very helpful in moving into reparations.
And when I work with groups, we almost always uh work on personal reparations plans.
(51:27):
And there is a guide that I've written up and I can share it with you for the show notesabout making a personal reparations plan.
And there's something that is a very powerful uh form of healing because
It helps us kind of get our feet on the ground of the reality that everyone else is livingin.
(51:53):
And it brings us down to earth and puts us into action no matter what kind of situationwe're in.
You don't have to have a lot of money.
You don't have to have a lot of free time to be able to do it.
Everyone designs their own based on their own circumstances.
But um making personal reparations plan, I've seen it.
(52:18):
I've seen people kind of resist and drag their feet and procrastinate.
And then when they finally bust through and do it and begin moving into action, that iswhere the healing comes from.
Yep, you gotta do the work.
Thank you so much for that, Hillary.
For those in the few minutes that we have remaining, for those that want to find you orfind your work or find your book, what's the best way to get in touch with you and to
(52:49):
support you?
okay, so I have a website, GoodRelative.com, and on that page, you can get my book at anymajor retailer, but I have two independent booksellers in specific who carry it on my
website to try to support them.
(53:09):
And um I'm also on Instagram at HillaryJavaliAuthor, and I'm also on Facebook.
I have a form on my website and people are welcome to reach out and message me.
I love to hear from readers.
um I also want to let people know that all of the income from book sales that I receive,half of it goes to the Decolonizing Wealth Project and half of it goes to Jubilee Justice.
(53:37):
These are BIPOC-led organizations that are re-granting and giving out funding to thosecommunities, those communities of color.
that have been so marginalized through the colonial project.
And so, you know, that's really important to me because I can't, I feel like I can'tprofit off this book, you know, and I don't want to, I want it to go back to those
(54:06):
communities to really walk the talk.
So that's an important thing to share.
And also just, I just welcome hearing from people and, you know, would love for people toengage.
That's beautiful, Hillary.
Thank you so much for being with us.
And I feel like we've just scratched the surface.
So perhaps we can have you back in the future and learn more about what you're doing andcontinue to support your efforts in these particular communities.
(54:33):
Because honestly, think I need to know more about it personally.
I think all of us would certainly benefit from a collective understanding, not only of ourproblematic past,
but the beautiful story of these indigenous communities.
So thank you so much.
We'll be sure and put all of that information you mentioned in our show notes.
(54:59):
Thank you.
And you know, I will provide a couple of titles too that might be helpful for people toread when they embark on their re-education process.
Yeah.
Thank you, Hillary.
Thanks for doing the work.
Thanks for sharing it with us and being out there doing what you do every day.
Thank you so much.
(55:20):
It's pleasure to visit with you.
Absolutely.
And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in and for Daniela Mestenec Young,Knitting Cult Lady.
I'll see you on the next episode of Cults and the Culting of America.
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