Hilary Giovale is a mother, writer, facilitator, and community organizer who holds a Master’s Degree in Good and Sustainable Communities. She has taught improvisational dance and has served on the boards of philanthropic, human rights, and environmental organizations. Descended from the Celtic, Germanic, Nordic, and Indigenous peoples of Ancient Europe, she is a ninth-generation American settler. For most of her life these origins were obscured by whiteness.

After learning more about her ancestors’ history, Hilary began emerging from a fog of amnesia, denial, and fragmentation. For the first time, she could see a painful reality: her family’s occupation of this land has harmed Indigenous and African peoples, cultures, lands, and lifeways. With this realization, her life changed.