Facilitated by
Hilary Giovale and
Elyshia Holliday

Eight-Month Community Circle

Each circle will be intuitively guided and will focus on topics such as...

  • Community-based ancestral storytelling

  • Embracing Earth-honoring, nonlinear, and unseen ways of knowing

  • Settler colonialism and whiteness

  • Rekindling ancestral memory

  • Building right relations

  • Making reparations

Acts of Healing

We will collaboratively engage in activities like…

  • Discovering and sharing ancestral stories

  • Respectfully connecting with the land where we live

  • Maintaining an ancestor altar

  • Listening to guest speakers

  • Writing an ancestral apology or forgiveness prayer

  • Participating in healing rituals

  • Developing a personal reparations plan 

Are you called to
this circle at this time?

This eight-month circle invites European-descended settlers in North America into a journey of ancestral reconnection, healing, and repair. Together, we will engage our lineage stories with curiosity, compassion, and a commitment to transformation—rekindling ancestral memory while practicing accountability and restoring relationship with land and community.

Through altar tending, storytelling, community dialogue, and the creation of a personal reparations plan, participants bring ancestral insight into meaningful action.

Why Focus on European Ancestry? What is the Connection to Nature?

This circle centers on European ancestry as a pathway to understanding settler identity, lineage healing, and accountability. Recognizing that colonization disrupts not only Indigenous lifeways but also severs many settlers from our own ancestral roots, this work invites reconnection through Earth-honoring, nonlinear, and intuitive ways of knowing. As we remember, we rebuild relationships with our ancestors, the land, and the communities around us.

For a deeper exploration of this connection, read more here.

“Rekindling Ancestral Memory Circle has helped reignite and re-invigorate my ongoing commitment to living a life focused on actively undoing and healing the places racism and colonization live in my white body, and in the systems that run our country.”

— Past Rekindling Ancestral Memory Circle Participant

“My experience with the Rekindling Ancestral Memory Circle was profound and life-changing. I loved that we were encouraged to build a relationship with our ancestral lineages through both traceable research as well as through listening to our dreams and intuitive knowing.”

— Past Rekindling Ancestral Memory Circle Participant

Circle Schedule

Circles are from October, 2025 - May, 2026

5:00 pm-6:30 pm Pacific Time/ 8:00 pm-9:30 pm Eastern Time

These sessions are not recorded.

October-December

Ancestral Altars and Ancestral Storytelling

We begin by grounding in connection with our ancestors, other ways of knowing, and sharing an ancestral story.

October 7 Opening gathering: orientation, introductions & altar creation

October 28 Altar tending, an introduction to story, and facilitator sharings

November 11 A conversation with circle Elders

November 18 First community storytelling circle

December 9 Second community storytelling circle

January-February

Apology, Forgiveness, and Ritual

We continue our circle after winter break with guest speakers and take a deep dive into apology, forgiveness, and a healing ritual.

January 6 Guest speaker session

January 20 Guest speaker session

(TBD) Optional hearthside office hour for continued story sharing

February 3 Explorations of apology and forgiveness; writing as offering

(TBD) Optional hearthside office hour for reflection and support

February 24 Ritual Preparation

March-May

Reparations 

The final phase of Rekindling Ancestral Memory brings our inner work into the world and into informed action.

March 17 Reflection and the beginning of reparations work

April 14 Guided facilitation of reparations offerings

May 5 Closing, Reflections, Looking Forward

Request to Join the Circle

This class is open to members and affiliates of ONE and will be limited to 18 participants.

We ask that you tell us about yourself and why you are drawn to the circle at this time using the “Circle Request” button below. This will help us know you a little better. We will send you the registration link after we receive your circle request.

If you are not already a member of ONE you can sign up here.

Reparations

If you join the circle, we suggest a sliding scale contribution of $150-$1200 (or more) for the entire eight-month session. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. 100% of the contributions will be returned to the following organizations, using a reparations framework, and to our guest speakers as honoraria.

Contributions from this year’s circle will be returned to the following organizations:

The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS) is the first and only national organization whose purpose is to advocate on behalf of Native peoples impacted by U.S. Indian boarding school policies. They seek truth through education and research, justice through activism and policy advocacy, and healing through programs and traditional gatherings.

Since 2020 Funds have been returned to these organizations:

“ I appreciated the integrity of how the group was facilitated, supporting me in taking an honest look at the colonial chapters of my ancestral history. Rather than approaching this history with judgment or shame, I was supported in approaching with an intention of reckoning and healing. This process was deeply impactful. I now feel more connected to my ancestral lineages and I also feel I have tools to continue on the journey of learning and reckoning with the past — both the beauty and the suffering.”

— Past Rekindling Ancestral Memory Circle Participant

Meet your Facilitators

Hilary Giovale is a ninth-generation American settler descended from the ancient Celtic, Germanic, and Nordic peoples of northwestern Europe. She lives at the foot of a sacred mountain, a being of kinship, that stands within the traditional homelands of Diné, Hopi, Havasupai, Hualapai, Yavapai, Apache, and Paiute Peoples, as well as several Pueblos. Her relationships with this land inform her life as a mother, community organizer, writer, and philanthropist. In 2015, Hilary became aware of her ancestors’ longstanding presence as American settlers. Since then, she has been living a process of inquiry that includes ancestral repair, solidarity with Indigenous-led movements, reconnection with Earth, apology, forgiveness, and reparations. She is the author of Becoming a Good Relative: Calling White Settlers toward Truth, Healing and Repair.  To read more about her work, please visit www.goodrelative.com.

Elyshia Holliday is the Executive Director of the Organization of Nature Evolutionaries, a Naturopath, community facilitator, and mother dedicated to restoring our relationship with Mother Earth.

She spent more than two decades co-leading a nonprofit devoted to repairing the human–Earth relationship, a path that grounded her in collective care, ecological restoration, and ceremonial practice. Elyshia now turns toward her own European ancestral lineages—Celtic, Germanic, and Nordic—seeking to rekindle the Earth-honoring ways of her ancestors and become a good relative in these times. Her current work is rooted in partnership with Trees and collaborative leadership.

She lives in Washington state on the ancestral lands of the Yakama people with her husband, youngest son, and their four-legged companions.

Elders and Guest Speakers

Elders Circle for the 2025-2026 Circle Cycle
We are grateful for these Elders, whose expertise has informed our process. They are generously offering support and guidance for our circle this year.

Kunsi/Abuela Ejna Jean Fleury is a spiritual activist, counselor, healer, mystic, visionary, and ceremonialist. She serves as a meditation and consciousness facilitator, guiding others in pathways of inner awareness and transformation. Ejna is a member of the Miniconjou, Oglala, Hunkpapa, and Ihanktonwan peoples of the Great Sioux Nation and holds the honored role of First Peace Ambassador for the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe of South Dakota.

She is the founder of several initiatives rooted in healing and Earth-honoring leadership, including the Crow Creek Kunsi/Unci Grandmothers Society, Divine Mothers Love, Sacred Earth Council, and Healing Hearts at Wounded Knee—a global movement dedicated to ending war and massacre through a shared pledge of peace. Her work extends internationally as a member of the Council of Eagle, Condor, Quetzal & Colibri, and as a coordinator with the Four Worlds Holistic Health Program. She also serves within the Peace Room of the Founding Mothers Movement.

Ejna holds degrees in Nursing (RN, BS) and Counseling Psychology (MA) and is a former faculty member of the University of Minnesota’s School of Nursing.

You can follow Enja’s work here.

Molly McGettigan Arthur was born in San Francisco and is an Associate of the Society of the Sacred Heart. She is the great-great-granddaughter of General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, known as the “Californio Patron,” and General Patrick Edward Connor, called the “Father of Mining” in Utah.

In acknowledgment of her ancestral legacy rooted in colonization, conquest, and a violent Catholic spiritual tradition, Molly is committed to working in solidarity with Indigenous communities on projects of reparation—a path she names Decolonizing Our Hearts.

She is the curator of Waking Up to Our Own History and EcoBirth-Women for Earth & Birth and Women's Collective Matrix—projects that explore the intersections of personal ancestry, spiritual reckoning, and Earth-honoring women’s wisdom.

You can find her on  BlueSky  (instead of Twitter/X)

Guest Speakers for the 2025-2026 Circle Cycle

Max Dashu founded the Suppressed Histories Archives (1970) to research and document global women's history. She teaches with images from her collection of some 50,000 photos of female cultural heritages across time and space. She is internationally known for her expertise on iconography, matricultures, patriarchy and systems of domination; medicine women, shamans, witches, and the witch hunts. Her books include Witches and Pagans: Women in European Folk Culture, 700-1100 (2016) and Women in Greek Mythography: Pythias, Melissae and Titanides (2023). Among her videos are Woman Shaman: the Ancients (2013) and Women’s Power in Global Perspective (2008).

See www.veleda.net for these and for her Female Heritages posters.
Open access videos: https://www.youtube.com/@maxdashu/videos
Stream on demand: https://suppressed-histories.teachable.com/courses/

Second Speaker- TBA- stay tuned!

“I'm in awe of the journey Hilary and Elyshia guided us on. I have a new relationship with my ancestors and they are living through me. I've experienced healing and movement toward wholeness. Highly recommend this offering.”

— Past Rekindling Ancestral Memory Circle Participant

“The care, depth and wisdom of Hilary and Elyshia wove a subtle but profound web throughout our circle that held each of us as we explored and discovered our histories and mysteries.”

— Past Rekindling Ancestral Memory Circle Participant

Honored Elders from Previous Circles

With Gratitude to Past Guest Speakers

  • "Through digging back far enough and feeling into how my ancestors were also once deeply connected to the Earth, I've been able to soften some of the shame I've been carrying. The less shame takes up space inside me, the more room I have to be present and awake with energy to take action and make reparations in the now. I feel this shift on a visceral level."

    Past Circle Participant

  • "The Circle has been a beautiful, warm, welcoming container for learning and sharing. The practices, conversations, and speakers all generated potent heart-centered connection and action. Hilary and Elyshia guide the group with authenticity and a skillful mix of clear communication, joy, and their own lived experience in this lifelong work. So grateful for this grounding foundation for my ongoing ancestral healing and reparations commitments.”

    Past Circle Participant

  • "My awareness has expanded to see how much we all carry around with us from our family history. I am heartened to know that there are tangible avenues I can take toward healing the wounds that my ancestors inflicted and endured. I feel more connected to this path in myself and am excited to continue to let this path unfold, to listen to what needs attention and healing in my lineage."

    Past Circle Participant

Ancestry and Nature

Why is this Circle Focused on European Ancestry?

ONE's extended family has been a majority white community, and we long for the vibrant diversity of a healthy human ecosystem. At the same time, in order to avoid repeating the harms of our ancestors, European descended people must come together and explore our family stories honestly. We have an opportunity to open our minds and our hearts to meet the complex people from whom we descend.  We do this with empathy for their lives and circumstances and with the courage to transform their legacies.  

In this circle, we will explore our ancestors' stories as settlers on Indigenous land. In our experience - as well as in the collective experience - it has been helpful to begin this process within Euro-centered community spaces. This helps to eliminate projecting our ancestral traumas onto marginalized peoples. Together, we will practice becoming good relatives to diverse communities over time.

This circle is not an exclusively white space.  People of partial European ancestry who are interested in exploring their settler legacies are welcome and encouraged to join us.

What Does the Circle Have to Do with Nature?

Somewhere in each of our ancestral lineages, we all descend from Earth-honoring people- those who were intricately woven into the web of life. Over time, many of our ancestors forgot this innate knowing, due to trauma, migration, war, and famine. Our legacies became empty. In this process of forgetting, we began to see Earth and all her beings as only resources. This is part of colonization. The modern environmental movement emerged from this history. It has used archaic patterns to “protect the natural world,” rather than working with nature as a loving partner.

In this circle, as we reconnect with our ancestors, we also begin to awaken the innate Earth-honoring knowledge that lives in each of us. As we heal our pasts, we become better relatives for our human and non-human family.