By Morgan Curtis
Audio read by author

Image: A photograph of a large tree, with the sun shining through the branches, with an open, dry meadow in the background, under a blue sky.
The black oak tree beneath which this letter was written. Photo by Tyler Hess.
Post-pandemic, post-revolution
Earth Abides, Sierra Miwok Territory, California
Dear Descendants,
I’m writing to you from beneath a black oak tree, a second growth tree in these climate changing lands. It’s still not long in the sweep of time since those of European descent seized this land, ripped her of her gold, and named their county after the skulls of the people who have always been here.
I’ve been trying to make sense of how I’ve come to be here.
there is love in our story, but a forgetfulness of what it is for: to commit oneself to place and people; to remember our belonging in the family of things.
I’m writing to you as I want you to know of the decisions we are making now, and why, so that you might understand your place in the story. You may have bloodlines and ancestors of culture, of places not my own, but I write to you as one of solely European descent, a settler for thirteen generations now on Turtle Island. Not so long ago, in 2020, an uprising swept America — never forget this country was named for the love (ame) of riches (rica), and our ancestors were amongst its founders — and the truth of the racial violence that began and sustains this so-called nation was revealed more fully to those who previously weren’t willing to look and see. It gave me a chance, an opening, with our family, to begin the process of transmuting our legacy.
These are your inheritance, your family’s legacy.
Yet do not think the work is over, for I have heard your times are hard, and no doubt some of our unwell ancestors are not yet accounted for. In my lifetime I’ve been working to heal the ones that wrought the wrecking of this continent. Now in yours, you have the chance to go deeper: to harvest the gifts of our ancient European people. You may wrestle (notice “rest” in there) with the ghosts of our people who colonized Europe (like our direct ancestor — through my 13th-great-grandmother Helena Harcourt — the Roman Emperor Charlemagne, who set out to kill and replace the Earth worshipping people of old Europe).
I know you know about such things, for from you I have learned them in dreams.
I leave you with a song that came to me, trusting you’ll be able to hear it…
Thank you Sierra Miwok (Abenaki/Ohlone/etc.) ancestors
For your tending of this land
Thank you for the water and trees
Thank you for the spirits moving through me
May I make you proud and free
May I make you proud and free
With love,
Morgan Hodgson Curtis (1991 – )
Audio version of biography
Guided by the call to transmute the legacy of her first settler ancestors, Morgan Curtis is dedicated to working with her fellow people with wealth, class and/or white privilege towards redistribution, atonement and reparations. Her work catalyzes the healing of relationship with self, other, family and the land, enabling the release of control so that money and power can move towards social, environmental and economic justice. Her first words of support from her ancestors for this work came through in a Work That Reconnects ritual in 2017. Morgan is a resident of Canticle Farm, an interracial, interfaith, intergenerational community in occupied Ohlone territory (known as Oakland, CA). You can learn more about her work at morganhcurtis.com.