Artist statement: This submission is the most important love letter I have ever written: an invitation to move beyond incremental gestures and towards deeper, accountable solidarity with Indigenous, Black, and other BIPOC communities. Written in the current political moment, it holds both hope and the hard-won skepticism of communities repeatedly betrayed by white supremacy, while calling for anti-racist education rooted in Indigenous leadership, truth-telling, accountability, and meaningful collective action.

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Dear beloved white kin,

This is the scariest and most important love letter I have ever written. 

As I write the word love, my heart thrashes against my ribs like a crazed caged animal. The little me within howls a tantrum-filled no. I imagine the skeptical glances of my BIPOC kin expressing, I wouldn’t do that if I were you. 

And still my fingers tap on the keys of my computer.

They tap gently. To not drown out the echoes of words I whisper to my child, Ezelle, as I try to help them navigate the nonsensical, yet very real and painful dynamics of racism: 

We must love everyone the same, 

That is how we break the cycle. 

Even if they do not love us the same. 

I trust you can understand why it feels viscerally dangerous to expose my heart to you, after all the repeated ways, throughout my life, throughout history, and throughout this moment, that you and your people have desecrated the trust between us. 

And I am taking this risk, due to the somber reality that BIPOC people around the globe will never be free from the oppression of white supremacy until far more of you are free from it too. 

*    *   * 

My fingers tap with glimmers of hope inspired by the incremental progress you have made towards centering Indigenous leadership in the fight against climate change. Your solidarity at Standing Rock. In the 2020 racial justice uprisings. Against the 2026 ICE raids.

Then, that little me within asks if it is responsible to generate meaningful hope from such tiny gestures, given the massive, chronic, systematized tendency of white people to break our hearts. 

My little one, like so many of ours, is a wise old soul, inquiring about what is plainly before them. 

And still my fingers tap.

They tap with tender flashbacks of the men serving life sentences that I did victim-offender surrogate work with in San Quentin prison. Their moist eyes, resting hopefully above their modest smiles, remind me that hurt people hurt people, hurt people can heal, and healed people are essential to the healing of us all.

They tap with the pulsing rhythm of my ancestral bloodlines, as the daughter of a white woman and an Afro-Indigenous father who descends from countless generations of slave rape. Pulses plagued by the desperate yearnings of my white ancestors, for help restoring their right relationship to the living. 

Whether I am proud of this ancestry or not, I can not pretend that white people are not my kin. That your actions, non-actions, and inadequate actions are not in some way my responsibility. That I am not impacted by our ancestors’ pleas. 

Well, actually, I could pretend this. And that kind of inaccurate accounting would only make me complicit in fabricating the delusions that dismember us all from the truth. 

*    *   * 

Beloved kin, the truth is, rage and punishment are what your culture tells us you deserve. 

Our cultures tell us that such retributive notions will not end these atrocities. 

Only courageous acts of love and solidarity will. 

I cannot ask that of you if I cannot model it myself.

And so my fingers tap.

They tap knowing, my proximity to whiteness affords me, and my survival requires me to know you far better than I wish to. Far better than you may know yourself. 

That knowing positions me to believe things about you that few others can fathom. 

This moment in history and the call of Our ancestors mandate me to step out on this flimsy limb, risk the respect of our BIPOC kin, and tell you what I believe. 

*    *   * 

In a text message to a Palestinian friend, I wrote: 

My kiddo loves to sing:

‘From the river to the sea,
Palestine will be free.’ 

Every time 
I hear them sing this, 
I rededicate 
myself 
to that promise. 

That is my promise to you, 
Fadwa

So many 
of us 
are making 
that promise 
right now. 

Our own precious liberation depends on it. 

Precious kin, I believe that your liberation from white supremacy depends on you also making this promise.  

I believe one of your deepest longings is to see white supremacy end, both within yourself and in the world around you. 

I believe you are acutely aware that less pain will be felt, less blood will be spilt, and less life will be lost the sooner and more completely you fulfill this desire. 

I trust you know that this moment in history may present the ripest opportunity you will face in your lifetime to do so.

I am confident you will bring your regret to your grave if you do not rise to this occasion. 

*    *   * 

Precious kin, I know you cannot fully embody this longing without also unearthing the traumas that led your ancestors to become hurt people who hurt people.

Without acknowledging the role you and your people have played in creating, maintaining, and benefiting from settler-colonialism and Indigenous genocide. 

Without admitting the devastating impacts this system has had on human and non-human life on every continent throughout modern history. 

Without grappling with the legacy of privileges left to you by this system and your ancestors. Privileges born from abuse, extraction, and exploitation. Privileges toxically saturating present and future generations of life, prosperity, and relationships. 

Precious kin, I know you can not assimilate these painful realities without contending with the deep cognitive dissonance created between them and the good people you believe yourselves to be. 

Without joining the We of wounded healers, transforming our ancestral wounds into medicine:

Cherished kin,

Many of your ancestors,

 like many of my own,

 were not well in life

 and are not well in death. 

Healing from the harm

 of harming others

 is one of the most difficult

 harms to heal. 

Such harms can not be healed

 in darkness, death, and isolation. 

They must be exposed

 to the life-affirming power of our love.

Our ancestors need us

to recover the painful truths about the harms they have caused,

to bring these stories intimately close to our hearts,

to courageously engage the pain as our own

to hold ourselves accountable for the damage done. 

They need us

to insist that these stories

be woven back into the fabric of dominant culture, education, and history. 

So the masses,

as well as future generations,

never forget,

 and never repeat.  

They need us

to learn from their mistakes,

 to rematriate what was stolen,

to repair the damage done to trust.

Our ancestors desperately need us

 to medicate their pain and regret

 with the transformational balm of

 truth, connection, and accountability.

*    *   * 

I invite you, precious, beloved, and cherished kin, to pause and breathe with me at this critical threshold. 

May your inner child absorb the tender compassion this letter is offering to you, as you face the profound reckoning it is asking of you. 

May all your relations know, deep in their cells, that this letter is demanding atonement for all future generations of life, including yours. Yes, You and your people are part of the We we have always been fighting for.

And now,

after taking one more long pause

and one more deep breath

I am asking

You to become part of the ever-growing We making this promise,

being shouted by millions of people around the world,

by the Black and Indigenous leaders you have vowed to follow.

by white and Jewish kin actively dismantling the cognitive dissonance between their complicity, and who they know themselves to be.

by humanitarian organizations throughout the globe,

through the wails of grieving mothers, and the silence of children too dehydrated, too malnourished, and too traumatized to utter a sound. 

From me to you, and you to me

From me to us, and us to we

From the river to the sea

Palestine must be free

We all must feel Gaza’s pain

Know it well as colonial reign

Fight for the people being slain

As if they are our kin

Because they are

We must love everyone the same

Even if they do not love us the same.

That is how we 

break the cycle.

In vulnerable kinship,

J. Miakoda Taylor 

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