maybe taking the 'confess' thing a little too literally here but:
I'm white, and family relations own a private plantation house, as well as the attached farm, which is still a sugar company. I spent alot of vacation time as a kid there before I knew enough to start refusing to go. Do you have any reccomendations for building a ritual to apologize to the spirits there? I'm already doing what I can to help the farmworkers unionize.
Giving a serious answer here.
Ritual is the physicalization of magic. Spirits ain’t gonna rest or accept an apology alone if they ain’t already gone by this point. You have to do the material work before you touch anything else.
Literally just do the research to identify the still living descendants of the enslaved people who were on it, then figure out a way to force the company to designate a portion of their profits as ongoing reparations for them split among living members. Consider it a lineage pension.
Do not reach out to the families initially unless you know the company will be resistant, and if they are, then add external pressure. If your family specifically were the slaveholders, use that potential of public shame vs. looking altruistic and good to help push it.
If you speak to families directly, don’t push your white guilt on them. Yes you can give direct apology ONCE but anything more than that unless requested is more for you than them.
Do not *offer* for them to come visit/do ancestor shit bc that’s sus af from someone nonblack in this situation, but be willing to facilitate if they ask.
Please, PLEASE know when to shut up, take an L, and/or acknowledge and accept they may be pissed at you not thankful.
It is not your place to do any ritual contacting these dead. I’d say at most find a spot you could silently leave offerings on the land and then promptly dissipate yourself from that area.
But dead serious the most important part is reparations for those families bc shit if I was the spirits and a cracker tried to talk to me because they great grandpappy owned me, I’d just fuckin curse them and leave 🤷🏽
