My Story
My name is Morgan Curtis, and I am descended from first and early settler colonizers of the land now known as Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York (Paugussett, Wampanoag, Matinecock territory, amongst many others). I know that the many privileges I was born into are inextricably linked to what has been stolen from the labor of enslaved African people, the rights of workers, lands of Indigenous people and the health of ecosystems. Growing up we never talked about family money or history in this way. I’ve realized I’m not alone in this, and now see this lack of truth telling as one of the major barriers in the way of transforming our ancestral legacies and building a more just world.
As a coach, facilitator, ritualist and organizer, I work at the intersections of personal transformation, community-building, ancestral healing and social change. I was politicized by the fossil fuel divestment student movement, and spent 8 years as an organizer and youth activist educator in climate and social justice movements. In those spaces I came to be passionate about grief work and direct action, grounding both in relationship, ritual and storytelling.
I started organizing wealthy people in response to the request from movement and community to “do the work with your own people.” I am on the journey of redistributing 100% of my inherited wealth and 50% of my earned income, working closely with both family members and the friends from social justice movements that hold me accountable. It’s been a challenging, healing and transformative process, one that I am called to support others in.
Lastly, I wish to share this letter I wrote to my descendants, which I think embodies much of the spirit with which I approach this work. Here’s a section of it: “The money that came down through our family, gathered by generations of bankers, lawyers, captains of ships and industry, has finally been returned to the people and lands from which it was taken. It is my prayer that you are still connected to the Black and Indigenous villages into which it flowed, that you are shaped by their leadership and that you still find ways to mutually support one another as the world heats and unravels. These villages are refugia of knowledge and wisdom, places where intergenerational trauma was able to be witnessed and healed, where children grew into elders that guided their people onwards. These are your inheritance, your family’s legacy.”
My Training
I am honored to be a member of Canticle Farm, a multi-racial, interfaith, cross-class, intergenerational community in occupied Lisjan Ohlone territory (known as Oakland, CA). For the eight years I have lived here I have been mentored in relational solidarity, the Work That Reconnects, nonviolence, restorative justice, inter-cultural ritual, circle process, gift economics, community reparations and more.
I also recently graduated with a Masters of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School, where I focused on the spiritual dimension of reparations work for white descendants of colonizers and enslavers.
I am a 2020 graduate of the Academy for Coaching Excellence, an accredited institution of the International Coach Federation (ICF), where I completed 200+ hours of rigorous training in life & leadership coaching, alongside 300+ client hours.
Lastly, I give thanks to Resource Generation, a multi-racial membership community of young people (18-35) with wealth and/or class privilege committed to the equitable distribution of wealth, land, and power, and Solidaire Network, another community of donor organizers for racial, gender and climate justice, for political education and peer support.
Photo from 2019 SustainUS Annual Gathering (me at center, red shirt) — This is the youth-led climate justice organization I learned and grew with from 2015-2019, and where I first became a “major donor”.