What do we owe one another?

We’ve looked at hundreds of years of decisions that shaped pregnancy, birth, and postpartum care in America. We’ve seen wealth accumulated in some communities while being deliberately withheld from others. We’ve seen knowledge extracted from Black communities without equal recognition or opportunity. We’ve seen hospitals, universities, professional organizations, and public systems built over generations, often benefiting from work, labor, or expertise that wasn’t equally valued or equally rewarded.

And we just addressed that allyship is attached to real actions that have real impacts. It’s natural, after taking all of that in, to wonder what happens next.

It can bring us right to the doorstep of the idea of reparations. And also — beside it, but less talked about — redistribution.

At their core, both ideas begin with the same recognition: there's real monetary value wrapped up in all this history that needs to be accounted for. The choices we’ve explored throughout this exhibition didn’t simply create different experiences. They created different opportunities, different resources, and different starting places that were passed from one generation to the next. If history helped distribute those things unequally, it’s reasonable to ask whether today’s choices can help redistribute resources and opportunity more intentionally. Can we, to some degree, play catch-up on this?

Reparations are often posed as controversial, and they are contested. But the basic idea — that the government can acknowledge a past harm and respond with money — is not new in America.

When Congress ended slavery in Washington, D.C. in 1862, it set aside $1 million to pay former slaveholders up to $300 for each of the roughly three thousand people freed. The people who had been enslaved received nothing. The federal government has since paid other kinds of redress: $20,000 to each surviving Japanese American incarcerated during the Second World War, under the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, and more than $800 million awarded to Native nations through the Indian Claims Commission between 1946 and 1978.

None of these is the same as reparations for slavery. None of them erased the obstacles those groups faced then or face now, and none offers a model for what repair should look like today. But they mean the country does not have to imagine from scratch that a government can owe something to a group of people because of what that government did before. The harder questions are whose harms we recognize, what we believe is owed, and what meaningful repair actually looks like.

When people hear the word redistribution, it’s common to think first about money. Money certainly matters, but it isn’t the only thing that gets distributed.

Throughout this exhibition, we’ve looked at many forms of value. Land. Education. Professional opportunities. Research funding. Leadership positions. Public attention. Community trust. Relationships. Knowledge. Even something as simple as being the person whose voice is assumed to carry authority in the room.

Those things shape people’s lives too.

That’s why redistribution is ultimately a much broader question than simply, Who gives money to whom? It’s also a question of access. Who has access to opportunity? Who has access to decision-making? Who has access to mentorship, professional networks, funding, introductions, or platforms? Just as importantly, who doesn’t?

One of the reasons I wanted to include the Redistribution Calculator in this exhibition is because conversations like these can stay very abstract. It’s easy to leave believing that redistribution is something only governments, foundations, or large institutions can participate in. Certainly, those institutions hold tremendous responsibility. They also hold tremendous resources. But they aren’t the only places where redistribution happens.

A physician can refer families to community birthworkers instead of trying to meet every need within one practice. A conference organizer can pay community educators the same way they pay academic speakers. A funder can provide unrestricted support instead of requiring organizations to repeatedly prove the value of work their communities already know is valuable. Someone with influence can recommend another person’s work before recommending their own.

None of those decisions erase history.

They do influence what history looks like moving forward.

This is also where power matters. A community organization with a small budget doesn’t carry the same responsibility as a hospital system. A patient doesn’t carry the same responsibility as the institution providing their care. Shared responsibility should never become a way of pretending everyone has the same ability to create change.

Instead, it invites each of us to ask a different question: What do I have the ability to influence from where I am?

The final chapter looks at people, organizations, books, films, and communities that are already doing this work — and offers a place to continue learning long after this exhibition ends.

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