Before we even know who we are, we are held by relationships: with family, community, place, language, the more-than-human world. In a sense, we arrive clothed – already a part of something.

And yet we can become separated from the places that help form us, from the people around us, from our histories and from the living world itself – finding ourselves as though we are somehow outside the systems that sustain us.

Belonging is a relationship – and relationships ask something of us.

What does it mean to belong to a community? What do we owe the people among us? What happens when we recognise that we belong not only to other humans, but also to the winds, forests, oceans, animals and the soil beneath our feet? And what happens when our relationship to place is broken, whether through displacement, extraction or the erasure of memory?

Belonging can be inherited, and it can be chosen – rooted in one place or stretched across many. It can bring comfort, but it also carries responsibility. And there is a difficult side too: the question of who is allowed to belong, who is excluded, and who gets to decide.

In this issue, we explore some of these different dimensions of belonging. Mary Robinson and Al Gore reflect on what it means for us to belong to one another. Gabes Torres considers the belonging that extends beyond the human, and Njerũ Njoka sits with their 103-year-old grandmother to discuss what it means to be mshamba – belonging to the land.

Across these texts runs a shared witnessing of harm – of colonialism, extraction, displacement and ecological loss – alongside grieving, tending, and beginning once again.

Elsewhere in this issue, Satish Kumar calls for a Ministry of Peace, Liz Hosken meets Lara Lutzenberger to discuss the legacy of her father, agronomist and environmentalist José ‘Lutz’ Lutzenberger, James Newcomb considers the vision of Plenty Coups and the call of the chickadee, Darcia Narvaez explores how we might recover a culture of kinship, and Fritjof Capra presents the eightfold way of life.

As you read this magazine, you might find yourself belonging to the stories. I invite you to sit with them, let them speak to you over time, and share them when you’re ready.

Dave Reeve is the Editor of Resurgence & Ecologist