Who Belongs to Whom? Ecosystem Sovereignty and the Spiritual Roots of Peace

This experiential workshop reorients belonging from social inclusion to reciprocal obligation: what we owe the living systems we belong to. From conflict and post-conflict landscapes where sacred connection to land fuels violence, participants enter a facilitated negotiation in which an ecosystem itself holds legal and moral authority, alternating between human and more-than-human roles. The exercise surfaces how spiritual communities and peacebuilding practices fail when they exclude ecosystems as legitimate authorities, and how "inclusion" language reproduces extractive logics when ecological belonging is denied. Grounded in the facilitator's lineages—Dilmun cosmology, the Egyptian Neṯeru, Islamic-Sufi amāna and ḥimā, Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche's Bodhisattva teachings, and Linda Tucker's white lions of Sirius—the workshop equips participants to integrate more-than-human voices and belonging within their decision-making, governance, and scholarship. What becomes possible when ecosystems are recognized as sovereign participants, not resources to be managed?