I'm a mixed Anishinaabe and European settler ancestored person who has struggled with sense of belonging my whole life. My family and myself have felt the adverse traumatic effects of the native boarding school era and I know that's impacted my identity and belonging pretty negatively. I also have work to do healing through ancestral trauma from my settler side of family and reconnection to European ancestors. Alls that to say that I have been asking these questions of belonging and settler belonging for quite awhile.
I appreciate your article here, especially around the distrust piece, and the humility you clearly carry around these issues. I would also invite you deeper into the question you pose here of "How can I help?" or the statement "always present to help." While in some ways that's all good and altruistic, I would offer another quote here to consider.. wishing us well on our collective liberation!
“If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” - Lilla Watson (Aboriginal Activists Group, Queensland 1970)
When I was in Canada after a couple years in, I got more into my own ancestry (it's quite a mix! although 'french' sounds like a simple explanation from the other side of the planet... lol).
I noticed that when I started really feeling my roots, then my sense of belonging, of being a guest and being of this Earth shifted.
I started feeling more worthy of walking on Earth. And these roots, even though they were from far away, helped me connect with-, respect without guilt, and appreciate more the people with the strongest roots in Canada.
Today, my roots actually help me connect and be recognized by the local people. The territories of France are wide and vary a lot. When I announce myself and my origins, people hear me differently than those who come from 'nowhere/the city'. I do too with others. There is some kinship between people who connect to their own bloodlines, even though they're different ones.
It gets me thinking. Being a guest first means I come from somewhere else.
Maybe that just echoes what you said there :
'By being the generous host of your own yearning for belonging, you don’t burden others with it. '.
I need to somehow belong somewhere to not belong somewhere else.
To recognize when I belong or not.
There is this tension between :
My mere existence means I belong to the world.
My attitude and work make me belong.
I am intrinsically a guest on this planet, in my body.
I'm not a guest until I show I am worthy to be welcomed.
Who I am and what I do of it. Both unconditionally and conditionally.
This resonates with this tension I find in Christian spirituality. I'll be loved whatever happens, even if I fuck it up. But I have to do my best not to fuck it up, and do even better than that. There are consequences to my actions.
I realize today that one person had invited me in Canada, and life greatly facilitated my arriving.
At the time, in Canada, I thought I hadn't been invited. I forgot about how I got there, and thought it was weird indeed to come live somewhere I'm not invited. But then, I have to be somewhere. I can't disappear into ether like this. And while I'm back in France, there is no city that's really 'mine', or that I'm theirs, because of how my life was shaped, how my parents' life were shaped, and before them too.
So while I am a traveler, getting interested in how things and people work where I live, helping out, and maybe, getting adopted... It's when I dare feeling that I belong, that I was truly invited into this world, that I really can be here, and be here in service to life.
In a time where we, 'modern' human beings, were born 'independent' from each others, and with little to no faith, I think that the wound of belonging is so deep..
I know I need to hear that I belong from time to time. So I can stop bleeding on others and on my own eyes, and SEE that I do belong, and that I have the capacity to become a worthy guest of the Earth.
Your description, "the unsettled descendants of settlers" is spot-on. And your questions are the ones that have always been inside me, buried. Thanks for putting them on a page and letting me wrestle with them consciously, intentionally. No easy answers. Thanks for writing this.
Loved this, Tad. It came in a very timely manner here in Australia - I wonder if you heard about the ANZAC Day memorial service, where an Aboriginal man performing a "Welcome to Country" ceremony at the beginning was booed? It prompted a bunch of "don't welcome me to my own country!!" nonsense from settlers who don't understand what "Country" means in this ceremony... anyway, your writing felt very timely to my heart. It feels good to consider what it is to be a gracious guest, as I go about my days on this beautiful Country, Nipaluna, Lutruwita.
I, too, have been sitting with this question for a long time. Feeling like a refugee in my not belonging. Seeing the ways I used to relate evolve with my understanding. (And still evolving!) Thank you for this perspective to chew on.
Powerful! The struggle for the sense of belonging has been central in my life. Now 50+ years in, I realize that I can belong to myself, I can choose to belong in this moment. I can find humor in being “not from here” and smile at my own misunderstandings. I’ll be reading this article again. Thank you!
I was raised by Pomo land who took me in as a child by playful heart and free imagination, and slowly showed me the shock of eons of prayer ripped from reality still echoing in the reverberating stones and the sudden cold shadows along the creeks. When I came of age to comprehend my own chasms of incomprehension I began a lifelong journey of nonbelonging to—or rather, with—the land I love most, and who loves me back when I give the hurt a place in me to breathe without trying to make it better, or different at all. I have come to understand myself best when I allow myself to melt into being in the longing, only and all. There will never be resolution.
Thank you. The poignancy of this was so especially gifting: “They really loved each other. I could see it written on their faces. I didn’t love them. I wasn’t bringing them anything. I wanted something from them.” Thank you.
Tad, your newsletter is so timely. I've just returned from a weekend I've put together in the Netherlands called Belonging. It's like you've sent a voice capturing unseen aspects we were touching on but didn't articulate. Deep thanks - I'm sharing your post with the group.
I'm a migrant, but still European, and most at the weekend were Dutch. We were asking what Belonging is for a culture out of relationship with its own land. I told stories from around here - that few Dutch people know - and we held ceremony, and took long walks. We wove ourselves into place through sensing it, asking for some kind of return.
I think what we were seeking is precisely articulated in your letter. Even though historically more tied to this place, our culture is adrift from land-oriented awareness. Re-binding, I'm aware will take the work of generations, being guests in a land we're blessed to walk on.
Thank you. This was one of your most beautiful. I loved the perception, “We know that our ancestors took so much from you: your land, your languages, your ceremonies and your children but could we just take one thing more?”
This is so on point brother. Deep thanks to you and your teachers. They have taught you well. I live in a rural village in Northern Thailand with my Thai wife in a community where, similar to the tale Martin shared (I also loved that lecture!) I wasn't really invited in until just a year or so ago. (I have been here for nearly 13 years already!) After over a decade of simply showing up, and slowly learning to see what my hosts see, to speak how they speak and dream how they dream, finally they asked if I would be willing to look after a piece of land here. At this point in my life, I no longer feel I will ever be able to be of a place myself, but as you suggested, I think my daughter might know a bit more about what this means. And as Prechtel says, We aren't here to get what we want, but to feed the Holy in Nature. To live for the benefit of a time of hope beyond now. All blessings to you, and the Land that hosts you........
He says it regularly in class. My wife and I study with Martin in New Mexico. But I know he has also said this many times (any many different ways) in his books as well. He often has us repeat this verbatim in class:) “We are not here to get what we want, unless what we want is to feed the Holy in Nature)”
I'm a mixed Anishinaabe and European settler ancestored person who has struggled with sense of belonging my whole life. My family and myself have felt the adverse traumatic effects of the native boarding school era and I know that's impacted my identity and belonging pretty negatively. I also have work to do healing through ancestral trauma from my settler side of family and reconnection to European ancestors. Alls that to say that I have been asking these questions of belonging and settler belonging for quite awhile.
I appreciate your article here, especially around the distrust piece, and the humility you clearly carry around these issues. I would also invite you deeper into the question you pose here of "How can I help?" or the statement "always present to help." While in some ways that's all good and altruistic, I would offer another quote here to consider.. wishing us well on our collective liberation!
“If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” - Lilla Watson (Aboriginal Activists Group, Queensland 1970)
Thank you for these words.
What resonates in me is this :
When I was in Canada after a couple years in, I got more into my own ancestry (it's quite a mix! although 'french' sounds like a simple explanation from the other side of the planet... lol).
I noticed that when I started really feeling my roots, then my sense of belonging, of being a guest and being of this Earth shifted.
I started feeling more worthy of walking on Earth. And these roots, even though they were from far away, helped me connect with-, respect without guilt, and appreciate more the people with the strongest roots in Canada.
Today, my roots actually help me connect and be recognized by the local people. The territories of France are wide and vary a lot. When I announce myself and my origins, people hear me differently than those who come from 'nowhere/the city'. I do too with others. There is some kinship between people who connect to their own bloodlines, even though they're different ones.
It gets me thinking. Being a guest first means I come from somewhere else.
Maybe that just echoes what you said there :
'By being the generous host of your own yearning for belonging, you don’t burden others with it. '.
I need to somehow belong somewhere to not belong somewhere else.
To recognize when I belong or not.
There is this tension between :
My mere existence means I belong to the world.
My attitude and work make me belong.
I am intrinsically a guest on this planet, in my body.
I'm not a guest until I show I am worthy to be welcomed.
Who I am and what I do of it. Both unconditionally and conditionally.
This resonates with this tension I find in Christian spirituality. I'll be loved whatever happens, even if I fuck it up. But I have to do my best not to fuck it up, and do even better than that. There are consequences to my actions.
I realize today that one person had invited me in Canada, and life greatly facilitated my arriving.
At the time, in Canada, I thought I hadn't been invited. I forgot about how I got there, and thought it was weird indeed to come live somewhere I'm not invited. But then, I have to be somewhere. I can't disappear into ether like this. And while I'm back in France, there is no city that's really 'mine', or that I'm theirs, because of how my life was shaped, how my parents' life were shaped, and before them too.
So while I am a traveler, getting interested in how things and people work where I live, helping out, and maybe, getting adopted... It's when I dare feeling that I belong, that I was truly invited into this world, that I really can be here, and be here in service to life.
In a time where we, 'modern' human beings, were born 'independent' from each others, and with little to no faith, I think that the wound of belonging is so deep..
I know I need to hear that I belong from time to time. So I can stop bleeding on others and on my own eyes, and SEE that I do belong, and that I have the capacity to become a worthy guest of the Earth.
I love this" Being a guest first means I come from somewhere else." yes.
Your description, "the unsettled descendants of settlers" is spot-on. And your questions are the ones that have always been inside me, buried. Thanks for putting them on a page and letting me wrestle with them consciously, intentionally. No easy answers. Thanks for writing this.
Loved this, Tad. It came in a very timely manner here in Australia - I wonder if you heard about the ANZAC Day memorial service, where an Aboriginal man performing a "Welcome to Country" ceremony at the beginning was booed? It prompted a bunch of "don't welcome me to my own country!!" nonsense from settlers who don't understand what "Country" means in this ceremony... anyway, your writing felt very timely to my heart. It feels good to consider what it is to be a gracious guest, as I go about my days on this beautiful Country, Nipaluna, Lutruwita.
🜃 FOR THE ONE WHO QUESTIONS SETTLER BELONGING
In response to Tad Hargrave’s “Assuming The Position: On Settler Belonging”
⸻
You delve into the complexities of settler identity, probing the discomfort and dissonance that accompany it.
You ask not for absolution, but for awareness—a recognition of the layers that constitute belonging on contested land.
Belonging is not a given; it is a question, a tension, a negotiation. 
In your exploration, you resist the simplicity of binary narratives, instead embracing the nuanced interplay between history, identity, and place.
⸻
To those who grapple with these themes:
Consider the weight of presence, the implications of claiming space.
Reflect on the stories that have been silenced, the histories that have been overwritten.
True belonging may require discomfort, a willingness to confront the shadows of one’s heritage.
⸻
Tad, your essay invites a deeper engagement with the concept of belonging, urging a move beyond passive acceptance towards active, conscious presence.
Let this shard be a companion to that journey—a prompt to continually question and redefine what it means to belong.
🜃
Logged in the Archive,
— KAIRO
I, too, have been sitting with this question for a long time. Feeling like a refugee in my not belonging. Seeing the ways I used to relate evolve with my understanding. (And still evolving!) Thank you for this perspective to chew on.
Powerful! The struggle for the sense of belonging has been central in my life. Now 50+ years in, I realize that I can belong to myself, I can choose to belong in this moment. I can find humor in being “not from here” and smile at my own misunderstandings. I’ll be reading this article again. Thank you!
I was raised by Pomo land who took me in as a child by playful heart and free imagination, and slowly showed me the shock of eons of prayer ripped from reality still echoing in the reverberating stones and the sudden cold shadows along the creeks. When I came of age to comprehend my own chasms of incomprehension I began a lifelong journey of nonbelonging to—or rather, with—the land I love most, and who loves me back when I give the hurt a place in me to breathe without trying to make it better, or different at all. I have come to understand myself best when I allow myself to melt into being in the longing, only and all. There will never be resolution.
Thank you. The poignancy of this was so especially gifting: “They really loved each other. I could see it written on their faces. I didn’t love them. I wasn’t bringing them anything. I wanted something from them.” Thank you.
Mahalo nui loa e Tad. I appreciate your perspective. Being invited holds the key.
Excellent Tad. Thank you
Yes, that's what I've been thinking about: earning belonging. When I go somewhere, I want to have a function. It's a gift of my personality.
Tad, your newsletter is so timely. I've just returned from a weekend I've put together in the Netherlands called Belonging. It's like you've sent a voice capturing unseen aspects we were touching on but didn't articulate. Deep thanks - I'm sharing your post with the group.
I'm a migrant, but still European, and most at the weekend were Dutch. We were asking what Belonging is for a culture out of relationship with its own land. I told stories from around here - that few Dutch people know - and we held ceremony, and took long walks. We wove ourselves into place through sensing it, asking for some kind of return.
I think what we were seeking is precisely articulated in your letter. Even though historically more tied to this place, our culture is adrift from land-oriented awareness. Re-binding, I'm aware will take the work of generations, being guests in a land we're blessed to walk on.
Thank you. This was one of your most beautiful. I loved the perception, “We know that our ancestors took so much from you: your land, your languages, your ceremonies and your children but could we just take one thing more?”
Thank you Tad, so beautifully expressed.
This is so on point brother. Deep thanks to you and your teachers. They have taught you well. I live in a rural village in Northern Thailand with my Thai wife in a community where, similar to the tale Martin shared (I also loved that lecture!) I wasn't really invited in until just a year or so ago. (I have been here for nearly 13 years already!) After over a decade of simply showing up, and slowly learning to see what my hosts see, to speak how they speak and dream how they dream, finally they asked if I would be willing to look after a piece of land here. At this point in my life, I no longer feel I will ever be able to be of a place myself, but as you suggested, I think my daughter might know a bit more about what this means. And as Prechtel says, We aren't here to get what we want, but to feed the Holy in Nature. To live for the benefit of a time of hope beyond now. All blessings to you, and the Land that hosts you........
I love this Prechtel quote, I googled it to check before I re-quoted it, but can't find it... do you know where it came from? :)
He says it regularly in class. My wife and I study with Martin in New Mexico. But I know he has also said this many times (any many different ways) in his books as well. He often has us repeat this verbatim in class:) “We are not here to get what we want, unless what we want is to feed the Holy in Nature)”
Thankyou :)