Writing has always been a way of building connections. Words can never weave together the complexities of all we experience, but they can weave together threads that bind us. Writing on, about and through what she calls ‘the liquid continent’ of Te Moana-nui-a-kiwa — the Pacific ocean — the writer and scholar Alice Te Punga Somerville builds and imagines worlds, challenging and then offering the reader a passage aboard a waka (canoe) of language, belonging, identity, ‘citizenship’, sovereignty, solidarity and love.

To be Indigenous is to share cascading crises with the earth. Swarms of plastic suffocate our beaches; our wetlands drained for dairy farming are prone to catastrophic floods; the soils we live on are poisoned by industrial toxins, causing soaring rates of asthma and cancer in our communities.

Dr Huhana Smith and cousins have spent the last twenty years focussing on the restoration of her ancestral coastal land and waterways at Kuku Beach, near Levin, in Aotearoa/New Zealand, using biochar—the carbon-rich remains of slow-burned wood. Smith and her collaborators use biochar not only as a tool for land restoration, but also as an artistic medium. Their work is critical for thinking about what is possible when Māori communities have control of their cultural and spiritual bases.

Do you ever just take up exercise because you’re bored? Will training for a marathon and joining a gym cure my depression and give me a reason to live? Pain is just weakness leaving your body. Sorry that was a bit bleak wasn’t it. Gemini full moon baby. Running on a muddy track along the town belt I see a ponga tree slipping off the banks. I almost stand on a baby Tui. Honestly can nature get the hell out of my way I’m trying to cure my depression.