Contested Belonging

Abstract This article examines how local chiefs frame their relationships with communities and Mount Mabo through kinship, exoteric knowledge, and spiritual power in the context of growing impositions of neoliberal nature governance. The article shows that the amwene (local chiefs) hold authority due to their spiritual connection with what they consider sibling landscapes: the oldest brother, Mount Mabo; the middle sister, River Múgue; and the youngest brother, Mount Muriba. This allows them to control access to landscapes that NGOs and conservationists aim to protect. The article argues that by understanding the amwene’s cosmologies, a relational ecology emerges where mountains, rivers, and forests are seen as inhabited by the original local chiefs’ spirits that in turn mediate social relations and mutual belonging with the living chiefs and landscapes. This cosmology offers a powerful critique of neoliberal nature governance, which thingifies nature while exacerbating the separation of nature from society. However, more than providing an academic critique of neoliberal nature conservation in Mozambique, this article aims to offer valuable insights for reimagining conservation efforts in a manner that respects and preserves the integrity of both human and nonhuman worlds in the Anthropocene.