In the context of the escalating ecological crisis, which is deeply intertwined with colonial and capitalist structures of oppression, mainstream public schooling in Canada is not supporting the health and wellness of many students or creating the eco-social-cultural changes needed to live within the Earth's carrying capacity. In this paper, we draw insights from liberation psychology and decolonial scholarship to offer a critical analysis of Western human development theories and suggest alternative wholistic and relational possibilities for education that can help institutions work toward collective wellbeing and community transformation. Guided by Indigenous and place attachment scholarship and through an examination of our own experiences as land-centred educators, we exemplify how attachment theory can be expanded to include the natural world. We propose that relational belonging to the living world and a nature-connected learning community is a crucial developmental need for learners that is foundational for collective wellbeing and eco-social-cultural change.