Politics: A Survivor’s Guide: How to Stay Engaged without Getting Enraged

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Witnessing their ancestor's knowledge in action was, she recalls, a profound moment that deepened her interest in medicinal plant knowledge. "We [once] used all these plants. That's what they were made for, to help us," she says. People are actually listening now," she says. "Being a guardian means to me that [indigenous] people will never go away. We'll always be here. Stop trying to go against us and start working with us." Guardians programmes are also vital in connecting youth with elders, facilitating the transmission of indigenous languages, culture and traditional knowledge – helping indigenous nations to recover and reclaim what has been diminished by colonisation. Since the late 1990s, the vast majority of protected areas established in Canada have been led or co-led by indigenous peoples, says Courtois, and their ambitions far exceed those of governments and global targets.

Our goal is that every First Nation, Inuit or Métis community in Canada that wants a guardians programme should be able to have one," says Courtois. "We think the country would be transformed for the better as a result of those investments." Serving as the "eyes and ears" on traditional territories, guardians are trained experts responsible for helping indigenous nations steward their lands and waters. Guardians manage protected areas and restore wildlife and plants. They are central to creating land-use and marine-use plans. And they test water quality and monitor resource development. Meanwhile, indigenous peoples worldwide are still fighting for basic recognition of their rights and are frequently harassed, criminalised, assaulted or killed for defending their territories.On average in Canada, when indigenous peoples are holding the pen, we see 60% plus protection of their landscape," she says.

I couldn't love Rafael Behr's writing more. This is a beautifully written journey through personal and political history that leads you to a wonderful place: hope. Passionate, clever, and often very funny, you couldn't wish for a more eloquent guide to the landscape of the permacrisis. But as well as being able to explain how things got broken, Behr helps you believe that they can be fixed - and that there is, meantime, a way to stay sane along the way. -- Marina Hyde If you want to understand what turned British politics toxic there is no better guide - or antidote. -- David Baddiel Rafael Behr's writing always illuminates even the most complicated of political chaos and this book does this and so much more: it explains our entire era and how we can bear it. Enlightening, entertaining and a delight to read. -- Hadley Freeman I'm telling you it is a must-read. Quite apart from the subject matter, Rafael Behr is such an elegant writer. -- Nigella Lawson A wonderful meditation on populism, nationalism, politics and truth - rich with imaginative aphorisms, alert to the most unusual connections across time and space - weaving the personal and the global - a great work of political analysis. -- Rory Stewart, The Rest Is Politics podcast's Non-Fiction Book of the Year For too many of us, politics has become an exercise in anguish. And few people have absorbed and endured as much toxicity and despair as political writer Rafael Behr, who in recent years has found himself documenting a national nervous breakdown at the same time as experiencing a near-fatal cardiac crisis. The resulting book could have been solipsistic, but it's not. As Behr rehabilitates physically, he does so intellectually and politically too, producing a book which is at once hopeful, restorative, universal and true. It feels like political Prozac. -- Sathnam Sanghera, bestselling author of EMPIRELAND Fascinating and hugely enjoyable, it reassured me that I'm not going mad and any book which does that is appreciated. Wide-ranging and ludicrously readable, eminently thoughtful and sane. -- Robert Webb How can we still care about politics without being driven to despair or madness? This is an urgent question for citizens everywhere and Rafael Behr answers it with both passion and panache in this wonderfully engaging book. Written with all the verve and wit that make Behr one of the great stylists of contemporary journalism, this

That appeal for nuance pervades this beautifully written, persuasive plea to bridge our political divides. It is also a warning of the dangers if we don’t. It is difficult not to conclude that we are ruled by a generation of meat-headed (my phrase) politicians who are either unaware of how rhetoric can chime with the darkest reaches of 20th-century history (to which Behr is attached by virtue of his murdered forbears) or just don’t care (Boris Johnson). He cites the annual march through Riga honouring Latvia’s Waffen SS division. I have been on that march, as a reporter for The Independent, and yes there were young Nazis strutting their stuff. But Behr is right to say it is more complicated than that. Theresa May’s post-Brexit speech in which she declared that anyone who was not a citizen of Britain was a “citizen of nowhere” chimes eerily with Stalin’s “rootless cosmopolitan”, a euphemism for Jews. Didn’t she realise that? No, reports Behr. He asked her aides and they said as much. But even before any data is gathered, Meness and her colleague are on the look out for indications that something is off. Seeing an unusually high amount of sand in streams – which leaks into the water from logging roads – is one sign they look out for, based on indigenous knowledge, says Meness.

In Canada, where there are feelings among many that colonialism is a historical problem but one still rooted in the present, centring conservation with the country's original stewards is allowing indigenous people to reconnect to their land and culture. It is also reshaping relations between indigenous nations and non-indigenous Canada, presenting an opportunity for genuine reconciliation. And there would likely be many more – if the money was there. At the last intake, Courtois says demand for guardians programmes far outweighed available funding. Over a period of one year, the device will collect data on the water's temperature, PH, salinity and conductivity. True, there were always “diligent antisemites” who pointed out Behr’s Jewishness irrespective of its irrelevance to him and his work.Like elsewhere, this biodiversity is threatened by habitat loss and degradation, over-exploitation, pollution and climate change. The most recent national assessment found 20% of measured species face some level of risk of extinction, with 873 of these species critically endangered mainly due to human activities encroaching their habitat. In turn, Meness now offers medicine walks and workshops, and aims to play an integral role disseminating this knowledge to others in her community. Although the new forms of recognition in the Global Biodiversity Framework are a high watermark, it is by no means enough," says Holly Jonas, global coordinator of the ICCA Consortium, an international non-profit which supports Indigenous Peoples' and Community Conserved Areas and Territories (ICCAs). There's no shortage of examples of indigenous-led conservation ambition, from the Qikiqtani Inuit Association working to establish a 108,000 sq km (42,000 sq miles) national marine conservation area in the richly diverse Arctic waters offshore of Nunavut to the Sayisi Dene First Nation in northern Manitoba aiming to protect the entirety of the 50,000sq km (19,300sq miles) Seal River watershed. Here Behr reveals with the clarity of spring water the logic with which Corbyn’s acolytes see Jews via Zionism as the enemy of socialism and therefore also of the “dear leader”.