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

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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. We can go to them and say: 'You're not doing your job properly, you're destroying creeks when you're logging, you're not following your own rules,'" says Meness. 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. If you want to understand what turned British politics toxic there is no better guide - or antidote. - David Baddiel

We live in an age of fury and confusion. A new crisis erupts before the last one has finished: financial crisis, Brexit, pandemic, war in Ukraine, inflation, strikes. Prime Ministers come and go but politics stays divided and toxic. 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. Western science tends to say: 'We're fact-based, we should lead in decision-making,'" says Courtois. "There's not always a recognition of equivalency of indigenous science to that. And while some may say that they believe in indigenous science, where Western science and indigenous science clash, guess who wins in this system?" 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.Despite existing for millennia and embodying a wealth of wisdom, indigenous knowledge systems often still struggle for recognition.

Stretching from the Pacific to the Atlantic to the Arctic Ocean and encompassing 15 terrestrial ecozones, Canada is blessed with ecological wealth. The country contains 28% of the world's boreal forest, while 25% of global temperate forests are located in the province of British Columbia alone. The country is home to an estimated 80,000 species, 25% of the planet's wetlands, 20% of global surface freshwater and the world's longest coastline. Over a period of one year, the device will collect data on the water's temperature, PH, salinity and conductivity. We have to more than double the national network of these areas to meet our targets by 2030," says Valérie Courtois, a member of the Ilnu Nation and director of the Indigenous Leadership Initiative. "The only way that Canada is going to be able to do that is by enabling, supporting and financing the work of indigenous peoples." Working as a guardian has enriched Meness' life with new experiences and knowledge. From elders she has learnt how to build birch bark canoes and identify medicinal plants. Once, in a remote camp, a woman had been burnt and Meness, given this expertise, was called upon to help. Gathering yarrow, which has cooling effects, and winter green, which soothes inflammation and pain, she mashed them together in a bowl, thinning the mixture ever so slightly with river water. A few minutes after applying the paste to the burn, the woman felt relief, says Meness.Courtois hopes Canada can serve as a model to other parts of the world – on the art of the possible when it comes to decolonisation and reconciliation. But she cautions against the indigenous-led conservation movement being used to reinforce a colonial apparatus. The book is out! Politics, A Survivor’s Guideis about the infuriating toxicity of politics, how it got that way and how to resist the slide into cynicism and pessimism that are so corrosive of democracy. It’s also about identity, migration, nationalism (and how it is different to patriotism), the forces of belonging and trust that bind us to a political system, the feelings of dread and exile that spread when the bonds break down and how to recover. 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." The Sun is sinking lower in the sky and there's a long drive home. Tomorrow will bring another day out on the land, stewarding the territory as her ancestors once did, and as generations to come will too. 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."

By collecting data on water quality in streams and rivers, they help determine if companies are adhering to regulations.The Global Biodiversity Framework adopted at Cop15 made small steps forward by recognising and respecting the rights of indigenous peoples. But the agreement didn't incorporate indigenous people's demand for their lands and territories to be fully recognised as a specific category of conserved area – meant to protect them from land evictions and abuses. This exclusion leaves them at greater risk of human rights violations, according to human rights non-profit Amnesty International. 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. Meness senses a shift in society, observing that indigenous and non-indigenous people alike are trying to work together. In that shift, hope has taken root.

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). is an invigorating, illuminating and hopeful lesson in how to take politics personally. -- Fintan O'Toole, Irish Times columnist and author of HEROIC FAILURE: BREXIT AND THE POLITICS OF PAIN Clear and courageous, Behr stands up for freedom in a world that wants to suffocate it. And he is further distinguished by his fine style. -- Matthew Parris, The Times columnist There are few more elegant writers about politics in the English language than Rafael Behr. With his trademark command of arresting metaphor, he probes our current democratic condition with insight, empathy and wit. The result is a book whose wisdom runs very deep. -- Jonathan Freedland, bestselling author of THE ESCAPE ARTIST The melding of his own near-death experience, a poignant, family history and a profound analysis of four decades of political conflict shouldn't belong in the same volume; but Rafael Behr's lucid prose

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And then of course there is the other side of the political spectrum, with which Behr was more politically aligned until Corbyn’s leadership of Labour.