By Alliance Intern Eleanor Hulan
This time last month, I walked the 15 minutes to work and got there with my eyes streaming, nausea threatening to fell me, and a sense of despair unhelped by staring out a floor to ceiling window all day. July 16, the Air Quality Index in MN reached hazardous levels due to fire and smoke particulate in counties across the state, including the Tribal Nations of Mille Lacs, Leech Lake, Red Lake, and White Earth.
That day, levels here were the second worst in the world. We’ve also been facing heat waves all summer that at times made it feel like a Herculean task to accomplish errands and get to work.
And this is in Minnesota, one of the so-called climate-haven states. Places like Australia have been contending with weather like this for decades. Australians, like the US, Canada, much of South America, and everywhere else with a history of colonialism, have also been contending with their history of the exploitation and displacement of natives for decades.
Where the Air Goes Orange, So Does the Music
A few Australians in particular, the members of Midnight Oil, have a prolific body of work dating back to 1977 revolving around both issues, as well as causes like disarmament and disaster relief. I can see why, because when you go outside and the air is orange and it feels like the world is ending, you can think of little else.
Climate issues affect the island country disproportionately because of its coastline and geography, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders even more so.
In 1987, the song Beds are Burning from the aptly named Diesel and Dust album was released. I first heard it when I was a young teen, just beginning to develop my own music tastes, and it resonated deeply.
The vocal style was a little foreign (I later came to love it) and I didn’t watch the music video until years later, but it hit me that: Oh these are artists who believe in something. The song was evocative and shocking and forceful and it made me want to wake up.
When I did eventually watch the music video, it added to my understanding. It features Aboriginal communities in Australia, which the band visited and would continue to return to throughout their career. It’s a condemnation of the colonialist forces that caused native Australians to live with less, but also a celebration of the power and love in their communities.
Forty Years Later, the Rent Is Still Unpaid
One of the most provocative aspects is the song’s invocation of now, the emphasis of the immediacy of the problem. They say “The time has come… to pay the rent, to pay our share” To the bandmembers, that time had come by 1987, and before. So it’s alarming that, more than 40 years later, we still have not done so. The people and companies most responsible are assuredly not paying the rent.
To me, even through the doom, it also has a hopeful bent. The land showcased in the music video has elements of beauty and the other part of the chorus “when our Earth is turning” inspires awe. It makes me think, yes these electromagnetic forces of the cosmos are acting on us in ways we still don’t fully understand, and that is incredible. We have to do something with the life that has been offered to us, not sleep through it.
The other inspiring piece of the puzzle is Midnight Oil’s advocacy work. Throughout their career, they advocated for environmental and aboriginal causes and raised money for aboriginal institutions and disaster relief. They scheduled release dates around events like UN Climate Change Conferences and Armistice Day. A band member – Peter Garrett was eventually elected as Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts.
Give it a listen (or another one, if you’ve heard it before), and watch the video. It’s one of the great protest anthems of our time.
Beds are Burning
By Midnight Oil
Out where the river broke
The bloodwood and the desert oak
Holden wrecks and boilin’ diesels
Steam in forty-five degrees
The time has come
To say fair’s fair
To pay the rent
To pay our share
The time has come
A fact’s a fact
It belongs to them
Let’s give it back
How can we dance when our earth is turning?
How do we sleep while our beds are burning?
How can we dance when our earth is turning?
How do we sleep while our beds are burning?
The time has come to say fair’s fair
To pay the rent now, to pay our share
Four wheels scare the cockatoos
From Kintore, east to Yuendemu
The Western Desert lives and breathes
In forty-five degrees
The time has come
To say fair’s fair
To pay the rent
To pay our share
The time has come
A fact’s a fact
It belongs to them
Let’s give it back
How can we dance when our earth is turning?
How do we sleep while our beds are burning?
How can we dance when our earth is turning?
How do we sleep while our beds are burning?