Midnight Oil's Beds Are Burning is about giving the Pintupi their native Australian lands back. The Pintupi were forcibly moved from their lands during the 1950s and 1960s.
Beds Are Burning is also part of TckTckTck, a climate justice campaign working to draw attention to the urgency of the issue. People sign a "musical petition" with each song download.
Halifax reader and beer/freedom expert Bobby O'Keefe wrote in about the song:
I was 11 or 12 when Beds are Burning came out, and it was probably the first song I associated with any sort of power or movement in the political sense when I first heard it. I doubt the environmental message of the song was really the message I was getting at that time, and even now I think there's a greater message - that being how can we simply stand by when there are real issues to be taken care of and, more to the point, when the people in charge are making such poor decisions. Reminds me now of a couple of my favourite quotes: Plato's "The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men" and Martin Luther King's "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." Remain silent or indifferent and run the risk of your bed burning out from underneath you while you sleep. Still a powerful message today, all wrapped up in a great rock song.
