Meaning
"Beds Are Burning" is a political song about giving native Australian lands back to the Pintupi, who were among the very last people to come in from the desert. These 'last contact' people began moving from the Gibson Desert to settlements and missions in the 1930s. More were forcibly moved during the 1950s and 1960s to the Papunya settlement. In 1981 they left to return to their own country and established the Kintore community which is nestled in the picturesque Kintore Ranges, surrounded by Mulga and Spinifex country. It is a community with a population of about 400. Kintore and the town of Yuendumu are mentioned by name in the lyrics, as are vehicles produced by Holden. It's believed by some that the line, "How can we sleep while our beds are burning?", may also be a reference to singer Peter Garrett's mother's death in a house fire years earlier.
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Famous quotes containing the word meaning:
“We must leave our pets at home, when we go into the street, and meet men on broad grounds of good meaning and good sense.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Even in my own writings I cannot always recover the meaning of my former ideas; I know not what I meant to say, and often get into a regular heat, correcting and putting a new sense into it, having lost the first and better one. I do nothing but come and go. My judgement does not always forge straight ahead; it strays and wanders.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“That would be waving and that would be crying,
Crying and shouting and meaning farewell,
Farewell in the eyes and farewell at the centre,
Just to stand still without moving a hand.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)