Australian School kids strike for climate

Despite a serious message, the events were a sea of colour and placards, many of which poked fun at their adult counterparts.

"I'll stop farting if you stop burning coal," one read.

A student at a Sydney event drew cheers for announcing he was "here because we are all from nature and we should all be taking care of it" before playing a clarinet solo.

The stage was set earlier in the week when out of touch Prime Minister Scott Morrison slammed the intended action, saying Australia needed "more learning in schools and less activism". Morrison is clearly incapable of learning.

But the comments only seem to have emboldened the students, as just a few of their signs show.

Julian Burnside
(@JulianBurnside)
#Scomo reckons kids should stay at school learning, rather than protesting climate change. The fact that they are protesting climate change suggests that they have learned things #Scomo hasn’t (or prefers not to)

02 Jamalo Atai

On November 4, New Caledonians will go to the polls to vote for either continued French governance, or independence.

Many Australians, who might holiday there to taste French culture in the Pacific, are unaware of the continuing struggle for sovereignty of the Kanak people (Indigenous New Caldeonians) since the catastrophe of their colonisation by France in 1853. This struggle has often been told through music.

Our research looks at the role of music in political struggles in Melanesia, particularly in West Papua and New Caledonia. Across Melanesia, music is not only evidence of ancient and living cultures, it is also a celebration of Indigenous resistance, agency and resilience.

Songs of resistance

Just now in the street I saw my children
Advancing, shouting “Freedom!”
The high school was empty, where are the youth?
In the streets the city was in protest

Written in 1985, these opening lines, from pioneer Kanak protest singer Jean-Pierre Swan’s song Liberté, refer to les évènements, “the Events”. These were a bloody civil war in New Caledonia in the 1980s that culminated in the massacre of 19 Kanaks by French commandos in 1988, and the assassination in 1989 of the great Melanesian pacifist independence campaigner, Jean-Marie Tjibaou.

Ewan MacColl – Dirty Old Town

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