Eddie Mabo's Fight for Indigenous Sovereignty (Book Review)

Peter Russel's book, Recognizing Aboriginal Title: The Mabo Case and Indigenous Resistance to English-Settler Colonialism, is a meticulously thorough overview of Aboriginal rights in Australia since the inception of British Colonialism in Australia in the sixteenth century. Today, a time when, in Canada, Aboriginal rights are still at odds with our legal system, Russell's story of how one man, Eddie Koiki Mabo, managed to instil key Aboriginal rights in Australian law provides an uoplifting ray of hope.

The first half of the near-400 page book provides a background of Indigenous history in Australia. Not too surprisingly, it is 200 pages of extensive research on how the Natives on the British occupied land mass come to be at the mid-point of the twentieth century. It is a wealth of information to take in, beginning with the onset of colonisation and the threat it created on non-British culture. Much like in Canada and the United States, the Native peoples of Australia intended to work together with colonisers.

But, also like in North America, there were many injustices done to the original inhabitants of Australia by colonisers over the past 500 years. More or less, the many unrecognized land claims and Aboriginal rights treaties were left to rot, and be forgotten, until the famous Mabo case.

Eddie Mabo was a descendent of original inhabitants of Mer Island, an offshore land mass north of Australia. Mabo's life consisted of countless political endeavours in order to decolonize Native life in Australia. In other words, he wished to see Native culture persist despite the assimilation, and oppressive techniques, of the British Crown.

All this came to a head in the Mabo vs. Queensland case, beginning in 1982 and ending in 1992. In the end, the High Court of Australia deemed that Native title to lands, cultural practices and lifestyles are a fundamental right of Native Australians. Not to sound to promising, the second half of Russell's book looks at how the government of Australia, like Canada and the US's, found loopholes to further challenge Aboriginal title rights for its own economic and political agendas.

I cannot give it all away in one small blog, because the story of Aboriginal sovereignty in Australia is a long, and still unfinished tale. However, Russell has managed to tell the story in a captivatingly interesting way. A real page-turner that any history buff should find hard to put down.

Originally published on campusintel.com

Tent City, Vancouver

A Vancouver Olympic Committee parking lot in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside is home to a sea of red tents. The public staging is a reaction of homeless activists in Vancouver who feel the Olympics are problematic for homeless people.

The idea is about catching the public eye. The bright red tents with white slogans and blurbs are designed to function as a visual aid for the homeless movement. It seems the intention has succeeded. There have been stories about the tent activism throughout the media in the past weeks.

The homeless movement in Vancouver has chosen the Olympics as the backdrop for their activism because of logical reasons. For Vancouver's large homeless population, the recent preparation for the Games meant displacing them from where they called home. They are asking that instead of spending billions of dollars on international sports events, that Vancouver and other major cities address homeless problems.

The tent city site is one of many major social protests meeting the Olympics. First Nations activists fighting for land rights, environmental activists educating about nature deprivation, domestic violence, and women's activists have all utilized the soapbox that the Olympics surprisingly provide.

Tent city is expected to remain intact until the Olympics are over. We will see if the awareness has achieved any success for the homeless cause.

Originally published on campusintel.com

Remembering Lux Interior: Punk's Unsung Undertaker

On February 4, 2009, the rock and roll world lost one of it’s greatest and most unsung trailblazers. Lux Interior, legend in his own time and lead singer of the Cramps, died due to aortic dissection, he was 62.

The Cramps were founded in 1972 by Lux and the ferocious female guitar player, Lux’s future wife, Poison Ivy. By 1975 the Cramps were a staple in the budding punk rock scene in New York City, turning heads alongside the New York Dolls, Television, and the Ramones.

However, The Cramps were different from the other seminal punk bands. This is highly due to Poison Ivy’s guitar style, which was highly dependent on blues riffs and archetypal rock and roll music. She picked up where the 50s and 60s punks left off (yes, punk was around then too) with guitar driven music that concentrated on the spirit of the garage, rock and roll’s first home.

Many of the songs The Cramps played were covers of old rock and roll classics - like “Surfin’ Bird” by The Trashmen, “Psychotic Reaction” by 60s California garage band The Count Five, or “Shortnin’ Bread” made popular by The Emeralds. But, they also had a telling bluesy influence, through which The Cramps popularized new rock genres that spring-boarded off punk.

Rockabilly, southern rock, prototyped by Gene Vincent and Elvis Presley; infused with hillbilly bass lines and country guitar, became part of the Cramps’ lure. However, they did it with a twist. As if by accident, they bred a new -billy: Psychobilly. Early Cramps flyers advertised “Psychobilly” and “Rockabilly Voodoo” as their style of music. In the coming years after the first wave of punk, Psychobilly would be used to describe many punk bands, like with The Dead Kennedys who mixed hardcore with an old school rock sound, and The Stray Cats who mixed the old rockabilly sound with punk’s speed and fashion.

The Cramps were also masters of keeping the Hallowe’en spirit alive all year ‘round. Lux’s lyrics were obsessed with sci-fi exploration like in “Human Fly” and “How to Make a Monster,” and masochistic sexual themes like in “What’s Inside a Girl?” This ghoulish, creepy sci-fi theme led to another sub-genre of punk: Horror Punk. The Misfits and ensuing copy-bands are considered the horror punks, and a lot of their dark, gothic subject matter was founded by The Cramps’ style.

Above all, The Cramps are arguably the first blues-punk band. For lack of a better term, blues-punk essentially means high energy, distorted blues. When analyzing The Cramps, this is exactly what they are. There was still no bull, keeping them punk - but Poison Ivy could lay out a juke-joint riff like any of the greats. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion is a recent band that follows in the crashy, trashy style of blues that The Cramps fine-tuned.

In recent years The Cramps were still touring. Lux was still sporting his leather bondage gear and high-heels, and still giving head to the microphone; Poison Ivy still laying down the hippest, funnest riffs in recent rock, and looking damn hot while doing so. Needless to say, I love the Cramps, and I think you should too. I discovered them in my early high school days, on one of the old Punk-O-Rama compilations that Epitaph records used to do so well. The song? Haulass Hyena, off “Big Beat from Badsville” (oh, what an intimidating album name, and cover). After that, I was a Cramps-head, through and through, and always will be.

Look around for an album series called “Songs The Cramps Taught Us” - a collection of Cramps songs that were in fact originally recorded by other, often much older, artists. Hopefully it will lead you to an appreciation for original rock and roll - an act that punk, as a learning tool and reference point in rock history, begs us to do.

R.I.P. Lux Interior.

Originally Published at campusintel.com