Culture

When far-right extremist Anders Behring Breivik went on a mass killing spree in Norway on July 22, he was listening on his headphones to "Lux Aeterna", a mournful piece of music by British film soundtrack composer Clint Mansell.

Once I ruled the Northern plains, my clan roamed free and wild, the lush Dakotas were my home, the gods were on my side. Every leafy shrub was mine, every blade of grass, every creature trembled when a herd of bison passed. My family has been slaughtered for food, for prize, for fun, of all the kings that roamed the earth I’m now the only one. Am I now a laughing stock? The object of your pity? A weakling of the prairies, while you prosper in the city? And who was it that killed my clan? Let’s set the record straight: that bastard son of Europe’s womb —

All Along the Watchtower: Memoir of a Sixties Revolutionary By Michael Hyde The Vulgar Press, 2010 272 pages, $32.95 (pb) Red Silk: The Life of Elliott Johnston QC By Penelope Debelle Wakefield Press, 2011 212 pages, $32.95 (pb) Phillip Adams: The Ideas Man — A Life Revealed By Philip Luker JoJo Publishing, 2011 337 pages, $34.99 (pb)

At this year’s Deadly Awards, an annual celebration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture being held on September 27, all eyes will be on one of the fastest rising stars in Aboriginal music.

How ironic that The Clash should be on the cover of the British music magazine NME in the week that London was burning, that their faces should be staring out from the shelves as newsagents were ransacked and robbed by looters intent on anarchy in Britain.

Yirrkala, in north-east Arnhem land, is home to the famous 1963 “Bark Petition”. This was a protest action by the Yolngu people that led to the first native title litigation in Australia’s history. I was there last month for the anniversary of that stage of their landmark struggle. The petition was an attempt by the Yolngu people to force legal recognition of their land ownership rights.

There used to be snow On the mountain tops Now the rivers run low Nothing left for the crops Where will they go They who work the land When all the ancestral waters Have vanished in the sand? Free market policies And vanishing border lines Replacing highland pastures With open cut mines No choice but to leave A thousand years behind City lights on the horizon What will they find? Billboards by the highway Paper-thin lies Selling progress and consumerism As the land about them dies Welcome to decaying sewers And chemical smokestack plumes

Downfall: The Tommy Sheridan Story By Alan McCombes, Birlinn 2011 326 pages, pb £9.99 In the elections to the Scottish parliament in May 2003, the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) polled just under a quarter of a million votes and won six seats. By any stretch of the imagination this was a remarkable achievement for a party well to the left of Labour. It was a beacon of hope and inspiration for socialists the world over. By 2011, the SSP’s vote had slumped to below 9000. It failed to regain any of the six seats it had lost in 2007.

You can see that western Sydney Aboriginal rapper Sesk has turned his life around when he holds his head up high. Not only does it give him an air of self-esteem - it also reveals that the large tattoo across his neck reading "GUILTY" has another word inked above it: "NOT".

Black Swan By Carolyn Landon & Eileen Harrison 238 pages Allen & Unwin, June 2011 Bestselling author Carolyn Landon says the main revision she had to make in writing her latest book, Black Swan was editing all her anger out of it. "I had difficulty with my own voice," she tells  Green Left Weekly about the book, a memoir of Koori artist Eileen Harrison. "Mainly, it was getting my own angry and ashamed responses to what Eileen was telling off my chest. After I let off steam in the drafts, I eliminated most of my reactions.

I am and have always been a pro-active pacifist.. I long and pray for a peaceful caring world. A world of respect and sharing. Whats happened in London and Birmingham and Liverpool and what will be the rest of the country deeply upsets me.

Our Way to Fight Michael Riordon Pluto Press, 2011 “People safely outside the situation sometimes ask ‘Why don’t more Palestinians use non-violent protest?’ says Michael Riordon is his concluding chapter to Our Way To Fight. “The question ignores the long history of Palestinian attempts to seek justice through non-violent means, and the equally long history of official Israeli violence in suppressing these attempts.”