The song lyrics were written by the band Van Halen, as they were asked to write a song for the 1979 movie "Over the Edge" starring Matt Dillon. The movie (and the lyrics, although more obliquely) are about bored, rebellious youth with nothing better to do than get into trouble. If you see the movie, these lyrics will make more sense. It's a great movie if you grew up in the 70s/80s you'll definitely remember some of these characters from your own life. Fun fact, after writing the song, Van Halen decided not to let the movie use it.
the best thing i ever saw on tv was that s.q. (securite quebec) cop catching a bullet with his teeth. condolence, madame canadiana, but your husband was a fucking (stuck) pig. but this song's not about some romantic account of history. it's not about martyrs or mythos or heroes or burnings-in-effigy. it's about a native kid flipping her lid just trying to keep some self-respect intact. it's about an oka the size of a fist in resistance and a will to fight back... and the girls at work, they still deny their racism. they claim tolerance for all. but it seems the degree of (only) racial slurs is their gauge (and it defines tolerance as hate). and there's 27 million "girls-at-work" here. imagine fighting that for 500 years. and golly-gee! how valient! how the white oppressor makes allowance for calculated gestures of insurgence (all tightly tethered to their purses/purpose). oka had this orchestra(tion) aborted. oka fucked their rules to choose a future self-determined and i, for one, support it... ...and the smartest thing i think i ever said: "if a kevin kostner kavalry is your means to their end, then the struggle is dead". why do we pretend that our approval is upon what they depend?
Lyrics submitted by PLANES
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Ok. This song is about the OKA crises, which happened in Canada. A golf course wanted to expand its property onto native reserve land. And they did. But a group of Indians living on the reserve took their hunting guns and made the workers stop jopping down trees. The police came in and the natives and the police faught. The police tries to gas them but the wind pushed it back in their faces. 1 cop died (hence the start of the song). Anyway more natives took places over all over quebec. Riots occured and alot of anti-native racism starting coming out. If you were a native in quebec you couldn't go to town because they'd push your car over and beat you up and shit. Anyway the army came in. The feud was settled, the canadian government bought the land and then gave it back to the natives. This song focuses on how its wrong to take someones sacred land just for some shitty golf course. And Oka was either the golf club name or the reserve name or something....i forget.
what is oka?
wow.. thanks!
Oka was the town.
So yes, this is about the armed standoff between Indigenous peoples and police / troops near a town in the Canadian province of Quebec called Oka, often refferred to as the "Oka Crisis." The "girls at work" segment of the lyrics, if I had to make an educated guess, is kind of talking about how in Canada, there is an ugly underbelly of racism but it tends to be less obvious than in other places like the US. Also I think it speaks to how Canadians have a reputation for being polite and nice but in reality that sometimes hides more negative attitudes towards minorities. The "imagine fighting that 550 years" I believe refers to how at the time this song came out, it had been roughly 500 years since Columbus first landed in the Americas, and started his genocide of the local Indigenous population, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Arawaks and enslaving many more.