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.
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.