Just Dance to the Racism

    The only game system I've ever owned was a Nintendo, so I've played games on other people's stuff over the years but around Christmas year before last my friend Ryan let me borrow his Wii ("indefinitely") and bought me Just Dance 3.  And it's fucking awesome!  They do repeat a lot of moves on different songs, but I suppose it has to be easy enough for people to actually be able to do it.  I literally play about 45 minutes worth of songs every day for my workout and it's like not even working out.  Often enough I'll end up playing it for an hour or more without even realizing it.  My point is, I love this game.
    The other day though I was working on one of the goals to earn a medal, or whatever they're called, which will give me bonus shit or songs or something.  One of those goals is getting one star on every song on the game, so I was playing/dancing to songs I wouldn't otherwise try like that horrible crap band Laugh My Fucking Ass Off which I just really don't understand the appeal of.  One of those was Apache by Sugarhill Gang.  I was astounded!  When it started I thought, of course some ignorant pop-culture game designer would see the Apache song title and put a headdress on the avatar dude...but then I realized I had never heard the song in its entirety and the lyrics had my jaw dropping as I shuffled my body around to the moves.   
      I have many points of contention here, but let's start with the most glaringly obvious shall we?  Apache, is not actually even a tribe or group of Native people, but rather a Zuñi word for Navaho people which means 'enemy' and was assigned to a group of Native Americans by the Spaniards who came through bringing with them Christianity and genocide.  There's that, which is something that should be obvious to people, but alas is not.  What's really ridiculous though is the depiction of a traditionally Lakota Sioux war-bonnet headdress the designers put on the avatar.  Obviously this was a well thought out tribute by the game designers because the song so clearly represents the Lakota people's heritage, culture, and language.  My god, ignorance abounds!
      So the lyrics start with,"Tonto, jump on it, Kemosabi, jump on it," which in and of itself is some racist shit.  Mostly because the portrayal of Native Americans in The Lone Ranger is so absolutely awful and wrong.  What better character for Johnny Depp to revive by the way than the cowboy sidekick Tonto (Spanish for "moron" or "fool") who is too dumb to realize that the dude he's hanging with who he calls his kemosabi (meaning "friend" in the show) is part of the mass murder of his people and culture.  Great job casting a white guy in a Native role Hollywood...again.  Although that may have been intentional because the original Lone Ranger was a white guy, old habits do die hard and apparently racist ass TV shows die even harder.  Back to "kemosabi" for a sec, technically that's fucked too because, Kemosabi is from the Algonquin language, similar to the Ojibwe word "giimoozaabi" which means "he peeks."  And then the song goes on to mention "chiefs", "Custer", "horses" (which are also something that only one or two tribes of the country used), "firing squads", "maize", "moccasins", "tee-pees" (also a historically Lakota Sioux structure), "smoke signals", "medicine men", and yes..."squaws".  That line actually says,"Had a little talk with my medicine man he said, "Get them squaws, fast as you can.""  I'm assuming the rapper is trying to say that he wants to hook up with Native women (...?), considering that's what the word actually means in the Algonquin language, but "squaw" has been a derogatory term for Native people since the 19th century for Christ's sake.  And that song was released in the '80s!
         It sucks that some dumb ass, washed up band mashed a bunch of stereotypes and miscellaneous tribe's cultures together, made it all rhyme, and attempted to make money off of it.  I mean, I have a sense of humor, but when the systematic oppression of an entire population of people and the destruction done to their cultures is something that's still happening...it's not fucking funny dude!  And bad form Just Dance 3, for dredging that shit back up from the hole of the '80s and putting it in your game.  How many other millions of songs are there to choose from!?  It's infuriating.  I'm sick to death of Native people being ignored, misunderstood, and pigeonholed.