#leads a lot of non-indigenous chuds huffing and spitting and yelling at me -_-

[telekitnetic-art]

Indigenous person here, and I definitely agree that the "tribal cheese" and the mechanics surrounding it should be changed. I was really enjoying pizza tower and the fanart being made of it, but the stereotyped enemy made me cringe hard. also the fact that it was originally announced or created in 2019 as an enemy isn't really an excuse, because Indigenous people have been calling out bullshit stereotypes since the 90s. And the fact that it made it into a game released in 2023 is even more embarrassing to me. Like... no one saw the enemy labelled "tribal cheese" with the leaf/feather headband carrying a tomahawk and doing ""rain dances"" around a totem pole as potentially racist???

I've seen a couple people excuse it as "oh, the whole game is based on stereotypes, look at the main character" and like. you guys need to understand that the "mamma mia i cooka the pizza" trope is not on the same level of seriousness as racist tropes that have had a tangible impact on Indigenous people for decades.

I'm not a spokesperson for Every Single Indigenous person ever, so maybe other Indigenous people have different opinions on the "tribal cheese" enemy and how it should be handled/changed. This also isn't me saying "boycott the game/attack the creator" at all, or that anyone who plays it is a horrid person. But this is an issue that should be talked about, and this whole situation with the enemy stereotypes is really a "man, come on." moment to me.

So anyway -

The point is that Pizza Tower still has a racist, outdated stereotype of Indigenous people in the Oregano Desert level.

It even has a achievement for rain dancing around a totem pole (totem poles are a Pacific Northwest thing, not a Plains Tribe thing). They war cry at you and they throw tomahawks (because it's always tomahawks or spears).

Bellyache about the screencaps being 5 years old if you want, but the stereotype made it into the game, so he hasn't changed that much. He didn't change enough to have a shred of awareness about using a racist stereotype. And before anyone tries: that trope isn't a hallmark of Wario games or 90s animation, it's a hallmark of racism.

Even if he "doesn't" make bigoted jokes anymore (though I would consider the Tribe Cheese one such joke), he made an entire level based around that trope.

And like every other time there's an anti-Indigenous caricature in videogames or popular media, it doesn't get mentioned, or it gets glossed over because the creator went "Oopsie! That was cringe."

The exclusion of the Tribe Cheese from that salvo of screenshots undermines the entirety of it, because it's a solid example of him not having changed enough to be conscious beyond "that was unfunny," and everyone just focuses on what he said and when - without the connection to how that mindset still lingers in the final product of the game.