NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Un apå'ka na taotao, i na'ån-ña si Paul Zerzan, sigi ha' umalok gui' gi gasetan Guåhan na esta måtai pat esta taisetbe i Fino' Chamorro. Esta ha na'bububu meggai na taotao guini giya Guåhan yan gi sanlagu lokkue'. Estague diferentes na kåtta ginen i PDN ni' kumokontra i taihinasso na tinige'-ña.

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Our Language Isn't Dead Yet
by Michael Lujan Bevacqua
Pacific Daily News
11/3/16

My column this week is written in response to Paul Zerzan’s op-ed on Oct. 29 dealing with the death of the Chamorro language.

Men with the same complexion and attitudes as Zerzan have long felt it their right to determine the life or death of things related to indigenous people in the Pacific. For Chamorros, these sorts of pronouncements are common. We have been struggling against them for centuries and only recently realized that just because a man with a flag comes to claim us, it doesn’t mean he discovered us. Just because a man with a d…

One issue that constantly appears while traveling in Japan and speaking to people, is Guam's political status. I am not saying in any way that people here are knowledgeable about it or that they understand it. But there are constant, irritating reminders about Guam being a colony and how that means to much of the world you simply belong to another country and that is the extent of your existence.

The first time I traveled to Japan, I met with a large number of antiwar, demilitarization and peace activists. This was at a time when the transfer of US Marines from Okinawa to Guam was considered to be a hot issue, and somewhat controversial. Japan had agreed to pay more than half of the cost of the move, which had caused an uproar throughout Japan, because of the strange surreal fact that Japan had agreed to pay the expenses for moving another nation's military out of its borders. A number of Japanese political delegations had visited Guam, including representatives from Japan…

I've been a writer on the site Guamologyfor more than a month now and the most shocking thing about the website is that the most popular, most viewed and most loaded page there is my article "Guam and Gaza." Looking at the page statistics, it is by a huge margin the most visited page on the entire website. I'm not at all sure why, since its not the most discussed by any means.


The post itself is something you'll find plenty of on this blog. Discussions about what kind of future and present should Guam have. Should we be an island that accepts the way the United States defines and determines our lives, in particular through their strategic military interests? Should we accept and celebrate it when they call us the tip of their spear? Or should we be pushing for an existence which is more focused on ourselves and doesn't rely on the most crass and militaristic ideas of weaponizing or militarizing. As I often say to people, if you accept and celebrate Guam as the…