NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

The other day Independent Guåhan's held it's April teach-in at UOG, this time with a focus on "democratizing the media." The discussion focused on Guam's media landscape and ways that community members can create alternative means of educating or informing people on island about pertinent issues. For years I ran a number of different forms of alternative media, such as blogs, websites, podcasts and even a zine called Minagahet. From 2003-2010 I, and sometimes others edited a zine which focused on Chamorro issues from a critical and largely progressive perspective. You can still find it online, although the last issue was released during the DEIS comment period in early 2010. The name Minagahet which means "truth" came from a comment that a friend of mine had written on a message board many many years ago. It was an exchange with some Chamorros who felt that decolonization was stupid and impossible. My friend had written a long response seek…

Gof malåte' si Rachel Maddow.

Gi este na pakyo' taihinasso.

Hu sen agradesi i minalate'-ña.

Mana'annok este gi primet na attikulu.

Ti ha tatitiyi i hemplon i otro na media.

Kada kumuentos si Trump.

Ya ha na'annok ta'lo i tinaimamahlao-ña.

Yan mabababa i ilu-ña.

I otro media, ma tatiyias i take'-ña.

Kulang puyitos gi lancho.

Ma kekekånno' todu i papet etgue-ña Twitter.

Lao si Rachel ti ha cho'cho'gue ayu.

Mas tahdong i chine'gue-ña.

Ha cho'cho'gue' i diposti i che'cho'-ña i journalist.

 Ha kekena'famta i minaghaet.

Yan ha na'annok i manmana'attok ni' i manakhilo'.

********************

Rachel Maddow on How She Doubled Viewership Under Trump: 'I Stopped Covering the Twitter Feed'
by Brian Flood
March 3, 2017
The Wrap

MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” has been on a roll, posting her best ratings month ever in February and nearly doubling her viewership. Her secret is simple. Maddow said she cove…

The Guam Museum is open in Hagåtña. Well it is sort of and kind of open. The permanent exhibit text, which I have been helping write for several years now isn't complete, although a temporary exhibit about the history of the Guam Museum has been set up in the meantime. It is strange to have the structure, the physical building finished and mostly ready, but still the museum itself, the story or i hinanao-ta, that it is supposed to represent isn't quite ready. While going through some of my old files on my computer I noted (and was reminded) that Guam didn't have a museum for quite a while. I recall visiting the museum as a young child at the Plaza de Espana and also at Adelup, but for most of my life there has been no national museum on Guam. When my kids were first born, the museum was, interestingly enough just a little annex in the Micronesian Mall that few people even knew existed. The discussion over a museum has been underway for a very long time, although it pains …

Recently some people started sharing some articles on Facebook from old websites that I used to run such as The Chamorro Information Activists and Minagahet Zine. When I went back to read over some of what they shared, I could feel waves of nostalgia washing over me. These were the days when I was first starting as an activist and working with others for the first time, organizing things and trying to develop our ideas. I cringe when I read some of it because my positions have changed or I have learned more about certain topics.

I've decided to start up a new recurring post series on this blog called "Fanhokkayan" or "Collection." Since these websites are no longer active, no longer being actively updated, they sit there online, and are occasionally visited by students conducting research for their papers. I worry sometimes that at some point they will disappear and they provide an interesting snapshot of Chamorro issues at a particular moment in my life and …

I first wrote this article 13 years ago while I was applying for graduate school in the states and working part-time at the Guam Communications Network in Long Beach, California. My auntie Fran Lujan was working there as well and they had an irregular publication called Galaide'. Prior to my leaving Guam, I had photocopied hundreds of articles from the Pacific Daily News around the time of the the 9/11 attacks, and I had spent more than a year trying to organize my thoughts on it. It seemed so strange in that moment, how everyone was reaching out to the United States, trying to find a way to patriotically or tragically feel included in its embrace. But the more that people asserted their inclusion and their belonging, the more the structure of their exclusion became pronounced and obvious. I used the article below as my attempt. It remains my first all-out attempt at a critical intervention. I still find myself making some of these arguments, whereas others I have moved on from o…