NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

I have been wracking my brain for the past few hours and also "tearing apart" at least digitally my computer looking for the source for a quote that I had included in my notes and now need to use in an article I'm completing for The Journal of Okinawan Studies. As of now I have yet to find it unfortunately and I'm hoping that this quote didn't come from a news article that I had photocopied years ago but had yet to scan or transcribe. If that is the case, I may never find the citation for it.

Part of the joy, but also the frustration of searches like this, is the random surprises and nostalgia bombs that end up crossing your path. While searching through more than a decade of research, I came across so many bits and pieces of things, some of which ended up being keystones in my academic cosmology, others I had completely forgotten.

One thing I came across that I wanted to share was these three articles below. They all come from August 2007, at a time when the in…

Thankfully, it has been a while now since a soldier from Guam was killed in the current slate of US Wars on Terror. But as the US prepares to increase its presence in Afghanistan, I cannot help but think back to several years ago, when the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq were in full force and it seemed like someone from Guam or from Micronesia were dying every month. I remember writing several emotional and sometimes angry posts about the way these precious lives were being wasted on imperial ventures.

For obvious reasons, these sorts of posts are very difficult and sensitive, for so many reasons. Malingu un lina'la'. A life is lost. A Chamorro life is lost. A Chamorro life is lost fighting for the United States, which has been and continues to be his or her colonizer. A brown body is lost fighting other brown bodies, usually for the sake and interest of rich white people, or at least rich people. Lastly though we reach the most difficult point, which I articulated several y…

A few weeks ago I had the honor of meeting a current and a former member of the Japanese Parliament that were on Guam for a fact-finding trip. They were on Guam in order to gather information about how Guam will be affected by the transfer of Marines from Okinawa, for which construction is scheduled to begin next July and the whole transfer completed by 2014. While here, they met with community members, activists and local leaders.

The current parliament member is named Inoue Satoshi and he is a member of the House of Councillors, and a member of the Japanese Communist Party. A small mini-scandal was created after his party sent out a press release following his visit, which quoted that the Speaker of the Legislature Judi Won Pat stating that the majority of people on Guam are against the military buildup. Won Pat's response was that her words were taken out of context or that there was a glitch in the translation, and that in fact provided a balanced portrait of Guam, where many p…

My grandfather, echoing older days of politics on Guam, often says that the Guam Legislature always needs at least one Lujan. Its for that reason that in the 2008 election, in which grandpa was particularly displeased and disgusted at the character of the potential candidates for the office, he only cast two votes. One for Doug Moylan (sa' ga'mumu yan ga'gumantes gui') and the other for Jesse Anderson Lujan, also because ga'mumu gui', but more so because Lujan gui'.

Unfortunately the votes of my grandfather, my grandmother and even my brother weren't enough to put Jesse Anderson Lujan or "JAL" as I fondly refer to him as over the top in this past election, and so next year the Leyesleturan Guahan will be without a person who has Lujan as their last name. Oh, they'll be plenty of people with Lujan parientes or relatives, but no one left whose main family identifiers are Lujan, through either their mother or father (at least on the surface, …

I'm on Guam now, but I'm not registered to vote on Guam (lao giya California). There's an election coming up and this is the first time I've been on island for one since I voted for Robert Underwood and Tom Ada in 2002 (lao ti manggana siha).

I've been following the campaigns here closely, and even last week gave out different awards last week for Guam's politicians and their roadside signs. The battle over Proposition A has been hard not to follow since each Pacific Daily News edition for the past week is completely full of ads both for and against, which sometimes featuring local political celebrities. I had hope to write something about Prop A before the election, but with a dissertation to write, and classes that I'm teaching next week to prepare for, I don't have much time to blog (ai na'triste!).

I guess you'll have to settle for this video that I took of a big Prop A rally held last week at Chief Kephua circle in Hagatna. The thing I learne…