NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Rlene Santos Steffy published the article below during the summer as part of her iTintaotao Marianas feature series in The Guam Daily Post. I was honored to be included amongst so many other older and more esteemed activist and scholars. I conducted several long interviews with Rlene, some focusing on history and others on political status. I was surprised by her chosen route for this article, focusing on my learning the Chamorro language and my relationship to my grandparents. I was surprised, but not disappointed. The quote that she used at the start of the article is very much what I continue to feel about my Chamorro identity. Namely that if not for my grandparents, I wouldn't have much of a Chamorro identity and probably wouldn't speak Chamorro or care as much about the fate of the Chamorro people. Reading this article made me sen mahålang for my grandparents. I miss them every day, everytime I use the Chamorro language. Kada fumino' Chamorro nina'siente yu'

One of the aspects of Chamorro life that has frequently haunted me and frustrated me is the division between Chamorros in the Marianas and those who come from the diaspora, primarily the United States. It is a division that so much is made about in everyday conversation, which amounts to very little when you interrogate it. There is often times a perception that those from the diaspora are stuck-up, more Americanized and are completely disconnected from their culture and their identity. There is some truth to this, because much of what we get in terms of our identity has more to do with proximity and frequently than actual choices. You feel a certain way about yourself or you struggle with your identity in certain ways based on what you see around you, although there is always some element of personal agency or choice. Because of this, if you are born in Guam or the CNMI, chances are good you will generally know more Chamorro words or slang. You may know more Catholic songs. You may

Fanhokkåyan is my series where I share articles, writings and other documents from some of my previous websites, most notably the Kopbla Amerika/Chamorro Information Activist website and Minagahet Zin e. The one I'm sharing today is an intriguing one, as it represents a piece that helped shape alot of my own perceptions as an early activist about Chamorro issues, in particular their relationship to colonial legacies. This piece, which I co-wrote with a friend of mine at the time, built off the idea of "soul wound" a theory that was first popularized in considering the contemporary place of Native Americans in relation to their historical (or continuing) trauma. It is far too easy for us to argue that we shouldn't be stuck in the past by recounting how Chamorros have been hurt by colonizers, that is a common interpassive point. In truth, we need to recount it and we need to understand it, most importantly so that we can change things today, so that we can reshape th

It is intriguing when we see epochs of time shift and change and replace each other. These are like grand markers in time, like huge arches that delineate when everything was one way and when it all changed and became something else. On Guam we have antes di gera and despues di gera which draws a clear line of memory between what existed prior to World War II and after. World War II survivors will tell you the smells in the air, the sounds of the island were different in 1940 as they were in 1945. Most people in the United States and elsewhere in the world mark recent memory with "9/11" as if to say that things were fundamentally different before September 11th, 2001 than they were afterwards. All of this is a fiction of course, but there is still a way that communities tend to lay out the stretches of time behind them in certain blocks, to make them easier to manage, but propping up these important moments as providing the keys to understand all those temporal tectonic shi

October 2, 2014 12:00 am JST Yamaguchi dies at 94 YASUNOBU NOSE, Nikkei senior staff writer Yoshiko Yamaguchi © Kyodo TOKYO -- Wartime actress Yoshiko Yamaguchi, who later served 18 years in the upper house of the Japanese Diet, died of heart failure at her home in Tokyo on Sept. 7, her family announced. She was 94.      She grew up in Japan-occupied Manchuria, which is now northeast China, and debuted under the Chinese screen name of Li Hsianglan (Ri Koran in Japanese) in 1938 as a member of the Manchuria Film Association. She broke out in Japan with the 1940 film "Shina no Yoru" ("China Nights"), starring opposite Kazuo Hasegawa. The song "Soshu Yakyoku" ("Suzhou Serenade"), which she sang in the film, also became a big hit.      When she held a concert in Tokyo in 1941, th

For Immediate Release:                                                        Contact: Michelle Blas April 7, 2014                                                                          mcblas76@yahoo.com   University Theater Presents: Pågat: A locally written and produced play about the Chamoru spirit, culture and identity By Dr. Michael Lujan Bevacqua and Victoria-Lola Leon Guerrero April 24-26 and May 1-3                                                         University Theater closes its 2013-2014 season with the play Pågat, written by local writers Dr. Michael Lujan Bevacqua and Victoria-Lola Leon Guerrero, directed by Michelle Blas, and featuring choreography by Vince Reyes of Inetnon Gef På’go.    Pågat explores the complexities of cultural identity and change through the lives of four modern young adults and the memories of a cast of spirits, who share key moments in the history of the Chamoru people. The play is set in a latte site in the jungles of På

--> Anai manmakolonisa hit gi fine’nina biahi, meggai giya Hita manohge para u fanmumu, ya maseha manmapede’ hit gi gera, gi minagahet sigi ha’ hit manresiste lao gi otro manera.  I anten i Maga’haga-ta lala’la’ ha’ gi hagan haga’, I haga’ Famalao’an. Ya maseha meggai na famalao’an Chamorro manasagua yan otro rasa, ma na’siguru na ma kontinuha mafa’na’gue i famagu’on ni’ i fino’-ta yan hayi siha. (komo Chamorro) I ine’son-ta nu i Espanot annok gi che’cho’ Juan Malo, gos petbetso kontra i Espanot. Sesso di ha usa i inutguyosu kontra siha. Sesso di ha fa’chada’ I Espanot yan ha fa’baba nu i salape’-niha.  Gi duranten i 19 th century, dos Chamorro, Si Jose Salas yan Si Luis Baza, mausa diferentes na manera para u ha tachuyi i direcho i taotao-ta. Si Baza matungo’ put anai ha konne’ i Gubietno Espanot para kotte put todu i malabida-na kontra i taotao-ta. Gi 1884 Si Jose Salas, un Chamorro gi i militat Espanot, mamuno’ Gubietno Espanot put i estao i taotao-ta.  An

I am finishing up an entry for the website Guampedia on the activist group Nasion Chamoru. I didn't know much about Nasion Chamoru until I was  student at the University of Guam, and even then I would hear snippets from the media and from relatives and didn't really understand what they represented and what they were trying to do. Eventually after taking a Guam History classes, my artist temperament led me to question so many things about Guam and Chamorros that I had taken for granted or never even considered. This naturally led me to learn more about Nasion Chamoru and their members, their message. My grandfather being a cultural master helped identify me to people who might otherwise question the lightness of my skin or the strangeness of my last name. I spent time talking to members of Nasion Chamoru and I learned about their struggle. By this time Angel Santos had stepped out of the group and was a Senator and was also becoming ill. I would sit next to him at church wit

Cloud Atlas was by far my favorite film of 2012. It was a film I only saw once, but wanted to watch again immediately after I left the theatre. Part of this is due to the fact that a group of actors play multiple roles in different historical eras. Some of them are obvious, others aren’t so clear. The film becomes a type of game trying to figure out who is who. In the credits they flash on the screen each actor and all their roles. You realize then how many you recognized and how many zipped before your vision but you didn’t recognize them. The story itself is complicated and so that might also create that desire. You want to see it again because there may be a section you didn’t quite catch or weren’t quite sure about. At certain points the jumping across times can be confusing, especially towards the beginning when you don’t quite have your bearings yet. As one of the characters in the film states, a half finished book is like an unfinished love affair. It

For a person of any ethnicity undergoing an identity crisis, there are various stages that you must go through in your search for answers. Some of these stages you may move through quickly, others you may spent more time in, you may find your way to a new space and then decide you don't like it and then turn around and return to a previous point in your journey. For those who feel that they have been deprived of a cultural identity one stage that they must pass through, but which can be fairly dangerous, is the "uniku" stage, or unique stage. Their feelings of loss can come from many sources. They can be from the diaspora and feel like this barrier of oceans or continents stands between them and their identity. It can be an issue of dominant society blocking cultural expression and making them, their parents or their community feel like their cultural has to be neutralized or sterilized before it can be passed on. It can even be a railing and rallying against history

History is important because it holds the truth. The problem, like everything else dealing with the truth, is the uncertainty over what people should do with truths they don't like. History is filled with things you will like, things you won't really care about, and things you will hate hearing about. There are things that fill you with inspiration, love, hope and faith in the world around you, and things that make the world around you feel hollow, terrible, disgusting and make you wish you could leave it all behind, time travel or be sent to another universe. One of my favorite quotes about history is the notion that "Happy people have no history." This is something that I don't agree with as something that produces happiness, but I do believe that many people relate to the concept and force of history with this in mind. The less you know or the narrower your knowledge is about history, the happier you might seem to be. If you come from a community wi