NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Indigenous Studies Engages Ethnic Studies A Symposium hosted by the Department of Ethnic Studies at UCSD For a schedule of all panels, please see below or go to the event blog at: http://iss0509.blogspot.com/ Date & Time: Friday, May 8, 2009, 9:30am-5:00pm Location: Room 107 of UCSD’s Social Science Building If you are not familiar with the geography of UCSD, go to- http://maps.ucsd.edu and type “Social Science Building” -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mission Statement: As scholars in the Ethnic Studies Department at UCSD, we stand incredibly proud of the cutting edge critical race and ethnic studies work developed in our department, and in its potential to push the limits of the larger Ethnic Studies project. In this spirit, we find that in order for Ethnic Studies to move beyond the usual emphasis on immigration, diaspora and slavery paradigms, the critical potential of Indigenous Studies should become an integral part of ou

Graduate students at my department at UCSD are right now working on a Ethnic Studies and Indigenous Studies symposium to take place in May of this year. This symposium is part of a long process over the past few years which includes last year's interdisciplinary conference Postcolonial Futures in a Not Yet Postcolonial World that I helped organize, an Indigenous Studies cluster hire that I helped write two years ago, and the Voicing Indigeneity Podcast that I used to help create with two other indigenous students in the department. The goal of the process was to create a more stable and productive space for those working on indigenous studies projects within Ethnic Studies. For the upcoming symposium the organizers are looking to invite old scholars, new scholars and some graduate students who are all doing work at the intersections of these two discplines, either in their activism or in their academic work. I'm sure I'll have more details soon and there's also a goo

You might have noticed some recent changes with my blog, and in the coming weeks there are sure to be a few more. The rate of traffic to my blog has shot up in recent months (in particular since I was chosen to be one of the bloggers for the upcoming Democratic National Convention in Denver), and so I'm trying to improve its look a little bit. The changes are happening slowly because of other commitments, but bare with me I'll have this place gefpago soon enough. I first started this blog in 2004, when, at least for me, nina'gatbo or beautification was difficult. But now, adding all sorts of cool features to your blog is easy and so I've finally decided to upgrade and try them out. I used to have lists of blog posts listed along the side, grouped by different themes such as articles by Naomi Klein, posts on love, posts on decolonization, posts on Famoksaiyan, etc. etc. These lists were cool, and I hope that people found them helpful. But updating them was a pain, beca

Its been several months now, since the Postcolonial Futures in a Not Yet Postcolonial World: Locating the Intersections of Ethnic, Indigenous and Postcolonial Studies conference, but at long last the audio for the conference has been uploaded and is ready to be downloaded. For those of you unfamiliar with the conference, here is the mission statement below: As scholars engaged in critical social justice work, we are constantly engaged in conversations about how to push the limits of the Ethnic Studies project so that it may be used more productively in addressing the wide and varied number of student and faculty interests within the department. Although the growing interest in postcolonial and indigenous studies is exciting and holds great potential, we feel that there is an urgent need to learn beyond the caricatured and narrow perceptions that have cast these emerging disciplines as specialized fields of knowledge. It is our contention that in addressing issues of violence, oppress

A few weeks ago, the conference " Postcolonial Futures in a Not Yet Postcolonial World: Locating the Intersections of Ethnic, Indigenous and Postcolonial Studies ," which grad students in my department had been planning for months, took place, and it was a big success! First, we were able to bring together scholars and students from the disciplines of ethnic, indigenous and postcolonial studies, and get them into conversation with each other, and also educate each other about what the traditions, histories and ideas of both their respective communities and academic disciplines could offer to the other. I can definitely say, that people who came to the conference with very narrow ideas about what an "indigenous" person is (for instance a Native American, or a Chamorro), left the panels and the discussions, with a much more nuanced and much broader understanding. Participants and presenters addressed these issues from Latin American, African, African American, Middle

For our conference in Ethnic Studies at UCSD "Postcolonial Futures in a Not Yet Postcolonial World: Locating the Intersections of Ethnic, Indigenous and Postcolonial Studies" everything is just about set. For those interested in looking at the schedule or getting more info on attending, click this link for the schedule and this link for the conference website . In addition to helping organize the conference, I'll also be heading up a roundtable discussion on Guam in relation to my prospective dissertation . The title of the roundtable is "The Ghost of Guam in the Machinery of American Sovereignty" and its basic goal is to tackle the question I hope to confront in my dissertation, "What role does Guam, with its ambiguous political status and its strategic military importance, play in the production of American sovereignty, or in the aura of power, authority and benevolence that America surrounds itself in or projects to the rest of the world." For this

I may not post much for the next two weeks, because frankly they look really busy. 1. Finish up helping CHELU Inc . with the writing of their application for an Administration of Native Americans Grant to assess the state of Chamorro language in San Diego. 2. I'll be at UCLA this week as a respondent for a panel that my cousin Alfred Flores is on. 3. Early next week I'll be up at UC Riverside where I'll be giving a guest lecture for Professor Robert Perez in the Ethnic Studies department. My lecture will deal with colonialism, militarization and indigenous rights and struggles through the example of Guam. 4. Then starting Wednesday next week the conference we've been planning for months in our department is finally happening! " Postcolonial" Futures in a Not Yet Postcolonial World: Locating the Intersections of Ethnic, Indigenous and Postcolonial Studies " is almost set to go. Right now, I am literally printing name tags and designing flyers and emailing

For Immediate Release Contact: Michael Lujan Bevacqua futures0308@gmail.com ‘Postcolonial’ Futures in a Not-Yet Postcolonial World: Locating the Intersections of Ethnic, Indigenous and Postcolonial Studies Conference Will Look at the Futures of Indigenous, Ethnic and Postcolonial Peoples Across the World (San Diego, February 10, 2008) On March 5-7, 2008, the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego will be hosting a conference titled “Postcolonial Futures in a Not Yet Postcolonial World: Locating the Intersections of Ethnic, Indigenous and Postcolonial Studies.” This conference will bring together scholars and activists from the United States and from around the world, who are engaged in organizing and scholarly work across ethnic, indigenous and postcolonial communities. Traditionally, Ethnic Studies deals with minority peoples in first world nations. Postcolonial Studies is about the formerly colonized, now developing world. Indigenous Studies eng

The deadline for abstracts for the conference I am helping organize on March 5-7 of this year, " Postcolonial Futures in a Not Yet Postcolonial World: Locating the Intersections of Ethnic, Indigenous and Postcolonial Studies ," passed yesterday. We received alot of exciting abstracts, but are still considering extending the deadline until January 16th to solict a couple more. I've posted over the past few months some of the reasons why I think this conference is important and timely. In December for instance I wrote " Indigenous Futures in a Not Yet Postcolonial World ," which discusses some of the theoretical needs in the academic world, that make this conference necessary. I passed by another reason last week, at the Morongo Native American reservation , east of Riverside. Across the United States, there are literally hundreds of points like this. For most people in the United States they appear to be little more than casinos run by poor destitute Native Amer

As I've written regularly about over the past few weeks, in March of next year at UCSD, my department of Ethnic Studies we'll be hosting a conference titled " Postcolonial Futures in a Not Yet Postcolonial World: Locating the Intersections of Ethnic, Indigenous and Postcolonial Studies ." To say a little bit about the goals behind the conference, we are hoping to take each of the three previously mentioned academic disciplines as well as the political realities they mean to study, and bring them not just into conversation with each other, but also bring them in conversation with the idea and the force that is the global. For those who don't know what I mean by global, since it is kind of an utguyosu na academic term, its not anything too abstract, but is simply anything which can appear or is asserted to stand in for, represent or touch the entire world. Indigenous, ethnic and postcolonial studies, are all academic domains which are directed towards particular pe