NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

One of my jobs this summer is to run community conversations with Nedine Songeni for Humanities Guåhan at the Department of Corrections. I first started doing these types of conversations or civic reflections many years ago, when the Humanities Council introduced them as a means for talking about the military buildup. I along with several others underwent a training period and held these conversations with diverse groups across the island. Since then I've also helped them a few more times on organizing civic reflections. It is an interesting model, and what I've always found nice about it, is that it requires the use of humanities text, whether it be an article, a text, an essay or a short film, as a means to stimulate conversation. Rather than a debate or a lecture, you build from a text which can be interpreted in many ways to sort of try to unpack many of the things members of the community may be feeling and may or may not be talking about. A few years ago Humanities Guåh

I have been traveling for the past few weeks and struggling while conducting research and giving a variety of presentations, to also finish up a couple of articles. One of them is based on the research I did for the Guam Humanities Council a few years ago for their exhibit Sindålu: Chamorro Journey Stories in the US Military. It was an exciting and interesting project on a variety of levels. I got to share some interesting stories that I've come across in my archival and oral history research, some of which haven't really ever been publicized before. I also got to tackle some issues in terms of understanding or unpacking contemporary Chamoru identity. The veteran subjectivity is so pervasive and somewhat hegemonic in Chamoru culture today, that it ends up taking a great deal of space, even for those who aren't veterans themselves. How many people when talking about issues of decolonization and demilitarization feel a inner need to curb their potential voice, their potenti

I'm working on an exhibit for Humanities Guåhan, and its put me back into researcher/scholar mode. I've been pouring through books and reports for the past week looking for various bits and pieces of information. Part of this meant re-reading some books and archival documents I hadn't touched in over a decade. Given the way in which conversations over decolonization and self-government have begun to take on a new character lately, I was particularly attracted to passages that can help me or others reflect on our development over time, how far Chamorros and Guam may have come, or haven't, especially in the context of their political connection to the US. There are many ways that we can say that Guam has changed over the past 500 years or over the past 100 years. As we remain in the era of American colonialism, I am mostly concerned with the impact of the US and its policies. As I have written about in a variety of ways, these changes are tangible and very real, but a

  I first wrote an article "Happy US Imperialism Day Guam!" about 13 years ago. It was published in Minagahet Zine and later on this blog when I began it soon after. The writing of this article originally was a very formative experience. Part of it eventually became my Masters Thesis in Micronesian Studies. But I also wrote it at a time when I was first trying to find a way to become more public about my critiques and writing letters to the editor of the Pacific Daily News and creating websites/blogs were some of the obvious choices.  This article was written when the second Iraq War was only eight months old and the War in Afghanistan was over two years old. It was written at a time when I was feeling frustrated over the deaths of the first few Chamorros in Iraq, Christopher Rivera Wesley being the first.  As I said, it was also written at a time when I was first working on developing a critical consciousness and a public voice in terms of writing a

My first forays into the world of public discourse and engagement came on the pages of the Pacific Daily News through letters to the editor. For years I conducted research in the Micronesian Area Research Center library and through interviews with politicians, activists and manåmko', but the thoughts and ideas that were spawning in my head didn't have many outlets save for discussions in classes or with trusted elders or friends. In 2004 I gave my first public presentation on the issue of decolonization or critical Chamorro Studies, when I shared a section of my research at a forum titled "World War II is it Over?" organized by the Guam Humanities Council at the Agana Shopping Center. I spoke alongside Dr. Patricia Taimanglo, the late historian Tony Palomo and Guam military historian Jennings Bunn. After that, I spent several years in graduate school presenting at conference around the US, often times to empty rooms, as Guam papers tended to be very low on the prior

Our Voices, Our Stories, Our Ocean Pacific Literature Conference May 13-14 University of Guam, Mangilao, Guam Call for Papers and Presentations Description of conference and its purpose
Pacific voices and stories have been marginalized in educational spaces throughout the Pacific for too long. However, with the emergence of contemporary Pacific literature since the 1970s, stories and perspectives on Pacific lives have been included in school curricula throughout most of the region (with less prominence in Micronesia). Thus, Our Voices, Our Stories, Our Ocean Pacific Literature Conference aims to provide a venue for Pacific writers and voices to increase awareness about Pacific literature for Pacific educators, students, and writers on Guam and throughout the region. Moreover, because this conference will take place just two weeks before the 12th Festival of Pacific Arts (FESTPAC) on Guam, the conference’s steering committee encourages participation in

I worked last year on a project for the Guam Humanities Council titled Sindalu: Chamorro Journey Stories in the US Military, and that topped off more than a decade of doing research and speaking and writing about the effects of militarization on Chamorros and their lands, and also about the central place that militarism as an ideology has in contemporary Chamorro life. This is why Guam is referred to as "the tip of the spear," and why it has been given a number of other nicknames over the years, such as USS Guam, Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier. It is why Liberation Day is the largest holiday on the island each year. It is why Chamorros are thought of as superpatriots sometimes, internally and externally, and why a documentary came out recently titled "Island of Warriors." This is also why Guam has been in the past 2/3 military bases and is today almost 1/3 military bases. This militarized core is understandable given Guam's history. When we look at the past. Wh

The exhibit I worked on for the Guam Humanities Council titled Sindalu: Chamorro Journey Stories in the US Military is currently on display at the Isla Center for the Arts at UOG. As part of the exhibit I've given several scholarly tours to students, teachers and veterans. Although the exhibit itself features so many stories, the interaction with these groups often yields even more stories. Sometimes people will find themselves or their ancestors in the photos. They will offer up another perspective or another facet of someone's anecdote. Sometimes they challenge things and sometimes they express their gratefulness that an exhibit like this has been put together. I teach many aspects of the exhibit in my own classes, but I have appreciated the way the research and writing for the exhibit and then the way I have developed my talk for the tours has led me to really think about the progression of Chamorros and their relationship to the United States, through their military servi

The exhibit Sindalu: Chamorro Journey Stories in the US Military is still on display at the Agana Shopping Center. At the end of this month it will move to its next location in the Isla Center for the Arts at UOG. Although the creation of an exhibit like this can be so stressful, especially when you have a very tight timeline for completion, the experiences after the exhibit is open can be so rewarding. I was so worried that more people would complain about the exhibit and why their family stories weren't covered, which is what I often hear in the community about projects like this. But very few people have approached me personally about that, and many of the conversations I have had both while visiting the exhibit and also just out and about have given me a sense of how interesting and engaging people found the narrative. So many people appreciated the way it deepened their own understanding of the experiences of their fathers, cousins, sisters and grand parents in the US mili

Guam Humanities Council to host Smithsonian Institution Exhibit Journey Stories, Opening June 26, 2014 The Guam Humanities Council is partnering with the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, Museum on Main Street (MoMS) program to bring to Guam the national exhibit, Journey Stories. Many of us have powerful journey stories in our personal heritage. It may be a story of a family uprooting itself in order to stay together, or of sons and daughters moving to another land, or of a distant ancestor. As part of the Guam tour, the Council has developed a local companion exhibit with complimentary programs entitled, Sindålu – Chamorro Journeys in the U.S. Military, to explore the many significant and oftentimes unrecognized journeys of Chamorro men and women who currently serve or have served in the U.S. Military. Chamorro servicemen and women, along with their families, have moved all over the world, some returning home, others resettling perman

It is the summer, but my schedule is still packed. The Pacific Islands Bilingual Bicultural Association (PIBBA) is having their annual conference this month in the island of Luta (Rota). Gos malago' yu' mohon na bai hu hanaogue, lao chatsaga' yu'. The PIBBA Conference falls at the same time as the opening of the Guam Humanities Council exhibit "Sindalu: Chamorro Journey Stories in the US Military." I worked as the writer and researcher for this project and so I have to be on island for when it begins. But if it wasn't for this I would submit an abstract and go to Luta for sure. As I often say, any excuse to travel to Rota is a good excuse. Sen gefpago na tano'. Achokka' dikike' i mineddong-na sen dangkolu' i ginefpago-na. Below is the call for papers with other info on the conference. If you are interested please submit an abstract or at least just attend. **************** --> I Lingguåhi, I Kuttura, I Halige

For "Sindalu" the Guam Humanities Council Exhibit that I am working on, one of the tasks I did was to collect as many of the articles about Chamorros that have died in Afghanistan and Iraq as possible. Part of the problem with collecting these articles is that many of the Chamorro soldiers who have died lived elsewhere and were recruited outside of the Marianas. Sometimes these soldiers will show up in lists of dead from the Marianas, sometimes they don't. These lists are also more complicated by the fact that some of them will include the deaths of soldiers who were deployed but not killed in combat and others will exclude them. What makes it even more convoluted is that the metrics for counting the dead has changed as well. During Vietnam, the number was strictly Chamorros, even though there were a handful of soldiers from other islands in Micronesia who did serve. But in the Wars on Terror, the fights in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Horn of Africa, more and more non-C

The relationship between Chamorros and the United States has always been stimulated and frustrated by the United States military. When Chamorros were initially promised the greatness of the United States in terms of democracy, freedom and liberty in 1899, they instead met with the US Navy which governed by island for half of a century not allowing any of those three things to exist in any formal sense on the island. When Chamorros began to join the US military as a way of improving their lives and learning the importance of service and patriotism and how the greatest of any community are those who take on the sacrifice of sacrificing for all others, instead they were met with racism that relegated them to only serving in the lowest ranks of the US Navy, being just mess attendants. Even when Chamorros finally felt and learned first hand the liberating potential of the US military when it expelled the Japanese during World War II, they also learned that the US military h