NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

The fact that even now, after most of the world has acknowledged that colonization is an evil that must be eradicated, people still debate its merits and occasionally argue for its return, is a testament to the complexity that comes with colonization. Regardless of the ways in which people (sometimes myself included) try to propose colonialism as being a simple binary or something with clear moral boundaries, the process itself and the way it becomes deeply entrenched and embedded, means that long after the colonizer's flag is gone and no one is whipping or punishing anyone directly, people will still embody the logic of the colonizer's assertions of their superiority or the necessity of their dominance. In Guam we see this manifest in so many ways, despite Guam being one of the oldest remaining colonies in the world. People argue that Guam didn't suffer or isn't suffering. They argue that without colonialism Guam would be filled with pagan, naked savages. They argu

Last year when I attended the United Nations Regional Seminar in Nicaragua I had the chance to meet and talk to Reverend Conrad Howell from the Turks and Caicos, a fellow Non-Self-Governing Territory just like Guam, albeit in the Caribbean and with a different colonizer, the United Kingdom. Reverend Howell was clearly charismatic, even just from the few days that I spent with him at the seminar. He was articulate and not afraid to stir up controversy. Like many other people that I've met from Non-Self-Governing Territories, we face similar problems of being small, being faraway and being forgotten. These issues are relative of course, but when we imagine the possibilities for our future, we feel a massive weight bearing down on us, which seems to compel so many of us to think that we shouldn't try to change anything, that our colonial situations are necessary because of our minuscule realities, we just need to accept being hopelessly dependent. But in each of our islands, w