NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

One thing that I struggled with when I first became more conscious about issues affecting Guam, especially around political status, was the question of why more people weren't interested in this and why so few people were committed to the idea of changing it. For my entire life, for the entire lives of my mother and father, for the entire lifetimes of my grandparents, Guam has been a colony of the United States. The face of American colonialism in Guam has changed significantly. My grandparents grew up at a time when Guam was strictly segregated and Chamorros were openly treated as inferior to white Americans. Today, although people on Guam do regularly experience second-class treatment at the hands of the United States at multiple levels, it is easy to dismiss this as simple ignorance or lack of respect and not tie to it a larger political relationship. Para Guahu, ti ya-hu na mañåsaga ham yan i familia-ku gi un colony. Ti ya-hu na esta para kana' kuatro na siento na såkka

I used to run (with the help of a few others) the blog Peace and Justice for Guam and the Pacific . It is still online and features more than a thousand articles from a variety of sources dealing with issues of peace, militarization and culture primarily in Guam, but also in the wider Pacific. I was working on the draft of an article recently talking about Nasion Chamoru and their effect on Chamorro activism and Guam society. I found on that blog several articles and I wanted to share some of them below. ***************** Mayors shuns Chamorro Nation By Mar-Vic Cagurangan Variety News Staff July 16, 2007 GUAM senators yesterday gave the Japanese delegation a rundown of demands that they want from the U.S. government in exchange for hosting the 8,000 troops that will be relocated from Okinawa, while Chamorro activists told the delegation that they don't want the Marines to come to Guam at all. The delegation, however, declined to give audience to Chamorro Natio