NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

This would be a great idea to have in the Pacific. A conference that focuses on the remaining official colonies and the near colonies. Amongst the last colonies in the world there is sometimes discussion about solidarity work, but there are so few venues for it to form. So few mechanisms for it to actually be forged and sustained. The United Nations was for a long time one such space. On the internet the Overseas Territories Review run by Carlyle Corbin (featured in the image below) provides a wealth of information on all the world's remaining colonies. Part of the problem, and this is very true for Guam, is that as a colony we are conditioned to see the world through the eyes, the media, the history, the political possibilities of our colonizer. So if the colonizer connects us in some way, we accept and privilege that, but any other way seems outlandish or difficult. For instance, the peoples of Guam and American Samoa are more likely to see each other as American minoritie

Looking at the ‘tip of the spear’ How U.S. Military policy in Guam, a proposed “mega build-up” and population displacement are destroying the island and its people.  by Craig Santos Perez June 6, 2014 The Hawaii Independent Guåhan (Guam), an unincorporated territory of the United States, is the largest and most populated island in Micronesia. For a local comparison, Guåhan is larger than Lanaʻi yet smaller than Molokaʻi. Similar to Oʻahu, U.S.military bases occupy a third of Guåhan’s landmass. Kanaka Maoli activist and scholar Kaleikoa Kaʻeo once described the U.S. military as a monstrous heʻe (octopus). Imagine Pacific Command headquarters as its head, the mountaintop telescopes as its eyes, and the supercomputers and fiber optic networks as its brain and nerve system. Now imagine one of its weaponized tentacles strangling Guåhan: “The Tip of the Spear.” In 2009, details of a military “ mega-buildup ” on Guåhan were released in a dra

This Thursday at 6 pm at the Dededo Senior Center I'll be on a panel to discuss a rough cut of the documentary "Island Soldier." The film by Nathan Fitch is about the experiences of FSM Citizens who serve in the US military. I have been hearing about this film for quite a while from its director and I'm very excited to see what he has created. Micronesia is often dismissed by the world due to its smallness and its distance from places that are considered to be naturally important. What can there be of value here expect for those things which people associate with smallness, isolation and getting away from the "real" world. But one thing that this part of the world and the American Empire can claim is to have overwhelming per capita enlistment statistics in the US military. It is something that anyone who knows the United States in terms of its statistics or numerical reality is aware of, but is unsure how to process. The collection of islands that the US

We Are Guahan  WeAreGuahan.com *FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE *  *September 23, 2010; Guam*- With the release of the DoD’s Record of Decision, it has become evident that the Department of Defense will continue to disregard concerns voiced by the people of Guam. Guam’s local residents will be the demographic most severely impacted by plans to increase the US military’s presence within the region through one of the largest peacetime military relocations in modern history. We Are Guahan will be hosting a rally on Oct. 1 to unite the community in response. The island participated actively within the NEPA process, with over 10,000 comments submitted in response to the Draft EIS from the community and Government of Guam agencies. Despite the outpouring of community involvement, the Final EIS failed to incorporate many of the island’s concerns into their final plans. Guam’s community and local leaders presented a united front in opposition to the condemnation of land and the taking of mor

Tomorrow my Guam History classes will be conducting their political status forums. For this exercise, which is their last big group project, I divide them into three groups, one for each of the potential future political statues of Guam, and they have to debate which is the best for Guam. I'll write more about this project later, but it is usually the most fun part of my entire semester, since its high energy, usually gof na'chalek, and I'm always happy when students find small and large ways to surprise me with their arguments. One of the highlights of tomorrow will be when some producers who work for the show Dan Rather Reports will be filming one of my classes when they are debating political status, and then interviewing me afterwards about Guam's history. They are on island doing a story about the infamous military buildup which is always looming in a menacing ambigous form on Guam's horizon. They spent a week last month following Congresswoman Bordallo around

If you asked me right now who my favorite fictional character is, I wouldn't say Kakashi from Naruto, Spock from Star Trek, or even Jacob Black from Twilight. If you asked me right now I would have to answer the antiwar Barack Obama. He is the coolest. He's interested in shrinking the military budget, he's for peace and not war, is not interested in establishing more permanent US bases around the world, and is willing to admit that America is sometimes wrong and is not perfect. He's like the president from a great movie or tv show, one who completely changes the country, who takes a massive risk and decides to turn the most powerful country in the world into a radical new direction. In my favorite episode of the Antiwar Obama show, he tracks Dick Cheney to his secret underground lair, where he hordes away all the billions of dollars lost by war profiteering in Iraq and Afghanistan. There, Antiwar Obama fights off hundreds of Halliburton and Blackwater employees who ar

After watching Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen last week, and just a little over a year until my 30th birthday, I eventually ended up finding a creative way of taking stock of the long road that I've traveled to this point, and how the mythology of Transformers has followed me there. As I walked out of the film I said to my sleeping daughter Sumåhi, "Gof suette yu', kao un tungo' sa' hafa? Sa' gi este lina'la'-hu, "privileged" yu' na hu egga' na mapuno' Si Optimus Prime dos biahi, ya hu egga' na mana'la'la' ta'lo dos biahi." For those who don't speak Chamorro my message was "I'm so lucky and do you know why? Because in my life, I've been privileged enough to watch Optimus Prime die twice and come back to life twice." And for those of you who don't speak the language of Transformers, Optimus Prime is the leader of the Autobots, the good half of the Transformers world, with the

One of the most comprehensive pieces written about Chamorros and the complexity and everyday violence of their struggles today. Its long, but worth the read. ********************** War Stories and the Chamorus: journalism and militarization on the tip of the spear. By Beau Hodai Special to News From Indian Country July 2009 It was a typical day in the jungle, though more overcast than the constant island diet of endless blue skies and fluffy white clouds; humid-- drizzling rain that would materialize from the sticky mist in the air, a breeze stirring through breadfruit and banana leaves. I was at the family home of Navy Hospital Corpsman Second Class Anthony Carbullido, Jr., whom the Department of Defense had recently listed among the dead to be routed back from Afghanistan to Guam through Dover, Delaware-- the victim of an improvised explosive device. Family and friends of the corpsman were seated in rows of folding chairs under a glowing green fiberglass awning reciting the ros

On November 29th, the Chamorro creative arts group " Ginen I Hila’ I Maga’taotao Siha " wil be hosting a Stories and Songs Festival, which is free and open to the public and will feature Chamorro/Guam storytelling as well as arts and crafts. The group has been organizing a series of very enjoyable presentations recently, even having on before Halloween, where they told ghost stories on the beach at Ipan. I'll be participating in this festival in a number of ways. First off me and i che'lu-hu Kuri will have a table set up in order to display the tools of our grandfather Tun Jack Lujan. My grandpa has been a Chamorro blacksmith for more than 80 years now, and whereas the island once had several dozen tool makers, he is now the only traditional one, or one who comes from a generational legacy. Put i mafana'guen-na i che'lu-hu, esta gaige gi entre i familia-ku kuatro na henerasion herrero. Yesterday I posted some videos of grandpa, Kuri and me working in the sho

I gave a lecture recently at University of California, Riverside, on Chamorro soldiers, and the relationship between colonization and militarization in Guam. I gave it just a few days after I had returned to San Diego from a brief visit in Guam for Sumahi's first birthday. While I was at the airport waiting for my plane to board, I saw this homage, downstairs from the security screening area. It is an homage to all the soldiers that have died from Micronesia in Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa, in this always growing and expanding War on Terror. Ni' ngai'an na bei maleffa i sinangan as Borat, annai ilek-na "War of Terror." When I gave my presentation at UC Riverside, I made clear to the students there, that if they want to find what political community or entity of the United States has the highest rate of members killed in US wars since 9/11, you don't look at any particular state or territory, but you have to look at what has long been called America's Insul