NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

For each Inacha'igen Fino' CHamoru, the Chamorro Studies and Chamoru language faculty at UOG collect or produce a handful of creative and expressive texts in the language. These texts are used as part of the competition for these categories, Lalai (chant), Rinisådan Po'ema ( poetry recitation) and Tinaitai Koru (choral reading). Students have to memorize and then recite or perform these either as individuals or as a group. For the longest time, there wasn't a lot produced creatively in the Chamoru language. Most of it could be found in terms of music, as Chamorus were making songs, releasing albums and performing. Much of the publication and promotion of Chamoru could be found in the church, but little of it was creative. Much of it was translations of things written elsewhere in the Catholic universe and localized to Guam. In this way, the church preserved words and meanings in Chamoru, it helped teach and propagate the language, but it wasn't a venue for Chamoru

A few years ago, the University of Guam underwent a long discussion over the changing of its GE or General Education requirements for students. The intent was to update the system and lower the overall credit requirement. No system reform can ever be perfect or make all stakeholders happy, but this overhaul seemed to be strangely arbitrary and disconnected from UOG's mission, purpose or advantages as an educational institution. For most of its existence, you could argue that UOG was a colonial institution. You could argue that it continues to be one today. When I say colonial, it is not meant to describe that it came from the outside and therefore it implicitly bad. This is something that has been and can continue to be argued over forever. When I say colonial, I am invoking it to refer to the type of education it provides. How it is rooted and what it is meant to do. All cultures have some form of education and that education comes with different intents, to teach certain thin

Ever since we created the Chamorro Studies Program at UOG, there has been an expected tension within the university over what should or should not constitute the program offerings. While there isn't much debate over whether the Chamorro Studies program should offer courses in Chamoru language, Chamoru history or that discuss Chamoru culture from a theoretical perspective, there are regular disagreements over whether or not the program should offer "culture" courses. As someone who went off to grad school with the intent of helping to "decolonize" the University of Guam, a place where I had received my BA and my first MA, this conflict is usually very personal. Most everyone can agree that academia should make room for "indigenous knowledge" in a trendy or fad-like sense. In the same way in which everyone might want to connect something about climate change to their work to be aligned with prevailing intellectual currents, we find something similar in

In the middle of this year's regional seminar of the UN C24, the proceedings stopped briefly in order to recognize the release of Oscar Lopez Rivera, a long-time Puerto Rican political prisoner. Rivera was part of the Puerto Rican independence group named FALN, which was involved in more than 100 bombings around the US during the 1970s. He was convicted of seditious conspiracy along with other crimes and spent 35 years in prison. Rivera has been mentioned each year I have attended the regional seminar, as some Latin American countries feel a strong sense of solidarity with Puerto Rico and its independence activists, and therefore consider his case to be that of a political prisoner or a prisoner of war, who should have been subject to international court proceedings, as he was fighting for the liberation of Puerto Rico from US colonial control. Vilma Reveron, who frequently attends the seminars to discuss the state of affairs in Puerto Rico made the announcement and held up her

I have heard in the media, and seen on-line that some on Guam (and elsewhere) are referring to Dave Davis as a hero. Eiii na kinalakas. Davis recently won a case in US Federal court striking down the Guam decolonization law as being "unconstitutional" or potentially opening up this sacred, albeit symbolic vote to any resident of Guam. When I saw/heard this, it scared me in so many ways, perhaps even more so than the actual losing of this round of his case. I wrote my column in the Pacific Daily News this week about the friends that Dave Davis currently keeps, who have bought into his racist rhetoric and weaponized it, targeting the Chamorro people of Guam and their aspirations for decolonization. Davis was just an angry racist in Guam for a long time, but it wasn't until he signed up with the group called The Center for Individual Rights that he actually began to affect the world more directly with his vile ideas. I plan to write more about this group, which has mad