NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

History is important because it holds the truth. The problem, like everything else dealing with the truth, is the uncertainty over what people should do with truths they don't like. History is filled with things you will like, things you won't really care about, and things you will hate hearing about. There are things that fill you with inspiration, love, hope and faith in the world around you, and things that make the world around you feel hollow, terrible, disgusting and make you wish you could leave it all behind, time travel or be sent to another universe. One of my favorite quotes about history is the notion that "Happy people have no history." This is something that I don't agree with as something that produces happiness, but I do believe that many people relate to the concept and force of history with this in mind. The less you know or the narrower your knowledge is about history, the happier you might seem to be. If you come from a community wi

Mapuno' i birak. Esta hagas na tiempo hu u'uke' este na birak. Kada pekkat-hu ha chungat yu. Kada diha, kalang sinanggra yu' ni' i malago'-na. Para Hamyo, ni' ti en kempreprende hafa ilelek-hu guini, pat hafa este na estaba na birak-hu, manaplika yu' "grant" halacha. Ya para dos meses ayu sumagayi i lina'la'-hu. Lao makpo' este put fin, ya ha fattoigue yu' ta'lo i minagof-hu, i gailugat-hu. For those who don't understand the Chamorro section above, my life was taken over recently by applying for a National Science Foundation grant. I have applied for grants before, but never one such as this. This grant was twice as large as the largest grant I've ever helped apply for (this one is $220,000), three times longer than the longest grant I've ever applied for (3 years) and stretched my ability to sound "scientific" in a grant proposal. Suette yu', because the grant was on something I take se

A few months back I started up a Tumblr in hopes of exploring the angsty, curious teenage girl inside of me (j/k). In truth, I have no idea what the teenage girl inside of me is like, we don't talk very much, sina gof ekpe gui' lao ti siguru yu', hassan na kumuentos ham. Actually I did think about getting a Tumblr long ago, but it was precisely the abundance of angsty, curious pre-teen and teenage girls on there which made me shy away. Would getting a Tumblr mark me in a social-virutal way that I wasn't expecting? I don't know how cool or uncool Blogger is, but I'm certain that having a Tumblr is cooler, but would it be the right kind of cool? Esta meggai na blogs-hu siha, lao ti mangcool siha. Ya mungga yu' mama'tinas nuebu ya para bai hu makase' ta'lo. I asked my younger sister Alina who is a living, breathing angsty teenage girl what she thought about Tumblr and her response was, "What's that?" So that's when I decided it

In my Guam History class this week we’re getting to one of my favorite periods of Guam’s history, but one which my students usually don’t like hearing about. It’s the pre-war American period, from 1898-1941, where the United States controlled Guam and ran it like a Navy base, with Chamorros forced to go along for the ride. The government of Guam during this period was an autocratic Naval regime where a single man, the Naval Governor, had complete control over the island, and whatever he said, went. Most of these Naval Governors didn’t give a crap about Guam and were only here for a year or two and so didn’t do much. Lao despite that caveat, this is still a very screwed up and racist period of Guam history. One where, the racism of the United States is not some abstract thing we hear about as being conquered by Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama, but something that was literally scrubbing the tongues and policing the fields and gardens of Chamorros who are still alive today. For