NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

My grandmother loved i paluman natibun Guahan pat i paluman Chamorro siha. Recently while going through her numerous papers and documents I came across some stories she had written, on her own, for herself or for my children perhaps in Chamorro about Guam's native birds. She always told me stories about the birds in her youth and how sad it was to no longer hear them. It is common nowadays to feel like there are no birds left on Guam, because most of the native bird population has died out, killed by brown tree snakes and by loss of habitat. Ti mismo magahet este na sinangan. Hunggan i meggaina na paluma siha manmatai guini giya Guahan. Yes it is true that most of the birds on Guam are gone, but certain birds are still active and audible. The only problem is that most of them are recently introduced. Some of the endemic or indigenous birds that you can still find around Guam are the chunge', the kakkak, the sali, the aga and if you head down to Dano' you can see Ko'ko

Eight years ago on my blog, I started a series titled "Paluman Marianas," meant to feature different native birds of the Marianas and my drawings or paintings of them. I only did one, for I Tettot or the Marianas Fruit dove, and never got around to posting another one. I have plenty of drawings and paintings that feature Guam's birds, in fact with my daughter Sumahi, I've added quite a few more. Sumahi loves to draw in general, but I've tried to teach her as much as I can about the native birds of the Marianas. She can name many of them, probably more than most kids nowadays. But sharing this part of our heritage with her reminded me of my long forgotten series of Paluman Marianas. I wanted to add another one today, #2: I sihek, the Micronesian Kingfisher. ************** Micronesian Kingfisher - Guam Information courtesy of http://guamendangeredbirds.com/wst_page4.html The Micronesian kingfisher (Halcyon cinnamomina cinna

 Mina'tres na Lisayu for Elizabeth Flores Lujan 12/17/13 My grandmother would cut out anything in the newspapers related to Chamorro language. She gave me several reasons over the years for why she did this (other than her being a hoarder/collector), but once she said to me, that she was worried that the language would disappear from this island just as the songs of our birds had. This statement struck me because I had grown up in an island where the only birds I’d seem to hear were planes and helicopters flying overhead. For most my age the lack of birds is a piece of Guam trivia, a metaphor to use to talk about how fragile the state of the Chamorro people, or how we should be vigilante about what comes into our community, or a footnote to discussing the brown tree snake issue. For my grandmother and her generation the native birds of Guam were half of the soundtrack of life. If you imagine the singing that Chamorros did being the social opera, th

When I visited Okinawa last year I was fortunate enough to visit a language school started by a group of activists who are working towards the revitalization of Uchinaguchi or the main dialect of Okinawa. I had met most of them over the years at conferences in the states or on solidarity trips around the Asia-Pacific region. I was impressed with their grassroots efforts and in the year since they even received a small government grant to provide stipends for the community members who were offering their time to teach the classes. In these classes parents and children would work together to learn the language. Unfortunately when I visited last week the school was on vacation and wouldn't start again for several weeks. I thought it would be nice to share some of the photos I took last year. Part of the benefit of these types of trips is not only the inspiration you can feel from seeing people who at work who are committed and dedicated. It is also important to learn about each othe

“The Not-So-Secret Guam Wikileaks” Michael Lujan Bevacqua August 17, 2011 The Marianas Variety Former Congressman Robert Underwood used to call Guam “The Rodney Dangerfield of the Pacific” because it never seems to get much respect from the Federal Government or from the United States in general. So when I first heard that there were Guam mentions in the much discussed and maligned Wikileaks archive of US State Department communiqués, I was certain that most of them wouldn’t be of any substance, but rather reflect the way Guam is often mentioned in American popular culture; as the butt of jokes. Eventually we learned that the details were very important and shed much light on how the Guam military buildup was or wasn’t really planned. They were salacious enough, although not in the silly way I had initially wished for. For your reading pleasure here are some of the not-so-secret Wikileaks Guam mentions that I imagined finding. I was certain that several of them would simply be

The Marianas Variety has a habit lately of putting huge images of people talking on their front page. A few months back, when there was some back and forth debating between JGPO and We Are Guahan at the Rotary Club. The front page of the Variety first had a large, almost poster size image of i matan WAG and my Starcraft 2 bromance buddy Leevin Camacho, in the middle of a word. The week after, they had an image of Colonel Jackson from JGPO, also mid-word. The images weren't that interesting, since it was just people speaking, but the size of them caught me and others off guard. In today's Marianas Variety there was another tall and large frontpage image, yet this time rather than merely representing the act of someone speaking, it was meant to convey deep and serious emotions. The Governor of Guam, Eddie Calvo is standing tall, his hands folded below his waist before him. Rather than the usual images of politicians that we find in the media, which show them staged as happy, bl

One of the better articles that has come out recently about the military buildup, and I'm not only saying this because of the fact that I was interviewed for it. In most national articles or press about the buildup, China haunts the edges of the discussion, but is rarely drawn out in any meaningful way, and as a result the danger to Guam is rarely mentioned ever. This is not to say that people like me on Guam when we talk to people from The Washington Post or The Chicago Tribune, we don't mention it, we always do since it's something we can't dismiss or edit out of the picture. But from the perspective of the US, the national discussion is heavily ambivalent on the China issue, and so that complexity and uncertainty around the issue makes it something that always has to be other assumed or marginalized. There can be no "peaceful" intention to the US militarizing Guam or militarizing other places around the Asia-Pacific region meant to box in China, but since A