NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Since the start of the year I have been working on an article about militarization in the Marianas Islands. It is for a special edition of Micronesian Educator edited by Tiara Na'puti and Lisa Natividad. I'm excited at the prospect of writing it, but my schedule over the past year has been tough, in addition to family drama and other setbacks. I've been coming back and forth to it in my notebooks every month, but until now I haven't been able to really try to finish it. I spent Christmas Day typing up my scattered notes and drafts. The article is an attempt to talk about militarization, military increases, military strategy in a Marianas wide context, and the ways it divides, unities, takes and stimulates. One of the most interesting sections is on the CIA training that took place in Saipan from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. The facility was known as the Naval Technical Training Unit or NTTU and it trained anti-communist operatives to destabilize and sabotage r

It is less than 200 days til Guam hosts FESTPAC or the largest cultural festival in the Pacific. I am involved in FESTPAC in a number of forms and there are some ways that we are clearly ready and on course and others where ai adai it seems like it'll take a miracle for us to make it on time. But with each day, more and more things are decided and more and more groups come together. Hunggan sesso tai'esperansa yu' gi este na kinalamten, lao kada tumekkon yu', mafatto tinanga ta'lo. For those of you who would like to receive regular updates about FESTPAC, its planning and organizing go on Facebook and LIKE the official FESTPAC page. Here is the link: https://www.facebook.com/guamfestpac2016 Or, each Friday the Pacific Daily News is featuring a different column under the banner of "Saonao yan Eyak" which covers a different aspect of the organizing taking place and also hopes to help prepare the people for what it is like

This week I am in Taiwan, I'll be attending and presenting at the 2015 International Austronesian Conference. People from Guam have been attending this conference for quite a while and I am honored to be the most recent attendee. I'll be presenting a paper titled, "The Austronesian Sakman: The Role of FESTPAC in Chamorro Efforts at Cultural Revitalization." I am attending on behalf of the Guam Council on the Arts and Humanities Agency (GCAHA) and so I made certain my presentation was connected to FESTPAC which will be held in Guam next year. I'm pasted below my abstract and I'm sure I'll be sharing more about my experiences on this blog. Chamorro culture of the Mariana Islands has been dramatically influenced by centuries of colonization by Spanish, Japanese and American forces. Despite these changes, the Chamorro people have maintained various forms of continuity to their Austronesian ancestors that are still manifest today in

It is now almost 200 days til Guam hosts FESTPAC or the largest cultural festival in the Pacific. I am involved in FESTPAC in a number of forms and there are some ways that we are clearly ready and on course and others where ai adai it seems like it'll take a miracle for us to make it on time.  Para i taotao ni' muna'la'la'la' yan chumochonnek mo'na i kuttura-ta (gi meggai na manera) este na dinana' i mas takhilo', i mas sagradu na tiempo. Kada kuatro na sakkan mandadana' i taotaogues i Pasifiku gi unu na isla, ya manafa'nu'i yan manapatte i kutturan-niha. Un sen dangkolu na onra este na para ta kombida taotao ginen kana trenta diferentes na isla siha magi para i tano'-ta.  For those of you who would like to receive regular updates about FESTPAC, its planning and organizing go on Facebook and LIKE the official FESTPAC page. Here is the link: https://www.facebook.com/guamfestpac2016 Or, each Friday the Pacific Daily N

It is now less than a year til Guam hosts FESTPAC or the largest cultural festival in the Pacific. I am involved in FESTPAC in a number of forms and there are some ways that we are clearly ready and on course and others where ai adai it seems like it'll take a miracle for us to make it on time.  Para i taotao ni' muna'la'la'la' yan chumochonnek mo'na i kuttura-ta (gi meggai na manera) este na dinana' i mas takhilo', i mas sagradu na tiempo. Kada kuatro na sakkan mandadana' i taotaogues i Pasifiku gi unu na isla, ya manafa'nu'i yan manapatte i kutturan-niha. Un sen dangkolu na onra este na para ta kombida taotao ginen kana trenta diferentes na isla siha magi para i tano'-ta.  For those of you who would like to receive regular updates about FESTPAC, its planning and organizing go on Facebook and LIKE the official FESTPAC page. Here is the link: https://www.facebook.com/guamfestpac2016 Or, each Friday the Pacific Daily News i

When I teach modern World History, the island of Taiwan makes a couple of cameo appearances. It appears during the resolution of the Chinese Civil War. Chiang Kai-Shek (CKS) flees to Formosa vowing to keep the fight alive from his new island fortress. In the way that I teach the class CKS is not a very sympathetic character. Coming from a Western perspective he is supposed to be the one that we choose as our champion, the one “our” side made deals with as being either the better or two evils or the lesser of two evils. CKS is no saint and is hardly worth much historical sympathy in my opinion and the conduct from the initial purge of communists, to his retreat to Taiwan to the white terror all attest to this. I don’t shy away from discussing the atrocities of the communists and Mao, but I don’t deny the historical significance and revolutionary nature of some of the communist reforms. As coming from a colony of the “west” I don’t like to take on their heroes

I've been successful this summer in going on a hike at least every two weeks. I've been referring to these as my "Secret Hikes" Here are some pictures of the last four:

We took a train south from Seoul to reach the city of Pyeongtaek. At the train station we were met by Mr. Kang Sang-Won, the director of the Pyeongtaek Peace Center, who took us to his office. We spent some time in his office, learning the history of the problems that they have had with the always expanding military bases in the area, and later were taken on a tour around the area to see the bases themselves. To give you a little background, in 2006 Pyeongtaek became a central struggle in the anti-base movement in South Korea. In the areas around Pyeongtaek, there are two US military bases, Osan which is an Air Force base and Camp Humphrey’s which is an Army base. In anticipating of moving US forces from Yonsang in Seoul down to Camp Humphreys, the South Korea government announced plans (three years earlier) to take huge pieces of land from farmers and small villages around the two bases. In an effort to stop the taking of these lands, local farmers and peace activists from around Ko