NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Every September 11th since September 11, 2001 has a surreal quality to it. As if in a world where history repeats and meaning is always muddled, somehow the events of that day achieved a special, extra level of meaning for those that were alive and of age to experience it. At least this is what they say, and how true this seems depends a lot on your relationship to the US and what type of imaginary tissue connects you to it.  9/11 always means another set of memorial or retrospectives. These commemorative acts help us lock in a particular narrative for conceiving what happened that day, what it means, and whether or not we allow any understanding of events that helped led to that attack. At these memorials people recall where they were when they learned of the attacks and reminders of how scared they were, but how America rose again from those ashes.  Mixed into this naturally is a lot of what you might call blind patriotism or shallow patriotism. September 11 th , as the US se

Several years ago this poem was used in the Inacha'igen Fino' CHamoru at the University of Guam as part of the poetry recitation category. This is a Middle School category where students have to memorize and then recite a poem written in the Chamorro language. I was honored that year when the other Chamorro teachers, who were and continue to be far more versed than I am in the Chamorro language, asked me if I would be so kind as to submit something. I had written this poem years earlier, while I was in grad school and working my way through a few books by Indian poets and authors such as Rabindranath Tagore. At that point I was fluent in Chamorro, but constantly feeling alone in the language as I was staying in San Diego and couldn't always make it out to the Guam Club in National City for the senior lunches or the nobenas. During that period I ended up translating hundreds of poems and songs, some of which you can find archived on this blog, in an effort to keep my min

Yesterday I spent the day at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. It was a very surreal experience. On the surface it appears like many other shrines or places or worship or reflection in Japan, but it was an incredibly militaristic space. It featured museums dedicated to a whitewashed military history of Japan, thousands of letters from soldiers writing home about how happy they were to die for Japan, and statues for the courage of war widows. The shrine is meant to serve the more than two million souls who have died as soldiers for Japan over the past century, so the militaristic and warmongering tone makes sense, but given what I know of Japanese history it was still shocking to see the way things were twisted in order to create a sense of sinlessness and honor in the midst of a very blatantly imperial period of their history. The shrine reminded me that if you win your wars, you can always explain and justify the deaths involved as heroic, as necessary, as part of a teleology of g

Liberation Day is here again. I'm not on island for it and so in most ways I am insulated from it. Facebook is one of the main ways that I'm experiencing it this year. My dash is inundated with images from the parade, pictures of manamko', food, flags, uniformed troops and village floats. There are also quite a few posts weighing on the issue of Liberation Day itself, contending with the political meanings involved. Some people referred to it as reoccupation day or dependence day. They called into question, quite rightly, whether it is right to call this day a real liberation. Others pushed back against these critiques, some of them whining about the comfortable generations of today not appreciating the sacrifices of the past. They argued that if the generation of war survivors doesn't question the liberation aspects of the day, who gives us the right to? So much of this discourse relies on the idea that the older generation never complained and always endured, but it

It is unfortunate that the formal movement for decolonization has stalled in recent years. At the formal level there is little to do and little to work towards. Informally the work continues. Independence for Guam is a notion that has been around for centuries, but it has taken different forms and been articulated in different ways. It is at some points been something direct and strong, at other times more a feeling of autonomy than political sovereignty. Independence in the modern era is a political status option for Guam that brings out alot of passion amongst people, but also fears. It is something which people speak about but often times through a bitterness that makes it seem unattractive or that supporting independence would mean living in the past. Here is my take on independence for Guam. The movement here is small, but passionate. The way I see it, the movement should be built around two basic principles.   #1 Chamorros were once an independent people, who

Last week a small group of people started walking at 5:30 am in front of the Malesso Church. They headed north along Route 4 for hours, passing through Inarajan and Ipan and eventually ending in the middle of the day at the Manengon Memorial in Ylig, Yo’na. For those who finished the journey it was a difficult trek of 19 miles the last half of which was under the unforgiving Guam sun. The name of this walk was "Remember Our Strength" or "Hasso i Minetgot-ta." I started off with the group in Malesso, but by mile 13, for my own personal reasons felt like stopping and didn't continue. Although I was tired by that point it wasn't an issue of physical pain that made me stop. I made this decision because in my eyes the walk had become something I didn't want to participate in anymore, and with only 6 miles left I decided to catch a ride back to my car. My personal issues with the walk however shouldn't detract however from the event's potential impor

Around this time last year Howard Zinn passed away. He was most famous for his seminal counter history of the United States A People's History of the United States, but he wrote many other works as well and was a long time activist and support of numerous progressive causes. After I began teaching World History last year, I found that much of the way I talk about things, even history, tends to be at a level which is hard for your average UOG undergraduate to understand. When you starting talking like Levinas, Derrida, Benjamin, Slavoj Zizek and Avery Gordon to talk about history even if students are interested, they sometimes lack the vocabulary or a friendly framework to even engage with what I'm saying. The first time I taught World History 2 (from 1500- the present) I made the mistake of giving my students Walter Benjamin's Theses on the Philosophy of History, without prepping them much or giving them an idea of what it was about. Needless to say the discussion was gut

In my endless quest to make sure that I always have too many things to do and not enough time to do them in, I've started working with the office of Senator Frank Blas Jr. on an event to be held on December 8th to commemorate the invasion of Guam in 1941 by the Japanese. Each year there is a Paka-level-strength-typhoon of memorialized and commemorating for the reoccupation of the island by US force, known as Liberation Day, but very little takes place to remember the island was first cast into the fire of war. This event will feature a photo exhibit at the Cathedral Gallery in Hagatna, a mass on December 8th as well as a war storytelling event to take place after the mass. This project is the most recent part of Senator Blas' push to get war reparations for Chamorros. If you want more information on that issue then they have created a website devoted to it called Guam War Survivor Story . I'm pasting information on the project below, the photo exhibit and also some info on

After spending one day in Seoul I was surprised at how many statues there were. In no way did I see the whole breadth of the city, just some streets within a mile or two of my hotel and whatever I saw on my trip from the airport. But I saw an incredible array of statues. Most of these monuments I couldn’t glean the significance of because I couldn’t read Korean, but still, I was very surprised to find so many. Last week in my World History class at UOG, I had a discussion with my students about monuments and memorializing, but in the context of Guam and Ferdinand Magellan. I find it both amusing and tragic that the first modern monument which Chamorros ever raised was in 1926, down in the village of Umatac, meant to commemorate the visit of Magellan to the island in March of 1521. This stop literally put Guam on the map of the world and world history. It ensured that no matter how small and tiny Guam is, it would be something small children around the world, learning about world histo