NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

The fact that even now, after most of the world has acknowledged that colonization is an evil that must be eradicated, people still debate its merits and occasionally argue for its return, is a testament to the complexity that comes with colonization. Regardless of the ways in which people (sometimes myself included) try to propose colonialism as being a simple binary or something with clear moral boundaries, the process itself and the way it becomes deeply entrenched and embedded, means that long after the colonizer's flag is gone and no one is whipping or punishing anyone directly, people will still embody the logic of the colonizer's assertions of their superiority or the necessity of their dominance. In Guam we see this manifest in so many ways, despite Guam being one of the oldest remaining colonies in the world. People argue that Guam didn't suffer or isn't suffering. They argue that without colonialism Guam would be filled with pagan, naked savages. They argu

Per United Nations Resolution 1541 (1960), the colonized people of non-self-governing territories such as Guam have three options to choose from when deciding a path for their decolonized future. The first is integration with their colonizer, which is commonly known in Guam as statehood. The second, free association is to form a foundational agreement and share parts of your sovereignty with another power, which is usually your former colonizer. Finally, there is independence, which contrary to common misconceptions does not mean isolation from the world, but rather joining it as a sovereign and equal entity. As I have experienced over the past decade, discussing decolonization in Guam can move from inspiring to frustrating quite quickly. People seem to resist decolonization in general and independence in particular as being impossible or dangerous. Although I have met few people on Guam who have read the work of Francis Fukuyama, most notably his book “The End of His

Throughout my interviews that I conducted for my graduate school research, when the issue of decolonization would emerge in the discussion, regardless of the demographic intersections of the interview subject, regardless of their life experiences or their level of education, all of them would find some way of saying that on the topic of political status change, mungga ma'åkka' i kannai ni' muna'boboka hao, don't bite the hand that feeds you. This narrative, while understandable for an island stuck in what I refer to as the decolonial deadlock, it was frustrating for someone who was seeking to study decolonization and convince other Chamorros of the need for it. Eventually, at some point amidst the interview conducting, the critical theory reading and the online ranting, I ended up watching the 200 movie Lumumba directed by Raoul Peck. It tells the story of the final months of Patrice Lumumba, an inspirational figure in African and global decolonization, who was th

The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon is one of the books that has had a huge impact on me. You can interpret this book to be so many things, although people traditionally focus on the call for violent nationalist revolutions as a means of decolonization. For me I have used Fanon's work, in particular this book in order to articulate so many of my own ideas about social change, in particular in Guam. He wrote a time when decolonization was a tide and it was something that he both channeled and rode. In the context of that time, but also even today when so much of the world has banished his writing to echoes of a bloody and mistaken past, there is still so much power behind them. Here is his last chapter, his conclusion to The Wretched of the Earth, which more than anything shows the humanist and idealist of Fanon, and the promise that decolonization always holds. ************************ Now, comrades, now is the time to decide to change sides. We

Articles on the brutal crackdown in Gaza by Israel from the website Common Dreams.    *************** Published on Monday, November 19, 2012 by the Independent/UK Journalistic Cliches: 'Surgical Air Strikes', 'Rooting Out Terror', and 'Cyber-Terrorism' Cannot Conceal Reality by Robert Fisk     Terror, terror, terror, terror, terror. Here we go again. Israel is going to “root out Palestinian terror” – which it has been claiming to do, unsuccessfully, for 64 years – while Hamas, the latest in “Palestine’s” morbid militias, announces that Israel has “opened the gates of hell” by murdering its military leader, Ahmed al-Jabari. Hezbollah several times announced that Israel had “opened the gates of hell” for attacking Lebanon. Yasser Arafat, who was a super-terrorist, then a super-statesman – after capitulating on the White House lawn – and then became a super-terrorist again when he

Last year anthropologist David Vine visited Guam as part of a research trip where he visited areas around the world where communities were protesting (in various ways) the presence of US bases near them. While this is his most current research project, he is best known for his work on chronicling the plight of the Chagos Islanders, who come from the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. If you are in the military you have most likely heard about the base there. If you are a fan of the live-action Transformers films then you might remember it being featured as a secure location where a sliver of the infamous all-spark is kept safe. If you are someone, who like me keeps lists of the not-so-great-things that have been done by the US over its history, than Diego Garcia is a particularly gross and recent atrocity. Through postwar collusion between the US and British governments, the people living in Diego Garcia were first tricked into leaving their island and barred from returning