NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

The US military buildup to Guam "officially" starts now. The Record of Decision which is supposed to mark the end of the Environmental Impact Assessment process was signed earlier this week and so now construction on the projects outlined in the Final Environmental Impact Statement can "officially" begin. At this point, there is almost too much to be written about this issue and not enough time in my day today (since this is my long teaching day) or energy in my body (since this is my long teaching day) to do it. Although I've been writing about this DEIS and FEIS issue for months now and been actively participating in conversations and actions challenging the military buildup at so many levels, I still can't help but feel as if I did not do enough, that I could have done far more. But for all the feelings filtering through my mind and body right now screaming that something has ended, something is over or we have moved into a new phase and something can

The dissertation writing continues today. It is such a horrible feeling when the issues that you take to heart and normally write about so passionately, get reduced to horrid chores of editing, re-writing, re-structuring. I guess it is a part of all dissertation project or large research projects such as this, where you start to loathe the work you are doing. I'm sure it will pass though, but in the meantime I can take a small amount of joy, when I get the chance to write some interesting things. Today I am finishing up the second draft of my methodology chapter, in which I discuss using "traces of sovereignty" to support my academic arguments about sovereignty and what we can learn or tease out from the concept through the political status of Guam. These traces of sovereignty come from everyday sources, my blog, my email account, my interactions with people. As I wrote today: They are traces, fragments of discourse which circle around the link or lack thereof between G

We all know that feeling, when we find the most intimate meaning in most random or even puzzling or paradoxical of places. I know that many Pacific Islanders feel this sort of serendipity or finakcha'i when they watch Bollywood movies. The geographical, cultural, historical, political differences/specificities are obvious, regardless of whether we identify with them because of some post-colonial or anti-colonial solidarity. But yet, amongst so many Pacific Islanders (and occasionally Native Americans, but at a much rarer rate) when they would watch Bollywood movies, they would feel an immediate intimacy with the representations of large families, love of singing and song and "exotic" foods. In the United States, one film through which nearly all groups marked as "ethnic" meaning not apa'ka or not normative, felt a sense of "home" was My Big Fat Greek Wedding . Filipinos, Chamorros, Indians (Asian not American), Mexicans, Black people, some Asia

There are many Chamorros who believe that the bones of our ancestors which are uncovered or which are repatriated should be given to science and thus studied so that we can learn as much as possible about ourselves. I'm skeptical about this, and the first step in understanding my skepticism is listening carefully to the way in which this "quest for knowledge" is articulated. As one Chamorro told me recently, the bones that we find should be given to science so that we can "know where we came from." It seems innocent enough, seems intelligent enough. The question of origins is what drives all people, right? Well, maybe, but not really. For indigenous peoples this "search for origins" is a rigged game, it is a process which only undermines their existences, whether its a white archeologist doing the search or a Chamorro. This is the dangers of using anthropological knowledge to assert the existence or the identity of an indigenous person. You are using

After watching a preview for the upcoming film, V for Vendetta I decided to re-read it. I had purchased it almost a decade ago, after enjoying Watchmen and hating almost everything Alan Moore had done since that ( lana, gof kalakas Fire from the Heavens). First of all, I love it when authors and artists can weave things in their stories together throughout the narrative. So for example, in Watchmen, different themes are re-expressed in the dialogue or even the panel layout and image choices (such as the bodies of two people being vaporized by a "alien" blast becoming a blood splatter or a finger marked slash of an ice covered glasss dome.) V for Vendetta does that throughout, whether it be re-inserting "V" in different forms throughout, like the most famous line from Beethoven's Fifth symphony is morse code for the letter "V." When reading it on this occassion, I paid careful attention to the footnotes, the intro, the postcript to the collection. I&