NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

I posted the information about this Beyond the Fence episode earlier in the year, but felt compelled to post it again today.  It is titled "Minagahet yan Dinagi Siha: The Revitalization of the Chamorro Language." It features presentations from myself and my friend Edward Alvarez that we gave during a conference in Okinawa earlier this year on the revitalization of island languages. At present I am the coordinator for the Chamorro Studies program at the University of Guam. For years I have been working on issues of language and cultural revitalization from "the outside." But now I have an official and formal role in those debates and in that ideological infrastructure. I am teaching classes at the University of Guam in Chamorro language and Chamorro culture and I couldn't be happier. But like anyone who becomes used to seeing the problems of the world from a distance, where they appear to be more easily resolved, once you enter the thick of them, the comple

Two years ago, the United Nations, after more than 20 years of debating, at long last passed the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. Depending on your particular circumstances as an indigenous person, and what existing "sovereign" nation-state claims your land or your destiny, this was either a hopeful sign or a twisted and sad spectacle. For me personally, the adoption of the Declaration came at the perfect moment. I was in New York the following month testifying before the United Nations about the current situation on Guam. When I got there a few days prior to testifying, I wandered around the streets of New York trying to figure out what to say. I wanted to come up with something that others from Guam wouldn't cover or address, but which I could also speak to with very little reading up or research. In other words, something interesting and unique, that could be written in a few hours. The Declaration seemed like the perfect point to address. Chamorros on

I gave a lecture recently at University of California, Riverside, on Chamorro soldiers, and the relationship between colonization and militarization in Guam. I gave it just a few days after I had returned to San Diego from a brief visit in Guam for Sumahi's first birthday. While I was at the airport waiting for my plane to board, I saw this homage, downstairs from the security screening area. It is an homage to all the soldiers that have died from Micronesia in Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa, in this always growing and expanding War on Terror. Ni' ngai'an na bei maleffa i sinangan as Borat, annai ilek-na "War of Terror." When I gave my presentation at UC Riverside, I made clear to the students there, that if they want to find what political community or entity of the United States has the highest rate of members killed in US wars since 9/11, you don't look at any particular state or territory, but you have to look at what has long been called America's Insul