NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Ever since we created the Chamorro Studies Program at UOG, there has been an expected tension within the university over what should or should not constitute the program offerings. While there isn't much debate over whether the Chamorro Studies program should offer courses in Chamoru language, Chamoru history or that discuss Chamoru culture from a theoretical perspective, there are regular disagreements over whether or not the program should offer "culture" courses. As someone who went off to grad school with the intent of helping to "decolonize" the University of Guam, a place where I had received my BA and my first MA, this conflict is usually very personal. Most everyone can agree that academia should make room for "indigenous knowledge" in a trendy or fad-like sense. In the same way in which everyone might want to connect something about climate change to their work to be aligned with prevailing intellectual currents, we find something similar in

From Vicente Diaz University of Illinois, UC ***************** Some of you asked for my comments delivered before the Senate on Monday. i couldn't attach it so I paste it here: My name is Vicente M. Diaz. I am an Associate Professor in American Indian Studies and Anthropology. I am also an affiliate faculty member in History and Asian American Studies. I represent American Indian Studies; in fact, I co-chaired the search committee that recommended the hire of Steven Salaita. I’m here to express moral indignation and outrage at the BOT’s denial of Prof. Salaita’s hire. Far from over, and even further from correct, our leadership’s decision is a wrongheaded and misguided action that has tarnished our university’s reputation among academics who know and understand how academia is supposed to work. It has also put us in actual harm’s way, some of us more than others. Above all, this administration has willingly placed political expediency and possibly money over a

Opinion/Editorial The Salaita case and Cary Nelson’s use of “academic freedom” to silence dissent Vicente M. Diaz The Electronic Intifada 14 August 2014   Books and papers lie amid rubble at the Islamic University of Gaza on 2 August, after it was hit by an overnight Israeli air raid. ( Ashraf Amra / APA images )   Cary Nelson , retired University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) English professor and past president of the American Association of University Professors , has been busy. From the moment that the story broke of Chancellor Phyllis Wise’s underhanded nixing of Steven Salaita’s de facto hiring in my department, Nelson has rushed forward as the administration’s biggest cheerleader and defender against condemnations , protests and what amounts to a growing boycott of UIUC from scholars and academic associations . In the interest of disclosure, I co-chaired the search committee that recommended Salaita’s hiring. In live media and

Below is the resolution for the First Stewards Symposium that I attended earlier this year. It was a historic gathering and I am pleased to announce that there will be another First Steward's conference in Summer of 2013. **************** RESOLUTION of the First Stewards Coastal Peoples Address Climate Change Symposium National Museum of the American Indian Washington, DC, on July 20, 2012 Whereas, we, the indigenous peoples, were and are the First Stewards of the lands and waters of North America, Alaska and the Pacific Islands, having lived in these areas millennia before the establishment of the United States; Whereas, about 300 First Stewards and others convened July 17 to 20, 2012, at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American Indian, Washington, DC, at the First Stewards: Coastal Peoples Address Climate Change Symposium; Whereas, the Symposium reemphasized the First Stewards’ awareness of the interconnectedness of the clouds, forest, valleys, land, streams, fis

Gof magof yu' na manunuge' ta'lo Si Desiree gi i blog-na, The Drowning Mermaid . Ti meggai na blogs para i Chamorro siha. Lao, nangga na'ya, ti mismo magahet este. Meggai na blogs mamfina'tinas ni' Chamorro siha, lao manmafa'tinas ha', ya ti manmasosteteni esta ki pa'go. Aligao gi i internet ya siempre para un fanodda' meggai na Chamorro na blogs, lao pinat manggaiunu ha' na post siha. Halacha managu Si Desiree, pues tumaiguenaihon, lao esta ha tutuhun ta'lo. Maolek i bos-na Si Desiree. Gi fino' Ingles ma alok na "articulate" yan "passionate." Fihu masasangan na kalang taisiente i tinige'-hu siha. Puru ha' fina'tinas tintanos, ya annok na ti mismo ginnen i korason. Si Desiree ha na'danna' maolek i sinienten i korason-na yan i hinallom-na siha i tintanos-na. I humuyonga na an un taitai i tinige'-na, sina pinacha' i korason-mu yan i hinasso-mu achagigu. In her most recent poem Desiree

Yanggen guaha lugat-mu agupa' gi pupuenge... University of Michigan Associate Professor Vicente Diaz will present, "In the Wake of Matapang's Canoe: Alternative Histories of Chamorro Catholicism and its Opposition" on Tuesday, August 23 at 5:30 p.m. in the University of Guam CLASS Lecture Hall as the featured speaker in Robert Underwood’s Presidential Lecture Series. Vicente M. Diaz, PhD, is Associate Professor of Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies at the University of Michigan. Born and raised on Guam, Diaz taught Pacific History and Micronesian Studies at the University of Guam from 1992 to 2001 until he relocated to his present post at the University of Michigan. Diaz is a co-founder of the Guam Traditional Seafarers, which helped revived traditional canoe building and navigation in Guam, served as the historian for Hale'ta series of Guam history and civics books produced by the Guam Political Status Educational Coordinating Commission in the 1990s.

Last week, I finished what was literally a long road in the course of my life, when I officially stopped being a student and completed my dissertation. I've been in college in some form or another for 13 years straight now and so I am very much looking forward to this period of my life where hokkok i umestudiante-ku, or I'm through being a student. I first started college in 1997, at Cuesta Community College. I spent three semesters there before transferring to the University of Guam. By spring of 2001 I graduated with a double major from UOG in Fine Arts and English/Literature. While I was an undergraduate at UOG, I had two one-man exhibitions of my artwork, the first in 1999 titled "Typhoon: An Island's Intensity" and the second in 2001 titled "I Matan i Kuttura Siha." I was most known during this time for having paint on my clothes all the time, and some people still remember me as "that painted guy." From there I jumped into the Micronesi

Being on Guam for the past year, I haven't been traveling around much for conferences. I've participated in plenty on Guam, but haven't had the experience of writing a new academic paper/presentation in a while. Here are two conferences that I'm considering applying for next year. If anyone is interested in being on a panel let me know. ******************************* Engaging Indigenous Communities Conference: Resources, Rebellions, and Resurgence - Call For Papers August 9-13, 2010 Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada This conference is being undertaken in honour of the 1850 Robinson Treaties. The vision of the Anishinabeg leaders to protect our heritage and resources while sharing with the newcomers. It is this vision that remains as relevant today as it was 160 years ago. Contact between different peoples has resulted in a multitude of responses including peaceful interactions, uneasy relations, and far too often to war and genocide. Recognizing the autonomy of n

Indigenous Studies Engages Ethnic Studies A Symposium hosted by the Department of Ethnic Studies at UCSD For a schedule of all panels, please see below or go to the event blog at: http://iss0509.blogspot.com/ Date & Time: Friday, May 8, 2009, 9:30am-5:00pm Location: Room 107 of UCSD’s Social Science Building If you are not familiar with the geography of UCSD, go to- http://maps.ucsd.edu and type “Social Science Building” -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mission Statement: As scholars in the Ethnic Studies Department at UCSD, we stand incredibly proud of the cutting edge critical race and ethnic studies work developed in our department, and in its potential to push the limits of the larger Ethnic Studies project. In this spirit, we find that in order for Ethnic Studies to move beyond the usual emphasis on immigration, diaspora and slavery paradigms, the critical potential of Indigenous Studies should become an integral part of ou

Graduate students at my department at UCSD are right now working on a Ethnic Studies and Indigenous Studies symposium to take place in May of this year. This symposium is part of a long process over the past few years which includes last year's interdisciplinary conference Postcolonial Futures in a Not Yet Postcolonial World that I helped organize, an Indigenous Studies cluster hire that I helped write two years ago, and the Voicing Indigeneity Podcast that I used to help create with two other indigenous students in the department. The goal of the process was to create a more stable and productive space for those working on indigenous studies projects within Ethnic Studies. For the upcoming symposium the organizers are looking to invite old scholars, new scholars and some graduate students who are all doing work at the intersections of these two discplines, either in their activism or in their academic work. I'm sure I'll have more details soon and there's also a goo

As I've written regularly about over the past few weeks, in March of next year at UCSD, my department of Ethnic Studies we'll be hosting a conference titled " Postcolonial Futures in a Not Yet Postcolonial World: Locating the Intersections of Ethnic, Indigenous and Postcolonial Studies ." To say a little bit about the goals behind the conference, we are hoping to take each of the three previously mentioned academic disciplines as well as the political realities they mean to study, and bring them not just into conversation with each other, but also bring them in conversation with the idea and the force that is the global. For those who don't know what I mean by global, since it is kind of an utguyosu na academic term, its not anything too abstract, but is simply anything which can appear or is asserted to stand in for, represent or touch the entire world. Indigenous, ethnic and postcolonial studies, are all academic domains which are directed towards particular pe

I've just finished setting up my conference schedule for the rest of the school year, and it looks pretty exciting. In addition to the two conferences that I am organizing (click here for info on one, and I'll have more info on the other very soon), I've got four academic papers that I'll be presenting at conferences all around the country. The most exciting panel that I'll be on will be at the 2008 Indigenous Studies Conference at the University of Georgia. I'll be joined on this panel by three of my friends, to discuss in different ways the concept or spirit of "sovereignty" in the lives of Native Americans and Pacific Islanders. The title of our panel is Sovereignty and the Problem of Recognition. I'll post the panel description and abstracts below, since it'll explain where we are coming from better than I will. I've got a lot on my plate right now in terms of preparing for the new school quarter and then all the other writing and act