NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

10 years ago the cultural arts group Inetnon Gefpågo premiered "Fanhasso, Fanhita, Fanachu" a musical journey through Guam History and Chamorro issues written by Michael Lujan Bevacqua and Victoria Leon Guerrero, with choreography by Vince Reyes. The musical was directed by Clifford Guzman. The cast was made up of island youth in the group Inetnon Gefpågo.  Next Tuesday, December 8th, Inetnon Gefpågo and Independent Guåhan are holding a webinar to reflect back on the 10 years anniversary of this performance, which eventually was transformed into the play Pågat in 2014.  The webinar will be live on the Facebook pages of Independent Guåhan and Inetnon Gefpågo from 10 am - noon on December 8th. To say that I'm excited about this webinar would be an understatement. I am elated to the point where words are starting to fall short of expression.  The musical Fanhasso... was something I worked on with Victoria less than a year after starting teaching at UOG full-time and finish

  For fun, I used to take anime songs (gi Fino' Chapones) and translate them into Chamoru. Over the years I translated songs from Naruto, Gantz, Cromartie High School, Master Keaton, Evangelion, and Attack on Titan just to name a few. It was an exercise in expressing two things that I am very nerdy about. I hadn't thought about this in a long time though until earlier tonight when Youtube's next song randomness started playing anime theme songs. As I started to feel the chetnot nostalgia hit me, the kids asked what song is this? where is this from? When I described the plot of Evangelion to Sumåhi, her review, "wow sen na'triste enao (wow that is like incredibly depressing)." I told the kids about how I used to translate songs like this into Chamoru. When they asked why, I said, "Ya-hu fino' Chamoru, ya-hu este na kånta. Anggen hu pula' este gi mismo lenguahi-hu, hu na'latatahdong I siniente-ku put este. (I like Chamoru, I like this song. If I

Local children's book launches tomorrow by Andrew Roberto The Guam Daily Post December 15, 2017 Local author and activist Michael Lujan Bevacqua, through his publishing group The Guam Bus, hopes his latest project can get young and old readers alike to think more profoundly about Guam's culture. Titled "The Adventures of Akli'e'," the new bilingual project is one book made up of two stories: In the first story, the titular character spends a day with his great-grandfather, a master blacksmith, and imagines what it would be like to use the tools his great-grandfather forges every day. In the second story, the young Akli'e' listens to his great-grandmother's tales of CHamoru history and legend, bringing the stories to life in his imagination. Bevacqua said he took inspiration for the tales from his own life. The main character is named after his son, and his own grandfather is master blacksmith Joaquin Flores Lujan. Bevacqua sai

Through my Facebook page and this blog,  I often share what I refer to as “Adventures in Chamorro.” Gof takhilo’ i lenguahi-ta gi lina’la’-hu . Much of my work is dedicated to the revitalization of the Chamorro language and for my two children, Sumåhi and Akli’e’, from the days they were born I have only spoken to them in Chamorro. As such, in both work and the home, my life is filed with lots of interesting and hysterical Chamorro language moments. These are what I refer to as our “Adventures in Chamorro,” named for the adventure we take every day trying to talk about the world around us in the Chamorro language. Every couple of months, I would also share some of them in my Guam Daily Post columns. Here are some that I shared in my column published on August 17, 2016. Adventures in Chamorro #266: The other day Isa (i nobia-hu), the kids and I were walking along the beach and looking up at the moon. It was a crescent moon, which many people translate to "sinahi&q;

On Saturday my kids and I were driving up to the Litekyan demonstration organized by Manhoben para Guåhan at the front gate of Andersen Air Force base. When we were almost there, a half dozen Guam police vehicles rushed by us. We quickly parked and ran over to the demonstration site across the road from the gate. We could see the line of police cars and also, to our surprise, a line of protestors blocking several of the lanes to the gate. Both kid s cried "ti malago' yu' ma'aresta!" and "mungga' yu' ma'aresta."  When we got to the demonstration site and got a better look at the line of protestors, we saw the outline of my dad and their grandfather. I walked across to join him and learn more about what was happening, Akli'e' disobeying me and sneakily walking behind me. We embraced him and he gave us an overview of what happened during the protest. I felt so proud of him that he had joined the others to symbolically bl

People frequently ask me why I'm such a publicly critical person. They assume it is because I am half Chamorro, that I must be trying to compensate for my lack of cultural identity, and even I can acknowledge that there is some truth to that. It could be simply part of my personality, maybe I've always been an oppositional person, who challenged authority in some way. My father says it is because of the way I was forced to confront certain racial realities during my childhood. Some say it is simply because I have an artist temperament and so I am seeking creative ways out of systems, thinking about what could lie ahead on the next horizon of imagination. Hekkua', ti hu tungo'. While searching from some of my early writings on an old laptop, I came across a draft of this letter for the editor pasted below. It remember helping my mother write it about 13 years ago, and it was submitted to the Pacific Daily News. This was a time, when I was first speaking out publicl

In this image we see Sumåhi and Akli'e' finishing up a 3D puzzle for the show The Walking Dead.  I've only watched the first season and the kids refuse to watch any of it at all, but we saw this puzzle at a bargain store earlier this year and decided to grab it. At 150 pieces it isn't too exhausting. As trying to get the kids to finish puzzles with 500 or 1000 pieces can end up feeling like trying to get a fanihi to jump into a pot of boiling coconut milk.      As zombies are so pervasive in popular culture nowadays, the kids and I have had plenty of conversations over the years about what word to use for zombies in Chamorro. When the kids were much younger I would use the term "taitintanos" or "brainless" and zombies in general would be " i manaitintanos."  This phrasing was cumbersome and confusing for the kids as zombies no longer moan "brains..." as they shamble. We later switched to " i mamomokkat na man

If you ask just about any Chamorro about their thoughts on reunification or the unification of the Marianas Islands, they would most likely all say " Hunggan, gof maolek enao. Hu gof sapotte enao." In the past, differences between the islands due to colonial divisions and anger over treatment during World War II may have kept Chamorros from the north and the south apart, but that isn't really the case anymore. There maystill  be some latent feelings of superiority that people of one island may have over another, because they feel culturally, linguistically or technologically superior, but even that is started to fade at the political level as all the Marianas Islands are basically territories of the United States now, one with more power than the other. So while common sense has changed on this issue, there has been little substantive efforts. All governors of Guam that I can remember have at some point expressed interest in unifying the Marianas Islands. They have sa

As part of my collaboration with the Learn Chamorro project I wrote up the following bio for myself. But as the project, led by Troy Aguon is aimed at teaching Chamorro and finding innovative ways to revive the language around us in our lives, I decided to write my biography in Chamorro. Si Michael Lujan Bevacqua, ginnen i familian Kabesa yan Bittot giya Guahan. Nietun Si Tun Jack Lujan i Sainan Menhalom na Herreron Chamorro, ya fina’na’na’gue gui’ as guiya gi kustumbren Herrero desde 2008 asta 2015. I inaligao-ña siha mismo put taimanu na macolonize i Chamorro, ya hafa taimanu na siña ta “decolonize” maisa hit. Para “decolonization” ti manaliligao ha’ gi bandan pulitikåt ha’, lao gi banda linenguahi yan kinettura lokkue’. Gi 2006 ha ayuda umotgånisa i konferensia Famoksaiyan: Decolonizing Chamorro Histories, Identities and Future giya San Diego. Este i fine’nina na konferensia taiguini masusedi gi halom i Chamorron diaspora. Gi 2011 ha ayuda Si Victoria Leon Gue

Isa, the kids and I watched Ben-Hur over the weekend. Isa and I had watched parts of it before, but never sat down to experiences its 200+ minutes of epic drama. The kids found it boring for the most part, but the scenes in the slave ship and of course the chariot race, got them very interested and excited. Akli'e' found it particularly difficult to follow, as so many scenes would feature dramatic music in the background and characters looking pained off into space. The tension and emotional complexity was completely lost on the poor boy. Sumahi tends to enjoy movies based on a formula that boils down to "How many animals are in this movie?" and the hope that there be more animals visible than humans in this film. For both Isa and I, we were watching the film with a variety of things in mind. We've been trying to watch more "great" films and then work to analyze the camerawork, the acting, the effects, the writing and other logistics that create a fant

There are good parents and there are bad parents, but there are no perfect parents. What I find intriguing from talking to public school teachers around the island, is the way in which they see many parents unable to deal with the reality of their children or their level of parenting. The students that are the most problematic are usually those where the family is hardly involved in their education. The parents are absent in the home life, discipline isn't taught and order and structure aren't laid down and so those kids become problem students in school. Kids misbehave, kids make mistakes, families become busy, attention is divided, these are all normal things. But when some parents are confronted with the misbehavior of their children, rather than recognizing the realities of life, they choose to throw up a facade of being perfect parents. Perfect parents are always blameless and so are their children. The school system is the problem. Other kids are the problem. The te

I have never watched Game of Thrones, but simply because it is discussed so much and a favorite of so many people I know, I by default absorb so much information about it. I know most of the major characters and most of the major plot points. From all that I know however, it still seems baffling to me that so many people find the show so engrossing. There are those who say it is the violence. The writing. The realism. The creativity. The intrigue and drama. The relationship to real history. I've heard so many different types of arguments.   So much of this reminds me of the first time I read Shakespeare's plays. I had heard for so much of my life that the works and words of William Shakespeare were the pinnacle of human creativity and expressive achievement. That these were great plays that were timeless in their quality and boundaryless in terms of their importance. When I read them I was intrigued but not that impressed. To this day when I read or hear Shakespeare I stil