NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

For several years I have been assisting Siñora Rosa Palomo and Professor Gerhard Schwab who are my colleagues at the University of Guam with the development of an amazing, new, free language learning website built around the learning of the Chamorro language. Humuyongña i na'ån-ña " Learning Chamorro ."  After years of tirelessly working on building the site, it was launched last week. A Pacific Daily News article about it, was picked up by USA Today and shared several thousand times on social media. The website would not be possible without the love labor of GuamWebz and Rhaj Sharma. Some media on the launch can be found below. Sen magof hu na put fin in baba este na website. ********************** Date: March 12, 2017 We take this opportunity to thank everyone of you for registering and continuously visiting our website. All of us together have visited our website more than 1.7 million times. It is your continuous encouragement and support that has kep

Recently some people started sharing some articles on Facebook from old websites that I used to run such as The Chamorro Information Activists and Minagahet Zine. When I went back to read over some of what they shared, I could feel waves of nostalgia washing over me. These were the days when I was first starting as an activist and working with others for the first time, organizing things and trying to develop our ideas. I cringe when I read some of it because my positions have changed or I have learned more about certain topics. I've decided to start up a new recurring post series on this blog called "Fanhokkayan" or "Collection." Since these websites are no longer active, no longer being actively updated, they sit there online, and are occasionally visited by students conducting research for their papers. I worry sometimes that at some point they will disappear and they provide an interesting snapshot of Chamorro issues at a particular moment in my life and

One of the things that I take pride in, is that this blog has been around for a while and that I've been able to maintain it continuously for 12 years now. Most of the Chamorro related or Guam related websites that existed when I first started this blog are no longer around. They have been taken down, lost, morphed into something else. Many of the people are still around, but they have moved on to other social media platforms. At one point the Free Association for Guam Task Force had a website. Nasion Chamoru had a website on an AOL platform, although it is now on Blogger (like this blog). The Statehood for Guam Task Force still has a website. A number of social websites or personal blogs have disappeared, and every once in a while I wonder what has become of those people. Below is a short article written by former Senator Mark Charfauros, who was an active member of Nasion Chamoru in the 1990s. This was published 16 years ago on the website "Dialogue Between Nations"

For almost my entire life I've played video games. I played Double Dragon, Startropics and Dragon Warrior IV for the NES. I played Street Fighter II, Final Fantasy III and NBA Live 95 for the SNES. I have played a bunch of games for SEGA Systems, including Night Trap and even Dune for SEGA CD. On the computer I played games like World Builder, Pool of Radiance, Pirates! and Civilization in many incarnations. Most recently I've played games like Monster Hunter, Starcraft II and Hearthstone. Video games don't take up as much of my life as they used to, as I am busy with working, family life and activism, but they still play a role in my identity and how I see myself culturally. For some their "Chamorro" identity may be rooted to visiting ranches on weekends and attending mass with their grandmothers. For me, Chamorro identity comes not just from working with my grandfather in his blacksmith shop or reading the Chamorro Bible with my grandmother, but also yelling