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

I am in the very early stages of an article that was inspired by the Navajo dubbing Star Wars: A New Hope into their language several years ago. The use of native languages to talk about "pop-culture" in a general or sometimes considered to be colonial sense is not something new or recent for me. On this blog close to a decade ago I was already talking about everything from science fiction to manga to Bollywood movies in the Chamorro language. I have long felt that if you care about something, but it is alien to your native language, there should be ways to bridge that gap, especially if you are in a precarious situation in terms of language sustainability. The collective I started with Kenneth Gofigan Kuper, Guagua Tiningo' is built on this idea. We believe in it so strongly we made a film to show our ideas titled Påkto: I Hinekka last year which premiered at the Guam International Film Festival and was based on the premise that you can play a full game of Magic: The G

Misty Upham: The Tragic Death and Unscripted Life of Hollywood's Rising Star Kristen Millares Young The Guardian 6/30/15 W hen Misty Upham was 12, she announced herself to a Seattle classroom of aspiring performers. “My name is Misty Upham, and someday you will know that name as the best living Native American actress.” Years later and against all odds, her prophecy became true. She acted alongside some of Hollywood’s best: Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Benicio Del Toro. Last October Misty was found dead, skull and ribs broken, flies abuzz, in a wooded ravine in Auburn, Washington. Her body lay just above the turbulence of the White river. She was 32. This story is about her demise. How she went missing for 11 days. How she was found by folks enlisted by her family, and not by the police. How she was mocked when she most needed help. How she survived rapes. How she inspired kids. And how as an indigenous woman, she was not alone in facing injustice. Born on

I just finished reading a collection of poems by Simon Ortiz titled "Sand Creek." I've read quite a bit of Native American poetry, but this collection felt the most relevant to me and to the Chamorro experience. There are some ways that the Native American experience in all its variations connects to those of Chamorros. The ecological spirituality can be nice, but also feels very abstract and very disconnected from the present at times. The family ties and closeness to the land carries the same beautiful, but sometimes abstract weight. The centuries and layer of oppression and injustice also hit home, so do contemporary feelings of loss and cultural erosion. What made the difference in Simon Ortiz's volume was the scattered mentions of militarism and its role in Native American culture today. Military service has married itself to Chamorro culture over the past century, but the same can be said for different tribes across the US. From marganilized, i

For my CM 102 class or Beginners Chamorro Language 2, I've been experimenting with different assignments. I heard last year about a Navajo Star Wars, or the project to translate Star Wars into the Navajo language. For me, somehow who thinks that everything should be translated into Chamorro and is hoping to create a lexicon for playing 'Magic: The Gathering" in Chamorro, taking such an iconic nerdy movie and translating it into a native language is the height of awesome. I decided to incorporate something on a much smaller scale into my class.    Each student had to pick five minutes from a different movie and translate that portion into Chamorro. I told them to make sure that the segment wouldn't be too difficult for them to translate, because certain genres like sci-fi for example, might be a bit difficult for a lowly 102 student to translate effectively. They had to then record themselves or others reading the scene in Chamorro and then dub it into the film i