NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

After hearing for weeks about how the "terrorists" or North Koreans were winning the war against and for freedom, due to the decision of Sony not to distribute the film "The Interview," the company has decided to release the film on a limited basis. It can be streamed online and can be bought. Eventually it may be released through iTunes. It was interesting to see how a film which most people would probably not want to watch because of the abundance of jokes dealing with human genitalia, becomes an artifact over which freedom not on a national scale, but an international scale is fought. Screenings of The Interview have been filled with patriotic discourse and singing, in order to make that important argument that, this may be crap and it may be garbage, but I should have the right to eat crap and copulate with garbage if  I want to! Speaking of freedom, people in Guam attempting to watch the Interview online soon found that they were prevented by most sites

 In his book Saina Chamorro poet and scholar Craig Santos Perez does something that really intrigued me. I recently wrote a review essay of his three poetry books hacha, Saina and Guma', and this was one thing that caught my eye. Throughout parts of the book he includes the names of soldiers from Micronesia, who will serving in the US military were killed in the Middle East, in the Horn of Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq. He lists them in the way that is customary for KIA lists, with their age and a hometown. He crosses out however everything except their names.  The tactic of crossing things out can be a beautiful strategy. I used to use it alot before, most notably in my article "The (Un)exceptional Life of a Chamorro Soldier: Tracing the Militarization of Desire in Guam, USA. The act of crossing it out can mean that this doesn't really exist. It can be a way of de-emphasizing something. It can be a way of drawing attention to it, albeit in a circu

From We Are Guahan : This year was an eventful year for We Are Guahan. The organization helped organize over 11 hikes to historic sites on Guam, announced a high school scholarship program and enjoyed a historic legal victory against DOD in the lawsuit to save Pagat Village. We Are Guahan would like to extend a dangkulu na Si Yu’us Ma’ase for your continued support of our efforts. Special thanks to Dr. Miget Lujan Bevacqua for coordinating and assisting in the organizing of the Heritage Hikes, Alissa Eclavea for her efforts to raise funds for the GAPSS scholarship program, all of the artists who have volunteered their time and creativity for the Prutehi yan Difendi campaign and everyone else who supported us this year. We look forward to being involved in more things in the year to come. Below is a chronological summary of just some of the activities We Are Guahan was a part of in 2011: February 2011 •2/14: Sticker-up day to spread awareness about Pagat Lawsuit. •2/25: Relea

Throughout 2011 I was usually pretty good at blogging about the latest news out of Gangjeong in Jeju Island, South Korea. Things were pretty heated there throughout the entire year, with plenty of protests, arrests and international calls for solidarity. A friend of mine was arrested, as was the mayor of the village, whom I had met when I was there the year before. Both were eventually freed after spending months in prison. The central conflict is over the fate of Gangjeong Village and its beautiful environment. As a small village in Southern Jeju, it was identified as the site for a new joint US-ROK Naval facility. The majority of the people there, not wanting to see their land and their sea life damaged, have decided to protest this action. Incidentally and ironically, Jeju was named several years ago as "an island of peace." The protesters are attempting to ensure that their island lives up to its name. I haven't posted much on my blog, but emails and the reading of

Gof tinane' yu' gi este mamaila na simana. Guaha inaplikan grant ni' bai hu na'halom antes di Tuesday. Guaha meggai na bai hu na'listo para i singko na klas-hu siha. Guaha tinige'-hu review put i lepblon Vince Diaz ( Repositioning the Missionary) ni' bai hu tuge' antes di i finakpo' i mes. Guaha dos na kaduku na patgon-hu, ya kalang gof ga'tumane' i dos nu Guahu. And so since I won't be posting much for a few days because I have too many things to do, I've pasted below a picture of two dogs riding a karabao. Fa'na'an i duenon este na tres ga'ga' i bisinun Si tata-hu giya Piti. Lao yanggen sesso matto hao giya i kanton tasi Assan, sesso lokkue' sina un ripara este na tres manmamomokkat guihi. Adios, esta otro biahi!

I had meant to write about Avatar a few months ago after first watching it, but so many things were happening in my life and Guam and so I never got around to it. Gof ya-hu ayu na mubi, achokka’ guaha meggai ni’ siña hu tacha. I cheered and yelled throughout the movie, as I expressed my excitement and also my frustration. All in all though, I enjoyed the movie far more than I found it problematic. But as I once told an old friend, i kayu-hu estaba giya Berkeley, there is nothing fun which is not problematic. I cringed for plenty of reasons, at times it was like anthropology porn, and therefore it had all the elements that Ethnic Studies scholars are supposed to hate, meaning it was just like Dances with Wolves, where a white man is needed to save a helpless primitive, brown people. From the gaze of any “modern” subject, it is just too tempting not to engage in this fantasy, it is the most fun liberal form of viewing the rest of the world. There is something for everyone. If you

After watching Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen last week, and just a little over a year until my 30th birthday, I eventually ended up finding a creative way of taking stock of the long road that I've traveled to this point, and how the mythology of Transformers has followed me there. As I walked out of the film I said to my sleeping daughter Sumåhi, "Gof suette yu', kao un tungo' sa' hafa? Sa' gi este lina'la'-hu, "privileged" yu' na hu egga' na mapuno' Si Optimus Prime dos biahi, ya hu egga' na mana'la'la' ta'lo dos biahi." For those who don't speak Chamorro my message was "I'm so lucky and do you know why? Because in my life, I've been privileged enough to watch Optimus Prime die twice and come back to life twice." And for those of you who don't speak the language of Transformers, Optimus Prime is the leader of the Autobots, the good half of the Transformers world, with the