NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

From " Ten Thousand Things " An informative and touching article on Okinawa and the way the traumatic past weaves its way into the present. This is one of the dynamics that Avery Gordon refers to so poetically and so aptly as "ghostly matters." The way in which boats off the coast of Okinawa today don't simply remind people of the horrors of the past, but keep that past and all the injustice that comes with it, alive. Protestors of the past and those of today can have the same ghostly threads about them. They represent stories, memories and dreams that refuse to die, even if governments do their best through force, through coercion, through tokens, to make sure they are forgotten. The article is below: ************************ Henoko on August 14, 2014. (Photo: Chie Mikami on FB ) Film director Chie Mikami on August 14, 2014, on location at Henoko : "I saw so many boats in the sea around 7a.m. It reminds me of the history of Okin

I wrote a column for the Marianas Variety titled "Sympathy for the Taotaomo'na" a while back, it provided an overview of different beliefs about Guam's particular brand of spiritual phenomena and how most people may need to expand their understanding of them. For most on the island, taotaomo'na are ghost stories. When you start talking about them, people begin to get intrigued, to get frightened, hairs on their body begin to stand up. For me it is very interesting that when Destination Truth visited Guam years ago almost everyone hated the show they produced. They were here for a few days, met with people, filmed in the jungles, at beaches, in Tumon. While they were here they seemed to those I spoke to friendly, nice and understanding. People were almost universally irritated and appalled when they saw the Guam Zombie episode they created. The idea that taotaomo'na were somehow zombies made sense to people. It was disrespectful and ignorant. We watched the

Sometime last year I spent a morning with some members of We Are Guahan preparing for an upcoming round of Heritage Hikes that we hoped would visit Spanish Steps, Tweed's Cave, Pagat and Haputo Beach. Our initial round of Heritage Hikes featured places that are open to the public, but have some relationship to Guam's militarization, either in a contemporary or historical sense. For later rounds we tried to choose sites on bases in hopes of testing to see how sincere the US military is that the public have good and regular access to historical and culturally significant places. That morning we went on a tour of the historic sites that can be found on Navy Base Guam, including a walk around the area where songsong Sumay used to be. In a way, a historical tour around Naval Base Guam is actually a depressing trip. It is a tour of absence. Almost a tour of nothing, a tour of the long gone traces of something. There is plenty of recent history on the base. It has only existed s

I've been meaning for sometime to write some of my thoughts on the resistance to militarization taking place in the small village of Gangjeong on the island of Jeju in South Korea. I put up a couple of posts llast week about the most recent round of protests. I traveled there for two days last summer in order to learn about the struggle going on there against plans to build a joint Naval facility for US and South Korean forces. The facility would be used for Aegis Destroyers and would displace many farmers an end up destroying some very beautiful and unique coral off the coast. I was struck by the tenacity of the villagers when I was there. They knew that things were against them, that much of the rest of the island and the rest of South Korea didn't care what happened in their quaint village, and that better something like this be put in a tiny village then in the backyards of some larger community. Such is the logic that has meant that Okinawa which is 0.6% of the total la

Martin Luther King Jr. Day passed recently, and this year it was very different, for obvious reasons. America saw the election of its first African American President, and so people are feeling like a lot is suddenly possible, as the symbolism of America has been rocked, as its status as a white souled nation challenged indirectly, even though Obama was hardly a card carrying member of the Black Panther Party. As an Ethnic Studies scholar MLK Jr. is someone you always hear plenty about and always have to confront the ghost of. He is an inspiring figure, somebody who accomplished great things, who said many great things. Last year I went to the Martin Luther King Jr. historical district in Atlanta, Georgia, and saw his home as a child, and also different exhibits on the civil rights movement. Bai hu admite na guaha nai kana tumanges yu'. Manachu i taotao gi ayu na tiempo para i direchon-ñiha para u difende i tinaotaon-ñiha. But apart from these incredible things, MLK is also somet

Despite being an emergency substitute teacher for four History of Guam classes at the University of Guam for the entire month of November, I was still able to finish up the first sprawling draft of the third chapter of my dissertation. Yanggen ti macho'cho'cho' yu', siempre mas nina'funhayan as Guahu. When I say sprawling, I am not exaggerating, this thing is was forty something single spaced pages, and could have gone on longer if I hadn't eventually hadn't considered the damage I would be causing my chair if I continued. The inanakko' of this chapter is due primarily to the fact that it is a sort of mainstream lit review of sovereignty, and an explanation about why I cannot use mainstream sovereignty texts or even the concept itself when talking about Guam's political status and talking about sovereignty for the island. Not wanting to produce a traditional or very simple literature review, I instead created a very convoluted but eventually worthw

Un empe' finayi ginnen i kachido Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence : "Life and Death are both marrionettes wandering the same table. Cut their strings and they are easily ignored." Annai fine'nina humalom yu' gi iyo-ku Ph.D. program giya San Diego, hu kilili este guatu lokkue' gi i hinasso-ku. Sina na "estupido" este na sinangan, lao ti para Guahu. Este na sinangan yan otro na research na hu cho'gue, mana'dana' gi i hinasso-ku, ya chine'leghua iyo-ku idea siha put decolonization. Meggai giya Guahan, yan meggai na Chamoru gi lagu, ti ya-niha kumuentos pat humungok put decolonization, ya fihu ma na'chechetton gi iyo-niha resistance, chatguinife put mina'a'nao, minatai yan i madestrosa-na Guahan. Gi este na hinasso, achapiligro decolonization yan pinino' maisa ( suicide). I dipotsi na hiniyong este na kuentos, "mungga madecolonization, sa' siempre pon na'fattoigue hao ni' minatai yan dinestrosa para u t