NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

I first wrote this article 13 years ago while I was applying for graduate school in the states and working part-time at the Guam Communications Network in Long Beach, California. My auntie Fran Lujan was working there as well and they had an irregular publication called Galaide'. Prior to my leaving Guam, I had photocopied hundreds of articles from the Pacific Daily News around the time of the the 9/11 attacks, and I had spent more than a year trying to organize my thoughts on it. It seemed so strange in that moment, how everyone was reaching out to the United States, trying to find a way to patriotically or tragically feel included in its embrace. But the more that people asserted their inclusion and their belonging, the more the structure of their exclusion became pronounced and obvious. I used the article below as my attempt. It remains my first all-out attempt at a critical intervention. I still find myself making some of these arguments, whereas others I have moved on from o

Last month I did a quick “Chamorro” tour of southern California. While flying to a UN conference in Quito, Ecuador, I stopped off in California for a few days to visit family, friends and the lively network of Chamorro groups that have formed in recent years. I flew into San Francisco and over three days drove 1000 miles from the Bay Area, to Los Angeles, Long Beach and San Diego. For people who live in the states, this may not seem like a great distance, but for people on Guam, this is the equivalent of driving from the northern to the southern tips of the island 15 times. This tour was a personally enriching experience as I got to catch up with people I had worked with before and see projects that I supported at the beginning see completion and success. In Long Beach, I visited the Guam Communications Network and spent the afternoon with the staff there. GCN is the oldest Chamorro non-profit in the states. It was first started following a typhoon in the early 90’s, when communi

I've never have much luck writing grants over the years, and so humuyongna na mampos ti ya-hu mamangge' grants. I know amongst Chamorros there is a real need right now for good grants writers who can help get public and private monies for alot of community projects, unfortunately as I tell most people, my voice when I write isn't the one you want when a panel is considering who to fund. I can give you all the information and ideas, but chances are the form that I would put them in would scare people off. In my academic work I tend to write in a combination of visceral intensity and abstract philosophical waxing. On my blog, I tend to write, well just read some of the post below, with a firm commitment to the truth, but no real commitment to showing "both sides of the issues" or feigning objectivity. My writing on my blog is explicitly political and I make very few attempts to shroud that. If you've ever been to a grant writing workshop, than you'll know t

People often ask me how I became "political" or how I became "radical." There are a number of points in my life that I point to, each of which in some way contributed to the development of the consciousness that I use to write this blog. One faint event is the time that my family spent in Africa when I was a small child, and the experiences we felt there as a mixed family with a white father and a brown mother and two brown children. Another is a variety of experiences as a undergraduate at the University of Guam, and finding myself entangled in numerous forms of faculty racism and apathy. One whose seventh anniversary just passed today is the 9/11 attacks. I had always been a more liberal and Democratic person, but it was the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent run up to war against Afghanistan and Iraq that pushed me to become a more mature anti-war or peace activist. It was also interestingly enough, 9/11 that helped propel me into becoming a far more intelligent