NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Un diha siempre bai hu fannge' lepblo put i historian i taotao-ta. Esta meggai na kadada na tinige'-hu put este, lao i guinife-hu mohon na un diha bai hu puno' i toru yan na'magåhet este gi un kabåles na lepblo. Lao siempre este na lepblo u matuge' gi Fino' Ingles, ya guaha påtte siha matuge' gi Fino' Chamoru lokke'. Esta gof libiånu para Guahu, para bei estoriåyi taotao nu i hestoria-ta gi Fino' Ingles, lao guaha na biahi debi di bei lachandan maisa para bei cho'gue este lokkue' gi Fino' Chamoru.  Put este na motibu-hu guaha na biahi, mañule' yu' påtten hestoria-ta, ya hu ketuge' put guiya gi Fino' Chamoru. Sesso i inayek-hu put este, ti sen interesånte, gi Fino' Ingles "basic" pat gi Fino' i tatan bihu-hu "mata'pang."  Put hemplo, a'atan este guini gi sampapa', ni' tinige'-hu put si San Vitores. Ti hu guaiya si San Vitores, ti ya-hu meggai put i hestoria-ña, lao hu tung

  Every week I get sometimes a few, sometimes quite a few requests for information, for interviews, for assistance. I am not a very well-organized person and so sometimes these requests fall through the cracks, and I miss them. But for the most part I try to accommodate as many people as I can. I recall that if I can help someone in their research, finish a paper, gain some perspective for their thesis or even provide a key quote or insight for their article, it could help put Guam or Chamoru issues in a more critical light, and it may push someone, tied to the island, to be more engaged about things important to me (and hopefully to them).  It is always nice to look back and see if I did have an impact, albeit even a small one on someone's perspective or even the course of their intellectual journey. A few months ago, I was a guest speaker for a college course focusing on cultural diversity in psychology. I talked about my experiences growing up Chamoru, but also not very stereoty

Every week I get at least one request for an interview, several requests each week for information related to Guam history or the Chamoru language. Sometimes the requests can become a bit much, as I'm not able to get back to everyone. And sometimes I've responded to people close to a year later (ai lokkue'). But if I had more time I would respond to everyone I could, since the knowledge that I have or have access to, is useless unless there are ways it can get out to others.  After I gave a guest lecture in an English rhetoric class last year, one of the students contacted me asking for some help on understanding Hagåtña and its contemporary and historical place in Guam. I appreciated her wanting to know more about a village that most everyone takes for granted nowadays on Guam. So I wrote up responses to her 8 questions. Here they are below. ******************** 1. What makes Hagatna unique from other villages?  What makes Hagåtña unique is that because

My two columns from earlier this year published in the Pacific Daily News on the ban of cockfighting in the US territories. I've been slowly working towards an article on this topic, targeting two main aspects.  First, the debate over whether or not we can consider cockfighting to be part of Chamoru culture or whether it is really Chamoru or not. This is deployed in very interesting ways in this debate, as people seem to feel that if it isn't really Chamoru then it is ok and right to ban it. Whereas others tie to a strong, grounded sense of authenticity in contrast to perceived sort of softness of Americanized life.  Very interesting sort of discursive dancing around authenticity.  Second, the role that Guam's political status plays in the cockfighting ban. Some people argue that we don't necessarily see Guam's colonial status at play here, since this is just another way that big government in Washington, the elites impose things on the little man. This way of

I have not written one of these posts in a while, although the collecting of Chamorro sayings continues. Fina'kuentos Chamorro is where I post different Chamorro sayings or phrases, they are important in providing us a sense of the Chamorro worldview, both in history and in a contemporary context, and give us a sense of the Chamorro particular flavor to life. Sometimes this flavor can be very familiar to other cultures, sometimes it can be very Catholic, sometimes is can appear to be very tied to the land and people here themselves. This saying "Si Yu'os, Yu'os. I taotao, taotao ha'" can be both very simple, yet also encompass very deep thoughts. It translates simply to "God is God, man is man." On the surface it is simply that men should not worry about things that are beyond their control, as those things lie in God's hands and he will determine what happens. It is a simplified serenity prayer. But it can also extend further into helpin

On Facebook I have a regular informal series titled "Adventures in Chamorro." It ranges from stories of speaking Chamorro with my kids, protests, decolonization activism and also teaching Chamorro at UOG. I have not been on a hike in quite a while and so here are two stories dealing with hiking and my students at UOG. ********************* Adventures in Chamorro #234: For my Chamorro language classes I often have them write up some simple love poetry. I normally begin those assignments by talking about most elderly Chamorros refer to as traditional Chamorro courtship rituals. As Spanish Catholic influence made it very difficult for young unmarried men and women to interact with each other romantically, so much of the courtship happened in secret or through intermediaries known as "chule'guagua'" or "basket carr iers." It was a time of early-morning meetings down by the riverbank, sneaking away to the blindspots behind churches or nig

For most Chamorros, there is only one religion which gets to be designated as a "Chamorro" religion. That is Catholicism. Even though it has only been a part of Chamorro lives for just a few hundred years, it became intimately connected to so many parts of Chamorro life during that time, that for some scholars and individuals you cannot be Chamorro today unless you are Catholic or participate in Catholic rites. For others the Chamorro religion deals with taotaomo'na or aniti, ancestral spirits, their reverence and worship. We see elements of this in the way that cautious respect for the jungle and other natural areas persisted in a quiet supernatural or spiritual form, even when the overt belief in the spirits of Chamorro ancestors became weakened and almost forgotten. Although positive perceptions and connections to our ancient ancestors are common today, few people accept this as their religion alone. Instead they mix elements that to some might be contradictory toget

The Great California Genocide by gjohnsit DailyKos 8/14/2008 What do you think of when someone says "California"? Beaches? Sunshine? Hollywood?   How about the largest act of genocide in American history? "The idea, strange as it may appear, never occurred to them (the Indians) that they were suffering for the great cause of civilization, which, in the natural course of things, must exterminate Indians."  - Special Agent J. Ross Browne, Indian Affairs  California was one of the last areas of the New World to be colonized. It wasn't until 1769 that the first mission, Mission San Diego de Alcalá, was built in California at present-day San Diego. It was the first of 21 missions, which would become the primary means for the Spaniards to subjugate the natives. The leader of this effort was Franciscan friar Junípero Serra .  Despite whatever the movies portray, the missions were coercive religious, forced l

I normally only consider the Catholic Church on Guam in historical terms, as Guam for the past few centuries has been a very Catholic space. I think about the Catholic Church as being a colonizer and eventually being a structure that Chamorros became intimately tied to and saw as being a guarantor of their identities. I see the Catholic Church today as being something which is deeply tied to Chamorro culture and most of its manifestations, but as much of my research is historical the contemporary politics of Chamorro culture and Catholicism aren't as pertinent. But because of all the drama locally regarding the Concerned Catholics of Guam and their campaign against the Archbishop and his Neo-Cat flock, I am now paying more attention to Catholic politics. I came across this article about the crisis the Catholic Church is facing in the United States and I wonder how it might be connected to the drama in Guam. ****************** Pope Francis Will Visit US Catholic Church Facing

People ask me all the time what decolonization means or is. Manhoben, manåmko’, taotao sanhiyong, taotao sanhalom, all hear of this term as they go about their lives, but are unclear as to what it might mean. For most it stirs up fearsome feelings about losing everything that makes life possible and so they are seeking some reassurance that decolonization couldn’t mean that. I have a variety of answers, anecdotes, theoretical lens and concept ready to go, but it always depends on the context. Are they speaking to me about decolonization in a political context? Or is it cultural? Linguistic? Economic? Spiritual? People will conceive of decolonization differently based on their particular interests or their set of phobias. Many will instinctively define decolonization in a particular way because of their fears of feelings of dependency. Others will want to define it in a certain way because of their interest in something changing. You can conceive of decoloniza

People often conceive of colonization as being a formal process carried out by militaries or governments. These institutions play essential roles and the political system naturally becomes the primarily target for most movements for decolonization, but as I have stated many times, the process is much more diverse and complicated. Although it is easy to focus on what we consider to be the formal and concrete forms of power, they way that things are forcibly imposed, the world of the abstract, the conceptual and the ideological can have a deeper and more lasting impact. If we see for example in two former epochs of colonization in Guam, the formal ways in which things were imposed on Chamorros did not necessarily have a significant colonizing impact on the identity and consciousness of Chamorros. The imposition of governments on Guam by the Spanish and by the US led to great outward changes on the island, and histories tend to conflate the effect on the outward appearance of the i