NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

This week I am in California meeting with Chamorro organizations in Long Beach and San Diego. When I was in graduate school in San Diego, I worked very closely with several of these organizations. It has been nostalgic coming back and catching up with people and learning about what new projects they are working on and what are new ways that diasporic Chamorros are creating community. All of this reminded me of a question that a friend of mine asked me several years ago about what community building is like from a Chamorro perspective. Below is part of my answer tomorrow. *********************** It is important to think of community development not from any neutral or abstract stance, but rather take seriously the context that one intends to develop within, and by context I a huge number of things that must be considered both in the past and present. In conceiving this context, and forming it in a productive way, one must be prepared to bring into the analy

In Guam we are already very accustomed to thinking about military bases as being essential, safe and secure engines for an economy. This is true to some extent. In Guam, the military presence and strategic importance opened many doors in terms of Federal funding that Guam would not have received otherwise. Furthermore, the local economy is supported by the income taxes payments for Federal employees on Guam, and that gives some stability to the coffers of GovGuam. The military is also a chance for economic improvement and was something that played a very significant role in creating a middle class on Guam. One mistake that people often make is believing that the military bases on Guam help tourism. The fact that the U S owns Guam does help support the tourism industry, as Guam is considered to be a part of America and therefore gains some of its credibility, sense of stability and so on, but the bases are not part of that. If Guam were a colony with no bases, it cou

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

On January 30th, 2009 the remains of 88 Ancient Chamorros which were discovered and unearthed during the remodeling of the Fiesta Hotel in Tumon were re-interned at a small monument near the hotel's parking lot. The monument was small, and contained several spelling errors in the Chamorro text used in it. In many ways it was a sad and pathetic commentary on the treatment of ancient remains in Tumon over the past thirty years. Development there and around the island has disturbed an unknown number of sites of Ancient villages, and in most cases the construction companies never reveal what they've found. Those who do or those who get caught however usually end up creating some sort of small, token memorial. I wrote about this issue last year for GU Magazine, in an article titled " Searching for a Slingstone ." For that piece I was writing specifically about the expansion at the Okura Hotel, which had disturbed the remains of 350 Ancient Chamorros, and a small scandal

September 12, 2008 Open letter by Kanaka Maoli Scholars Against Desecration As Kanaka Maoli professors and scholars we write to publicly condemn the state-sponsored desecration of a Native Hawaiian burial site at Wainiha, Kaua`i resulting from the construction of a new home at Naue Point by California businessman Joseph Brescia. For years Brescia has been trying to build a home on top of our ancestral graves despite a litany of environmental, legal and community challenges to his construction. In 2007 Brescia unearthed and then covered over the bones of our ancestors when he began clearing the area. The illegal and immoral disturbance and desecration of our ancestors’ remains must stop now. The Hawai`i revised statute 711-1107 on Desecration specifically states that no one may commit the offense of desecrating "a place of worship or burial," and the statute defines "desecrate" as "defacing, damaging, polluting, or otherwise physically mistreating in a way

I was searching for a slingstone. It is an artifact, an ancient weapon that one rarely finds just lying around Guam, however today I am saddened to find a place where I there are plenty of them. Peering through the gaps in a fence made of orange plastic which guards the multi-million dollar remodel for the Okura Hotel, I see scattered and crushed beneath backhoes and bulldozers fragments of the slingstones I am seeking. These sights of development are becoming more common on Guam, in anticipation of the massive military increases the island is expecting over the next few years. Vague but monstrously huge sums of money are being dangled before the people of Guam by local business leaders as well as Federal and military officials, and people are clamoring both on and off of Guam to get a piece of the action. Around the island we see the halom tano’ (jungle) being cleared and the tåno’ (land) being hollowed out. In places such as Okura, the excavation is resulting in huge collections of A

This editorial offers some very obvious but crucial points that Guam in particular, but all of Micronesia needs to address. If the region is going to be "built up" or "developed" what course should this change or process take? How much should it be managed, checked or planned for, or how much should it simply be let go and unattended to? The keyword that we find in this article is "discipline," which should always be accompanied by "planning." Just because someone wants to dump 100 million dollars into the island, to build some new gigantic hotel or several hundred half million dollar condos, does that mean that we should just allow it, just go along with it? The mentality in Guam for so long has been, whatever is brought from outside, especially from richer larger countries, is better and fantastic, and we need as much of it as possible. Little thought is put into how much damage is done, in economic, social and environmental terms. Simply beca

The word lemlem in Chamorro, is one I rarely hear spoken, but am nonetheless regularly made to feel its meaning is being invoked. This is especially so in the diaspora, when people constantly, tragically circle around the term when they speak of Guam and how its changing, losing its culture and its flavor, and never going to be like it was when they were there. " Lemlem" means roughly "to fail to recognize something because of how it has changed" or "to be surprised at how different something is when you see it again." I remember during my research years at the Micronesian Area Research Center, finding an article from the Guam Daily News in the late 1960's about my great grandmother's brother Jose Pangelinan De Leon, who after spending more than twenty years in the states following World War II, was returning to Guam to visit relatives. A section of the article towards its end, dealt with how surprised Jose was about the look and the composition o