NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

  For Immediate Release October 7, 2020   SENATOR MARSH (TAITANO) CONTINUES HER CRUCIAL CONVERSATION SERIES, BREADFRUIT  AS A MEANS FOR FOOD SUSTAINABILITY AND SECURITY Senator Kelly Marsh (Taitano) authored a bi-partisan supported bill to capitalize on Guam’s lengthy history of reciprocal intraregional relationships which have been part of the region’s traditional approach to surviving and thriving within the Mariana Islands, Southeast Asia, and Micronesia. Her bill would develop a Guam Intraregional Commerce Commission, which will spearhead efforts to strengthen regional resiliency and rebuild and re-envision our economy in the face of the current global pandemic era.  With this focus on the need for greater regional economic collaboration in mind, Senator Marsh (Taitano) this Friday continues her Crucial Conversation Series, highlighting ways that we can build more sustainable industries while preserving our environment and culture. This week’s episode will discuss  lemmai  and  dok

When I was writing my dissertation more than 10 years ago, one question that I constantly had, was what is the "Department of Interior" in the United States, especially in relation to the territories. The easy answer is that it is the office to oversees them. It is the office that oversees the natural resource, the parks, the relations with Native Americans, but also the way the US connects to its insular areas and colonies. We can refer to the Department of the Interior as the make-shift colonial office, a colonial office in denial that it is a colonial office. The office manages resources and helps to remind those of us who live in the territories that we are a resource, that our lands, our lives are more explicitly than any other place within the US and its empire, thought of as a commodity. The fact that our strongest link to the federal bureaucracy is the DOI is key in understanding our relationship to the US. We may have a variety of fantasies about what we are to

Next month I'll be back in Washington D.C. to resume my research about federal territorial relations that I began last year. Much of my focus last year was on Guam and its commonwealth movement, but as I conducted interviews and sifted through files, I also found more and more references to the commonwealth of the CNMI as well and found its evolution and devolution to be even more fascinating. Even just the contrast of reading about what has taken place there for the past few decades in federal documents versus local government is striking. Take for example when a number of sovereignty provisions that had been negotiated through the commonwealth were lost about ten years ago. This process was referred to the in CNMI as a "federalization," akin to a takeover by the federal government. Within the federal government however it was referred to as as normalizing of a relationship, whereby those provisions were considered to be only temporary and would eventually be done away

Ti siguro yu' håyi tumuge' este, lao interesånte. Guaha meggai na hestoria put i Chamorro gi Islas Sangkattan gi este na ti gof anakko' na tinige'. Hu sodda' este na tinige' ginen i gasetan Saipan, annai manespipiha yu' infotmasion put Fino' Chamorro gi halom i kottre gi Islas Sangkattan. Ti meggai na infotmasion humuyong, lao hu fakcha'i este. Ti hu tungo' i kilisyanu na fulånu ni' tumuge', lao ya-hu i milalåk-ña i hinasso-ña siha. Frihon yan botlon. ************* The Death of Chamorro Language March 31, 1999 The Saipan Tribune For many years, we were active participants in the death of our local vernacular. It started with the golden days in grammar school when speaking your language lands you some corporal punishment, a fine of five cents, scribbling several pages of “I will not speak Chamorro”; picking up trash outside the classroom after school, among others. Well into high school, there’s the student monitors or J

Travis Coffman, a notable figure in Marianas media over the past few decades passed away recently. He was best known for his role in talk radio in Guam at K57. And as such, he was someone that I would interact with quite frequently. I went on his show several times to be interviewed about various topics. He was always respectful to me in public, and I would sometimes see him at anime, manga and nerd conventions on the island. But for many Chamorro activists, they saw him as someone who could frequently be anti-Chamorro in his statements on the air. I definitely heard elements of that when he would be on the the radio, and I would sometimes get text messages or emails, telling me to listen to what Travis was saying today. When I say anti-Chamorro, what it usually boiled down to was being dismissing of Chamorro issues and Chamorro concerns, but not necessarily someone who would ever say that Chamorro culture sucks. But someone who would use his position to belittle activists fighting f

Since the start of the year I have been working on an article about militarization in the Marianas Islands. It is for a special edition of Micronesian Educator edited by Tiara Na'puti and Lisa Natividad. I'm excited at the prospect of writing it, but my schedule over the past year has been tough, in addition to family drama and other setbacks. I've been coming back and forth to it in my notebooks every month, but until now I haven't been able to really try to finish it. I spent Christmas Day typing up my scattered notes and drafts. The article is an attempt to talk about militarization, military increases, military strategy in a Marianas wide context, and the ways it divides, unities, takes and stimulates. One of the most interesting sections is on the CIA training that took place in Saipan from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. The facility was known as the Naval Technical Training Unit or NTTU and it trained anti-communist operatives to destabilize and sabotage r

Testimony to the Fourth Committee of the United Nations From Michael Lujan Bevacqua, Ph.D. Co-Chairperson, Independence for Guam Task Force October 3, 2017 Buenas yan håfa adai todus hamyo ko’lo’ña si Maga’taotao Rafael Ramirez Carreño i gehilo’ para i kumuiten Mina’Kuåtro, gi este na gefpå’go na ha’åni. Magof hu na gaige yu’ guini på’go para bai hu kuentusi hamyo yan kuentusiyi i taotao Guåhan put i halacha na sinisedi gi islan-måmi. (Hello to all of you on this beautiful day. I am grateful to be here now so that I can speak to you, in particular H.E. Rafael Ramirez Carreño, Chair of the C24, and speak on behalf of the people of Guam about recent events that transpired in our island home.) My name is Michael Lujan Bevacqua and I am a professor of Chamorro Studies at the University of Guam. I am also the co-chair for the Independence for Guam Task Force, a community outreach organization tasked with educating our island about the possibilities should

Tomorrow for my free Chamorro lessons at a Hagåtña coffee shop, we'll be focusing on translating four Chamorro songs into English. The reason for this focus is that next week is the "Na'lå'la': Songs of Freedom" concert being organized by Independent Guåhan (July 4th, 2-5 pm at the Adelup Front Lawn). After the success of the Respect the Chamoru People Rally in April, our group decided to have a similar public event, although this time focus more on art, music and poetry, as opposed to speeches. To get my Chamorro students into the mood for the event (as most of them will be there or are even volunteering), I picked out four interesting songs, with various social/political messages. One of those songs was this one, "Ingrato" a traditional song written by Tun Jose Pangelinan, but made famous by Candy Taman and the groups Tropic Sette and Chamolinian. It has a simple, yet powerful message, especially profound in times of rapid social and cultural cha