NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

A 2014 study by The Guardian/UK shows that in 50 different colonies/territories since 1860, 88% of the time they chose independence as their option. Very very few chose to become integrated into their colonizer, it was almost natural to seek their own fortune and destiny, even if it might lead to a time of difficulty. The study looked at places such as Samoa, East Timor, Mongolia, Iceland and Iraq. Given the way in which independence is often imagined in places such as Guam that remain colonies today, it is intrigued to see how normal seeking independence was in the past, but how today it feels so fearful. Most people would argue that the resistance that people in Guam feel today is tied to the island being too political immature or the island being too small or too far away from the centers of power. All of these points make some sense, but not enough to really build up the type of fear that people experience when discussing the notion of Guam becoming independent. As the United N

There are currently 17 entities on the list of Non-Self-Governing Territories that the United Nations keeps track of and is mandated to help see through to self-government and decolonization. Although there was a great deal of activity around decolonization in previous decades, both within the United Nations and without, but lately, especially at the level of the United Nation's, fairly little has happened. The last territory to be de-listed, meaning it went through a legitimate and recognized process of decolonization is Timor Leste or as it was known as a colony, East Timor.  East Timor had been a colony under the Portuguese until 1975. A small civil war followed the Portuguese releasing of their colony, in which the neighboring country of Indonesia helped to instigate the conflict. On December 7, 1975, Indonesia invaded East Timor, killing more than a hundred thousand people in just two years. They occupied East Timor for more than two decades despite international efforts t

One of the drawbacks to seeing your country as the most powerful in the world, or the greatest in the world, or even worse the greatest country in history, is that it makes changing yourself almost impossible. Your country will change, all countries are changing, often times whether the people want it to or not. But the larger your national ego is, the more difficult  it is to organize the chaotic coalition that is your national innards in order to solve basic problems. A smaller country, a less nationally narcissistic nation, which is less enamored with its own overblown and self-aggrandized image can have difficulties as well. But the "greatness" doesn't get in the way as much. Part of the problem if you think far too highly of yourself in this way is that your problems go from being unsolvable or impossible, to irrelevant, especially from those who may be standing in the way of any change, large or small, that could take place. The "greatness" of the countr

This article is interesting. On the one hand, you could argue that it isn't necessarily talking about sovereignty in a overt political sense and so the title or the thesis is very overstated. It deals with an exchange over surfing and a sports article. But on the other hand, the article is a good reminder about the way that sovereignty can be woven into everything, and is something that can be fought at multiple levels, even the most basic of conversations. That it can begin with an idea, with a community formed simply by shared memories or shared desires and that it can grow from there. As I once wrote many year ago, "kada mumon linahyan ha tutuhon ni' un sinangan ha'." ***********************   Surfing as Sovereignty: How Native Hawaiians Resisted Colonialism by Dina Gilio-Whitaker Indian Country Today Media Network 11/14/14   In Hawaiian culture, surfing has always been more than a sport. So important was it that prayers and chants

It has been a while since my last message of this type. To be honest the Commission on Decolonization of which the Independence Task Force is a part hasn't been very active for the past few years. Inertia and lack of motivation seeped into the Commission from a variety of angles making it incapable of doing anything. That period is hopefully at an end however as the Commission has shown some signs of life since the start of this year. Although the Commission has received money since 2011 for salaries, no money has been set aside for public education, which is what the Commission on Decolonization is meant to oversee. This year there is at last a $100,000 budget set specifically for conducting public education. The Independence Task Force will be meeting this month and start to make plans for the coming year. If you are interested in joining the Task Force, please email me at mlbasquiat@hotmail.com or leave a comment below. This past week I saw an interesting piece of news out o

 I'm excited this summer because I'll be a visiting scholar in Japan at Kobe University. I'll be teaching a course on transnational relations that focuses on militarization and militarism in the Asia-Pacific region. I'll be using two books for the course Militarized Currents edited by Setsu Shigematsu and Keith Camacho and The Bases of Empire edited by Catherine Lutz. Catherine Lutz has been a friend of Micronesia for a very long time and last came through Guam a few years ago. Here work is very important in terms of giving a structure to militarization and militarism and not just letting them be things taken for granted as natural parts of life, but being able to drawn them out of the background here and force them to become objects of analysis and critique. Her work when she came through Guam and gave several presentations and even testified in front of the Guam Legislature was very eye-opening to people about the nature of military bases and how they affect the c