NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

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

This image is of me in 2007, the first and only time that I've testified before the Fourth Committee of the United Nations. I am excited that next week, I along with more than a dozen others will be back at the United Nations to testify. In 2007, only three of us went, myself, Rima Miles and Marie Auyong. It was an incredibly exciting albeit frustrating experience, to testify in a room filled with the world's representatives, who aren't really pay ing attention to you because you come from a far-away colony of the world's most powerful country. I ended up incorporating my UN-experience into one of the chapters of my dissertation. We only had less than five minutes to testify and make our case to the world. Despite the short amount of time, it is common for people to still being and end their testimonies in their native language, while the bulk of it is in English.  Chamorro scholar Tiara Na'puti wrote about this in her own dissertation. This was