NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

The clock is running out for the Government of Guam to decide if they plan to appeal the recent 9th Circuit Court's affirmation of the Dave Davis case. After the federal district judge in Guam, Francis Tydingco-Gatewood ruled in Davis' favor in 2017, the government of Guam appealed. They lost that appeal earlier this year. In a few weeks the Leon Guerrero administration will reveal their plans for the Davis case and hopefully the issue of a self-determination plebiscite in general.  For those unfamiliar, the Davis case deals with a non-binding political status plebiscite codified in Guam law, that would be limited to only those who were made US citizens by the 1950 Organic Act and their descendants. Although not strictly a racial definition, the US federal courts have ruled that this classification known in Guam as "native inhabitants" is unconstitutional.  The question that remains for Maga'håga Lou now is, what is Guam's next step? As she is the head o

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

She Hails from Tribal Chiefs. Now She's Ready to be Idaho's Governor. by Jennifer Bendery 5/9/18 Huffington Post WASHINGTON ― When you think of political dynasties in American history, you might think of the Kennedys or the Bushes. You’ve probably never heard of Paulette Jordan’s family. Jordan, an enrolled member of the Coeur d’Alene tribe, comes from thousands of years of intergenerational leadership in Idaho and the Pacific Northwest. Her grandfathers were chiefs. Her grandmothers were chiefs. Some of her ancestors were very prominent, like Chief Kamiakin of the Yakama-Palus Nation. In 1855, when the territorial governor of Washington forced Kamiakin to sign a treaty of land cessations, Kamiakin later banded together with 14 tribes and waged a three-year war against the U.S. government. “They could lead as chiefs and fight as warrior chiefs,” Jordan said of her grandmothers, one of whom was tribal chair of Colville Confederated Tribes. “They taught me the way.

One of my first introductions to Native American Studies was the book Ojibwa Warrior: Dennis Banks and the Rise of the American Indian Movement. I was at that point in graduate school in San Diego, and learning a great deal about different ethnic movements around the United States, and while much of the readings focused on the larger groups in the United States, such as African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans, I was grateful that each course had books or readings that situated Native American struggles and experiences as well. I knew the basic, general history of how Native Americans went from being a diverse array of tribes and peoples, to losing almost all their sovereignty and land to colonial settlers across North America and also Latin American depending on how you want to define the terms. But by reading this book and others by scholars and Native American activists I began to understand more of the structural and historical connections. In Banks' book he talked abou