NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Earlier this year, as part of the annual Guam International Film Festival or GIFF festivities, longtime juror and supporter of the festival Tom Brislin, who is a professor of film at University of Hawai'i, Manoa gave a presentation on the need for Chamorros to join the larger conversation in the Pacific about preserving cultural intellectual property and also developing an infrastructure to help make future film project in the region more accountable to the lands and the lives of which they are making use. He referred to a number of issues in Hawai'i, New Zealand and Australia, where traditional culture was being snatched up and copyrighted by corporations such as Disney, and how the cultures of the Pacific continued to be portrayed in racist and orientalist ways, which can end up teaching those inside and outside of the Pacific terrible lessons. I really enjoyed his presentation and I'm hoping some students caught onto the conversation he was attempting to start locally

I've been in Japan for two weeks now and things have been quite busy, I haven't had as much time as I would like for blogging or writing. I have been swimming in a sea of small and large differences from my life on Guam. The things each day which strike me slowly or suddenly and remind me that I am in a different part of the world, and that my level of knowledge about Japan, barely scratches the surface of the surface for existence here. Transitioning from Guam, which is very car-centered to life here in Kobe where my life, my cognitive and temporal geography is all dictated by public transportation is a massive shift. One thing caught my eye the other day while I was riding the train. Some trains would have cars with pink signs on them such as the one in the image above. These trains would only for female users of public transportation. When I asked my friend why they had these and were these common throughout Japan, she stated that they were created in response to the fre

Guaha dos patgon-hu siha. Hohoben ha' i dos. Gof ya-hu kumonne' siha para i fanegga'an para bei in egga' i nuebu na mubin famagu'on siha. Taiguihi i meggaina na manhoben, gof yan-niha umegga' i mubin Pixar. Gof ya-hu este na mubi siha, sa' tahdong i mensahi siha, fihu gof gaisiente, yan sesso mafa'tinas maolek i estoria. Ya-hu lokkue' na fihu gof "simple" i na'an-niha, ya ti mappot mapula' gi fino' Chamoru.  Anai hu taitai este na lista gi Facebook ha na'hasso yu' put i na'an-niha este na mubi siha gi fino' Chamoru. Sesso hu usa este na pininala' siha gi klas-hu. Para i estudiante-ku siha, mas ki sesso sahnge i fino' Chamoru para siha. Esta hagas mampayon siha nu i fino' Ingles, ya achokka' i fino' Chamoru i fino' Irensia para siha, ti ma gof tungo', ya kalang fifino' lagu ha' gi pachot-niha yan hinasson-niha.  Ya-hu muna'halom gi klas-hu este na klasin nina'chale

When I have my students do oral history projects with elder Chamorros, they often times groan and moan. They knew that Chamorros suffered in World War II and don't need to interview an old person to know it. They know they speak Chamorro fluently and don't need to ask them about it. I generally have my students focus their questions on certain things that elders may have heard or been exposed to when they were very young, which wouldn't necessarily be the things an ethnographer or anthropologist or historian would ask them. For example, one topic I am always interested in hearing about are legends or children's stories. What were the stories that the elders of today were told when they were kids? My students often groan about this because they assume that the stories that were told then were probably the same stories we tell today. So kids today can hear stories about Sirena, Gadao, Fu'una and Puntan and Duendes, these must be the same stories that people told t

Pa'go na ha'ani, Hami yan Si Sumahi (i hagga-hu) para bei in falak iya Kalifotna. Para bai hu famanu'i gi un konfrensia giya Sacramento gi este na simana. Ya Si Sumahi para u bisita Si Nana-hu yan otro na membron i familia-ta. Esta kana dos anos desde sumaga' yu' gi lagu, ya gof malago yu' bumisita i manatungo'-hu siha ginnen i Dippatamenton Ph.D. Esta hu faisen Si Sumahi, hafa malago-na na para bei in che'gue annai gaige ham gi sanlagu. Hu ofresi gui' ni' tres na inayek: The Monterey Bay Aquarium, the San Diego Zoo, Disneyland. Achokka' hu sangan i na'an-niha este na tres, ti ha gof tungo' hafa siha ginnen i na'an ha'. Pues, hu sangani gui' ni' didide' put kada inayek. Para i aquarium hu sangani gui' na "ayu nai manasaga' i guihan yan otro na klasin ga'ga' tasi siha." Para i zoo, hu sangani gui' na este i "fangga'ga'an para i manasaga gi i tano' na klasin ga&#

From the first time I saw the preview for the movie Scott Pilgrim vs. The World I knew that I would like it. All the random jokes, the tone, the look of it, seemed built for someone of my generation. It was an interesting blend of geekiness and coolness, meant to be appeal to nerds, pseudo-nerds, hipsters and other assorted sorts of subcultural wallflowers. I found myself the first time I watched it, constantly poring through the dialogue, the sounds, the music, the background, the t-shirt art, for all the friendly fan service that I knew was coming. Over the past few days I have ended up watching Scott Pilgrim vs. The World several more times. My daughter Sumahi loves the movie and wants to watch it not just everyday, but a couple times each day. She doesn't watch it intensely, but wants it playing in the background and at certain moments she'll turn her attention that way and check it out. Sometimes commenting on what she sees, sometimes cheering a character on. She likes Sc

I recently hit 300 videos on Youtube. My videos are literally nothing special. Most of them are just random snippets of my life, whether in California or Guam. You'll see my kids, events I attend, my classes, things that I pass by which are interested. They aren't edited, they aren't flashy and for many of them, the camera is so shaky, kulang manunukot gui'. My hope for these videos is that 1,000 years from now, when humanity has been wiped from the face of the earth, as in the movie A.i ., and an advanced alien race visits the planet to try and discover what used to be here, someone, for some insane reason, one of my videos will be the only remanants of human life. And so those alien researchers, archeologists really, will have to conclude that the rules of this world was a cute little girl named Sumahi and that everyone spoke Chamorro with a cute valley girl accent. Anyways, enough silliness. I'm past belowing some of the more interesting picks from the last

In December of last year I started a new feature on this blog titled "Learning Chamorro With Sumahi and Youtube," where I would pick a favorite video of i hagga-hu Sumahi from Youtube, and then list the Chamorro words which she usually uses to narrate the video as she watches it. In recent months my time has become very scarce because of work and family obligations and so I don't get to spend as much time with Sumahi as I'd like. There isn't much time to go to the beach or take a walk in a park or do any sort of normal bonding activities, and so often times, late at night, watching Youtube videos as our way of connecting. She usually sits on my lap, bouncing up and down as she gets excited at what she sees on my laptop screen. Its hysterical, because some videos she's already watched probably hundreds of times, and so even whens he watches it time #101, she'll still laugh and scream at the exact same moment. Unfortuantely, Sumahi's love of Youtube me