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Showing posts with the label Manriku

Hami, i Taotao

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Hami, i Taotao Guahan by Michael Lujan Bevacqua The Marianas Variety July 29, 2015   On December 17 th , 1901 a group of more than thirty men, primarily Chamorros gathered in Hagatna. Most prominent on their minds was the political status of their island Guam, which had been taken by the United States during the Spanish American War three years earlier. Since the transfer of power, confusion over Guam’s future hung like dark foreboding clouds. Although the American flag flew over Guam, the United States had not set up a government in which Chamorros would now enjoy the glories of American democracy. They had established a military regime which the US Navy total control over the lives and lands of Chamorros. The group that gathered in HagÃ¥tña represented some of the largest landholders, the wealthiest families and some of the most educated Chamorros of the day. They carried last names familiar to us today, such as Perez, Torres, Dungca, Quitugua, Martinez

Tale of Two "Heroes"

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Desde sumaonao Si Donald Trump gi inachaigen Presidente gi sanlagu mas na'kaduku todu! Gof taffo' gui', taimamahlao gui'. Fihu ti hongge'on i sinangan-na lao gof klaru i motibu-na. Esta kana' bente taotao manhalom gi i inachaigi para i mas takhilo' na ofisina gi sanlagu. Gi ayu na batkada, taimanu unu sina gumefe'na? Para Si Trump, un konsigi muna'huyong i taihinasso na klasen kuentos ya sigi ha' mama'tinas hao "scandals." Humuyongna i media u ma tattiyi hao ya ma espiha hao para nuebu na taihinasso pat na'manman na klasen kuentos. Kao "serious" na klasen pretendente Si Trump? Buente ahe', lao para pa'go na momento guiya i mas annok yan i mas makubre gi i inachaigi. Debi di ta gof atan taimanu na para u inafekta i inachaigi ni i gaige-na. I mas halacha na scandal put i sinangan-na put Si John Mccain.Ya-hu este na tininge' ginen i Washington Post put hafa ilek-na. *********************** Wh

Rich White Families

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Racism is such a difficult thing to discuss. Wait, nangga un ratu. It isn't a difficult thing to explain necessarily. Esta meggai matuge' put este. Guaha diferentes na theories put hafa este na fuetsa gi lina'la' taotao. We can clearly explain its role in creating structures of inequality and normalizing systems of violence. Lao hafa i minappot? I patten tinaotao. Racism is not difficult to explain. Ti mappot maeksplika. It is difficult to discuss, because discussion assumes a conversation and this is limited by what the person you are talking to is able to process or able to admit to. I mina'mappot i diniskuti i chi-na i hinasso i ume'ekungok yan i kumukuentos tatte. Discussing racism means engaging in a number of topics that people would rather not address. The idea of post-racism today is predicated on the belief, hope that if we just don't mention it, all is well. Ya humuyongna, ayu i manangan put rasa pat rinasa, guiya i "raci

Teaching Privileged White Kids

What's Going On This Is What It Means For Me To Teach Your White, Privileged Kids Written by Linda Chavers 11/30/2014 http://damemagazine.com/2014/11/30/what-it-means-me-teach-your-white-privileged-kids I'm an educator. I teach English at one of the top independent boarding schools in the world. I'm also a Black woman. With a Masters in English, which qualifies me to teach it, and a Ph.D. in African-American Studies from Harvard University, which, among other things, scares the shit out of everyone. Yet, here I am, in rural New England, teaching the literature of my choice and with an interdisciplinary bent (read: African-American) and how to write the personal essay to a mostly White, upper-class population. And this is a good thing. When applying to grad schools I wrote in my personal statement that my presence in a classroom is a revolutionary act. I fill a space of authority that is still very much White, male and very

Clash of Comments

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I attended the SEIS Public Comment Hearings at both Okkodo High School and Father Duenas Memorial School. As someone who was there during the last DEIS Comment priod meetings and wrote about it quite a bit on my blog and later in this column, it was interesting to see the public debate over militarization in Guam be shaped this time in a war of words, ideas, fears and dreams emerging from the clashing comments. Most public debates happen through the dusting off of faded and often outdated pieces of information in peoples’ heads. Your perception of how some important issues of public substance is determined by random snippets of information you have heard, read, been told, want to believe, are afraid to admit to and so on. In each society there are always a list of things that everyone is expect to know something about, and be expected to take some position on, even if that position is that you don’t care about it or that everything sucks about it. The milita

I Manggof Riku

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Published on Monday, February 4, 2013 by TomDispatch.com The Paranoia of the Superrich and Superpowerful Washington’s Dilemma on a “Lost” Planet by Noam Chomsky [This piece is adapted from “Uprisings,” a chapter in Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire , Noam Chomsky’s new interview book with David Barsamian (with thanks to the publisher, Metropolitan Books). The questions are Barsamian’s, the answers Chomsky’s.] ********************* Does the United States still have the same level of control over the energy resources of the Middle East as it once had? The major energy-producing countries are still firmly under the control of the Western-backed dictatorships. So, actually, the progress made by the Arab Spring is limited, but it’s not insignificant. The Western-controlled dictatorial system is eroding. In fact, it’s been eroding for s

Chamorro Gangnam Style

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Add caption I was asked to do this months ago and it has been sitting on my computer ever since. Gangnam Style was still new at that point and it was only primarily K-pop fans and nerds who were aware of its massive, macarena-like, world changing potential. Someone asked me to do a Chamorro version of it, taking the lyrics and translating them into Chamorro. It didn't take very long, but I just never got around to posting it. First a couple of points. Number 1, this song is in Korean and I don't speak Korean. In order to understand it I had to rely on the translations of others. So there maybe obvious ways I couldn't grasp accurately what I was translating. But then again, the intent wasn't to take the lyrics to Gangnam Style exactly, but rather translate the feeling into Chamorro. This is a conundrum that you often face when doing translation work. If you take it exactly as it is written, you run the risk of making it lose the correct meaning in the new languag