NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

The Department of the Interior is the closest thing the US has to an explicitly colonial office. It is an office that overseas Native American tribes, the insular territories and also has obligations to deal with the freely associated states in Micronesia. It is for this reason probably the most interesting and exceptional place within the entirety of the US federal government. But this mandate is its least important function and one that matters very little in terms of general US interests or imagining. Overall its role in terms of managing national parks and providing oversight to resource extraction is far more visible. It is for this reason that in the general debate that is taking place within the US over Confederate monuments and attempts to whitewash and minimize racist and immoral parts of America's past, the Department of Interior enters the debate, not in terms of the Confederacy itself, but the way that certain heroes of American history, also participated in projects

When George W. Bush was President, he was hardly a socially or politically polished individual on the surface. Despite coming from a very wealthy and elite background, and attending elite institutions of education his manner and appearance was that of a folksy gentlemen. The type of person you might want to BBQ with and share alcoholic beverages with, but maybe not have in charge of the United States of America. The US has had a variety of Presidents, all except one white, many of them lawyers, all men, most of them coming from a political background, meaning they had served in some capacity in government. Their demeanor could be quite different, in that their approach to how to interact with people or with their staff could range widely. But all, including those who might appear to be more "folksy" and "unpolished" nonetheless retain a seriousness. The weight of the office affects their personality. It drives them to be better, or at least appear to be better as

It is intriguing the way that so many people assume something to be impossible and frightening in a particularly local or familiar context, but then completely miss the way that they accept such things in other contexts without even a hint of fear or apprehension. In Guam, a colony of the US for more than a century, and a colony of Spain for several centuries prior to that, this is frustratingly true and real in terms of the people of the island, both indigenous and non-indigenous, living in terror of Guam becoming independent. For other nations and other locations, independence is something to celebrate, a key moment in terms of a nation's development or evolution, something to look back on pride, even if your country has serious problems past or present. But it is intriguing how for example, Filipinos, Chinese or Koreans and others on Guam can celebrate the nationhood and the independence of their own nations, whether it be from colonialism, from imperialism or from their own s

Per United Nations Resolution 1541 (1960), the colonized people of non-self-governing territories such as Guam have three options to choose from when deciding a path for their decolonized future. The first is integration with their colonizer, which is commonly known in Guam as statehood. The second, free association is to form a foundational agreement and share parts of your sovereignty with another power, which is usually your former colonizer. Finally, there is independence, which contrary to common misconceptions does not mean isolation from the world, but rather joining it as a sovereign and equal entity. As I have experienced over the past decade, discussing decolonization in Guam can move from inspiring to frustrating quite quickly. People seem to resist decolonization in general and independence in particular as being impossible or dangerous. Although I have met few people on Guam who have read the work of Francis Fukuyama, most notably his book “The End of His

I came across this article while looking for examples about the way American media frames Okinawa, its history, its relationship to the United States, and the "problem" that it presents to US interests. The usual way in which the United States relates to places where it has bases, is through gratitude or lack of gratitude. If the people support the presence of the bases, then the media represents them as appreciative and understanding about how the US, as the greatest country in the history of the world, has helped protect them, develop them, given them freedom and democracy and capitalism. This is the case, even when those countries were former enemies of the United States and the bases were placed there during or after times of war. Even then, the US media and scholarly class has a way of making it seem as if the people there should appreciate the lesson they were taught about the world and global power. Hami i Yu'us, Hamyo taotao ha'.  But if the governments ar

I've left Okinawa for Taiwan, but the stories I heard and learned still stay with me. The violence of war on the land and the people. So similar to Guam, a great conflagration between empires built and fed on war takes place over an island and the people are trapped, caught in between. They get erased in the process in so many ways. Their lives are obliterated. Their memories wiped away. Their claims to the land vanish beneath bases. Even their stories are cast aside. When they fit the heroic and sacrificial narratives of the two great powers, they are brought forth as moments of patriotism, loyalty and power. But if they don't, they are forgotten. I finished reading the English translation of former Okinawa Governor Masahide Ota's book on the battle of Okinawa. Even though Ota himself is Okinawan and a big critic of the way both America and Japan have treated his people, his book still follows the narrative above, focuses on the tales of the two great empires locked in

Yesterday I spent the day at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. It was a very surreal experience. On the surface it appears like many other shrines or places or worship or reflection in Japan, but it was an incredibly militaristic space. It featured museums dedicated to a whitewashed military history of Japan, thousands of letters from soldiers writing home about how happy they were to die for Japan, and statues for the courage of war widows. The shrine is meant to serve the more than two million souls who have died as soldiers for Japan over the past century, so the militaristic and warmongering tone makes sense, but given what I know of Japanese history it was still shocking to see the way things were twisted in order to create a sense of sinlessness and honor in the midst of a very blatantly imperial period of their history. The shrine reminded me that if you win your wars, you can always explain and justify the deaths involved as heroic, as necessary, as part of a teleology of g