NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Its been several months now, since the Postcolonial Futures in a Not Yet Postcolonial World: Locating the Intersections of Ethnic, Indigenous and Postcolonial Studies conference, but at long last the audio for the conference has been uploaded and is ready to be downloaded. For those of you unfamiliar with the conference, here is the mission statement below: As scholars engaged in critical social justice work, we are constantly engaged in conversations about how to push the limits of the Ethnic Studies project so that it may be used more productively in addressing the wide and varied number of student and faculty interests within the department. Although the growing interest in postcolonial and indigenous studies is exciting and holds great potential, we feel that there is an urgent need to learn beyond the caricatured and narrow perceptions that have cast these emerging disciplines as specialized fields of knowledge. It is our contention that in addressing issues of violence, oppress

I have a radio interview lined up for tomorrow, with i kayu-hu Migetu Tuncap from UC Berkeley. We're going to discuss what Migetu has been doing at UC Berkeley in terms of getting Pacific Islanders recognized, funded and with their own faculty and programs, and also my recent trip to the United Nations and what's happening right now in Guam and the military buildup. I'm pasting the information below for the interview, and also a list of radio interviews done by members of Famoksaiyan over the past year on similar topics. Check them out, the interviews are very good and very informative. There are alot of voices involved and touching on so many important issues for Chamorros, whether it be environmental damage, military build up, economic dispossession, cultural and language revitalization and even music. ********************************* Apex Express: Asian Pacific Islander radio Thursdays 7PM-8PM, KPFA 94.1 FM, KFCF Fresno, www.kpfa.org Thurs. Nov. 29th: US Troop Increase

A few years ago, me and i atungo'-hu Josette Lujan Quinata recorded a "Guam Talk." For those of you who don't know who Josette is, she is a Chamorro raised most of her life in the states, who for the past few years has been looking for different ways to connect to Guam. She wrote her senior thesis as an undergrad on Guam, and later worked in the Department of Interior as an intern. Lola Sablan Santos from the Guam Communications Network first introduced us over the phone, since according to Lola, Josette had plenty of questions about what's going on in Guam and what's happening to Chamorro language and culture, and I could probably help her answer them. We emailed back and forth, at one point Josette giving me a list of I think 12 questions and me responding with 12 pages of answers. Sen magof yu' kada na mamakcha'i yu' mangge na Chamoru taiguini, pi'ot gi lagu. Hassan gi entre i manhoben pa'go este na guinaiya yan minalago para u ayuda i

The Voicing Indigeneity Podcast that me and my friends Madel and Angie do together will be on hiatus over the summer. Madel is in Palau doing research, spending time with family and recovering from her qualifying exams. Angie is writing her master's thesis in Ethnic Studies and audting some classes at UCSD. I'm in Guam for the next two months, doing some research, starting some trouble, and most importantly starting my life as a dad. I'm sure we'll be back though in the fall, and I'll still try to post stuff on the blog for those who pass by the blog while googling random things about indigenous peoples, sovereignty, decolonization and academics singing badly. As a public service, I'm pasting below the links to all the podcasts we've done over the past year, 17 in all. I did get very nostalgic while I was collecting all the links because I've enjoyed so much these conversations and they have really helped pushed me forward in my work. For instance, in J

Me, Angie (taotao Natibu Amerikanu) and Madel ( taotao Belau) are up to our old voicing indigeneity tricks. After a month-long break in December and January, we started recording again our infamously unknown podcast Voicing Indigeneity . I'm just kidding about the infamously unknown part, in actuality, we have a fairly loyal listener-ship. The blog itself gets around 10-20 hits per day, and from the email that I've gotten from when we started, we have fans from around the United States, west, east, north and south, but also get regular listeners from Taiwan, Australia, Hawai'i, Japan and even a guy from France. We recorded our most recent podcast Harry Potter and the 45th Generation Roman at the 2007 Crossing Borders Conference: Ghosts Monsters and the Dead , last weekend at UCSD. I'll post more about this conference soon, it was quite an experience. As one of its organizers, my main relief though is that it went well. For those of you who are unfamiliar with our podc

Apologies to those who followed the podcast that me and my friends Madel and Angie started a few months ago. School's out for the next few weeks and so there won't be any new podcasts for a while. But Angie swore to me that once school starts up again we'll be sure to start recording them again. In the meantime, for those who haven't seen it, I'm posting below the "declaration of indigeneity" that we drafted to kind of explain our position and the theoretical reasons for why we were saying so many critically unkind things on our podcast. By the way, we plan on taking our little pacific islander/indian show on the road next year. We submitted a panel proposal based on our different projects and podcast discussions for the Indigenous Studies Conference to take place next May at University of Oklahoma. Check out the description and the steering committee, it looks to be a truly exciting/inspiring event. Alii, el mor kemiu el rokui, Hafa ad

I've been busy lately, in so many different ways, I'm feeling a little overwhelmed at the prospec of just trying to write about all of it. So instead of doing so, then I just thought I'd let everyone know about the two other blogs that I help run. The Decolonize Guam blog was created several months ago to support the Peace and Justice for Guam Petition. The desire behind the Peace and Justice for Guam Petition is simple. Right now the United States is militarizing Guam at an incredible rate, and few people on Guam seem concerned about it . There are 8,000 Marines and 9,000 dependents on their way from Okinawa. They will most definitely be joined by some of the troops being downsized from South Korea . They will be supporting the American remilitarization of the Philippines . There are then the war games, the first of which, Valiant Shield , took place this June, which was described by one news report as a "massive armada." These games will be now be done