NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

One of the aspects of Chamorro life that has frequently haunted me and frustrated me is the division between Chamorros in the Marianas and those who come from the diaspora, primarily the United States. It is a division that so much is made about in everyday conversation, which amounts to very little when you interrogate it. There is often times a perception that those from the diaspora are stuck-up, more Americanized and are completely disconnected from their culture and their identity. There is some truth to this, because much of what we get in terms of our identity has more to do with proximity and frequently than actual choices. You feel a certain way about yourself or you struggle with your identity in certain ways based on what you see around you, although there is always some element of personal agency or choice. Because of this, if you are born in Guam or the CNMI, chances are good you will generally know more Chamorro words or slang. You may know more Catholic songs. You may

The Chamorro Diaspora Michael Lujan Bevacqua The Marianas Variety April 23, 2016 I spent five years of my life in San Diego while I was attending graduate school there at UCSD. It was an interesting experience that truly helped to shape and deepen my understanding of Chamorros as a people today.    We may see Chamorros as tied to home islands in the Marianas, but the reality is that more than half of the Chamorro people live in the United States in what scholars refer to as “the diaspora.” For most of my life, I have moved back and forth between Guam and this diaspora — spending a few years in Guam and then a few years in Hawai’i, a few more years in Guam, a few more years in California and so on. Although people tend to conceive of Chamorros as being either the “from the island” or “from the states” variety, there has, since the revoking of the military’s postwar security clearance, been a constant back and forth migration of Chamorros. Individuals and fami

I will be in the Southern California area at the end of this month for the upcoming Chamorro Cultural Festival in San Marcos (on March 28th). I went out to it last year and did some outreach for UOG and Chamorro Studies and had a wonderful time. Since we are supposed to begin building our online certificate program in Chamorro Studies this summer, I felt it would be good to go back out and keep people up to date of what we've been doing and keep networking. In addition to the Chamorro Cultural Festival I'll also be helping with the FESTPAC diaspora auditions. Next year Guam will become the most important place in the Pacific for two weeks as it hosts the largest arts and culture festival in the region. For this event Guam CAHA is including a group of people from the diaspora as part of the delegation. These auditions and workshops will take place the day after the Chamorro Cultural Festival, the 29th in San Diego. I'll also be doing more UOG/Chamorro Studies outreach

SAKMAN CHAMORRO FACT SHEET THE SAKMAN: The Chamorros owned and built the sakmans, also known as the “flying proa”. It was their largest sailing canoe. It was deeply admired for its speed and agility. Its special asymmetric design attributed to its performance. It is a remarkable pure-blooded Chamorro invention for which they were proud of. TYPES OF CHAMORRO CANOES: —The SAKMAN: the largest sailing single outrigger type canoe. 40 ft long with sail; 30 in wide; and stood 6 ft tall. The outrigger was 20 ft long. — The GALAIDE: the smallest fishing dugout canoe measuring 10-12 ft long. Used primarily for in-reef fishing. No sail. Single outrigger. Used the paddle (poksai) and maneuvering pole (tulus). DISCOVERY: When Magellan discovered the Marianas, he named the islands, “Islas de las Velas “ for the many sailing canoes that greeted him. He was fascinated by their agility and speed. DESTRUCTION & END: Since the Spanish colonization, Chamorros were forbidden to bu

Sakman Chamorro Project to take journey to the past Thursday, 05 Sep 2013 03:00am BY MAR-VIC CAGURANGAN | VARIETY NEWS STAFF WITH a nine-man all-Chamorro crew, an outrigger canoe built in San Diego will set sail on the first week of January 2016 and take a 40-day and 40-night journey to a native past. Master Carver Mario Borja said the 47-foot-long sakman, christened “Che’lu,” will travel 7,600 nautical miles from San Diego, to Acapulco, to the Marshall Islands, and finally to Guam. “We are looking for a meaningful expedition,” Borja said in an interview after his presentation of the Sakman Chamorro Project before the Rotary Club of Northern Guam, during the group’s meeting yesterday at the Hyatt Regency Guam. While the idea of taking the Hawaii route “sounds very nice,” Borja said, the navigating group is not keen on doing a luau. He said the canoe will be following the Spanish Galleon route and take the first port stop in Acapulco to ret

Last month I did a quick “Chamorro” tour of southern California. While flying to a UN conference in Quito, Ecuador, I stopped off in California for a few days to visit family, friends and the lively network of Chamorro groups that have formed in recent years. I flew into San Francisco and over three days drove 1000 miles from the Bay Area, to Los Angeles, Long Beach and San Diego. For people who live in the states, this may not seem like a great distance, but for people on Guam, this is the equivalent of driving from the northern to the southern tips of the island 15 times. This tour was a personally enriching experience as I got to catch up with people I had worked with before and see projects that I supported at the beginning see completion and success. In Long Beach, I visited the Guam Communications Network and spent the afternoon with the staff there. GCN is the oldest Chamorro non-profit in the states. It was first started following a typhoon in the early 90’s, when communi

Gaige ha' i kettura yan i inafa'maolek gi iya GMIF Pedro Onedera Guam PDN 5/21/13 Desdeki i ma babaña astaki i finakpo'ña i Mina'bente sais na Ferian Islan Maikrunisian Guåhan, sigi ha' hålom i finatton i taotao siha. Guaha inapurao, minannge' prugråma, kulot yan inafa'maolek gi i tres ha'åni na feria ni', sigun gi ma muebi para mes Måyu, bula minagof put i atte, fina'tinas cho'cho' kånnai, tradisiunåt, tinalenti yan finatta ni' prinisenta nu i taotao tåno' ginen Republic of the Marshalls, Republic of Palau, Yap, Pohnpei, Chuuk, Kosrae ginen iya Federated States of Micronesia, yan ta'lo ginen iya Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas yan islan Nauru. Desde franela, åtten botto, linasguen håyu, todu klåsen inatan åtte taiguihi litråtu siha, tiniffok, finattan agrikottura na tinanom, yan i petlas siha ginen islan Nukuoro, un islan Pålinesia gi iya estådon Pohnpei, bula siha na kosas para todu i taotao,

The past few weeks have been crazy. You may or may not have noticed this on the lack of posting. The sparse amount of posts in no way means that I haven’t been doing anything. The truth is the opposite, I have been doing way to much lately. Sen tinane’ yu’, ya esta liso yu’ para bei lalango. I am working on two Administration for Native American Grants. One to standardize Chamorro curriculum at the college level. The other to create a publishing house at the University of Guam that will publish Chamorro children’s books. I’m not writing them alone, but for those familiar with ANA grants, there always seems to be an endless amount of workplans, appendixes and so on to tweak and fine tune. Another grant that I need to finish by next month is for the Guam Preservation Trust, and is requesting support to hold a mini-conference in the fall on language and culture shifts amongst Chamorros today. I am working with Faye Untalan, who teaches Chamorro at UOG on th

While I was in San Diego attending graduate school I worked with alot of the Chamorro community out there, in particular the non-profit group CHELU Inc. CHELU stands for Chamorro Hands in Education Links Unity and it was created to support the Chamorro people and the maintenance of their health, their language and their heritage. I served briefly as a board member to CHELU, during which time I helped write for them a $100,000 ANA or Administration of Native Americans Grant, to study the state of the Chamorro language in San Diego county, which hosts the largest population of Chamorros anywhere outside of the Marianas. The grant was called Tungo' i Estao i Fino'-ta , and despite the group being rejected for the same grant the year earlier, with my help we received it and the study was conducted. When I helped organize three Famoksaiyan conferences in San Diego and the Bay Area, many Guam clubs or Chamorro groups were not supportive and sometimes openly hostile of what we were

  I'm writing my column for next week's Marianas Variety and I've hit a bit of a dead end. The month of October is full of Chamorro related events, with the Micronesian Island Fair next week, as well as the Mina'Kuattro na Konferensian Chamorro. The week after there are Chamorro Language Forums for Senatorial and Gubernatorial candidates at UOG. With all these things going on, I decided that for next week I would write on the Chamorro language. A few weeks ago, Pa'a Taotao Tano' released the results of its six-month study on the state of the Chamorro language on Guam. Two years ago, I helped write a similar grant for the San Diego-based Chamorro organization CHELU Inc, which was meant to study the health and use of the Chamorro language in the San Diego area. These sorts of studies are always both depressing and irritating. First, since the data is based on self-reporting the almost always over-estimate the levels at which people are using the language and

I've never have much luck writing grants over the years, and so humuyongna na mampos ti ya-hu mamangge' grants. I know amongst Chamorros there is a real need right now for good grants writers who can help get public and private monies for alot of community projects, unfortunately as I tell most people, my voice when I write isn't the one you want when a panel is considering who to fund. I can give you all the information and ideas, but chances are the form that I would put them in would scare people off. In my academic work I tend to write in a combination of visceral intensity and abstract philosophical waxing. On my blog, I tend to write, well just read some of the post below, with a firm commitment to the truth, but no real commitment to showing "both sides of the issues" or feigning objectivity. My writing on my blog is explicitly political and I make very few attempts to shroud that. If you've ever been to a grant writing workshop, than you'll know t

Minagahet Zine Volume 6 Issue 2 - March 24, 2008 http://www.geocities.com/minagahet Hafa Adai, yan welcome to i mina'trenta sais na Minagahet. It is that time of year again, almost time for another dinaña' Famoksaiyan or Famoksaiyan gathering. This year's gathering is titled " Guma'Famoksaiyan: Gathering Strength for the Journey Ahead ," and is scheduled for May 23-25, 2008 in San Diego, California. This year's gathering is being co-sponsored by Chamorro Hands in Education Links Unity (CHELU) Inc. For more info or to find regular updates, please head to the Guma'Famoksaiyan blog. This issue of Minagahet will be, for those who don't know much about Famoksaiyan, an introduction to hayi ham? and ginnen manu ham? And for those who already do know about Famoksaiyan it will be a retrospective of sorts, a collection of different events and projects that we've completed over the past three years. Ti bai hu kedagi hamyo, it has been surreal putting t