NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

One of the earliest Chamoru translations of an American pop song I ever did.  I came across it recently while I was searching on some old external hard drives.  It is to the tune of the Coldplay song "Clocks"which came out in 2002.  I remember I had started translating the song, working to come up with some basic lyrics.  I was hindered in my translation by the fact that the title frankly, gi minagahet was weird or sucked in Chamoru.  Clocks, didn't make sense in Chamoru. It may barely make sense in English for the song gi minagahet.  "Reloh siha" mungga yu' nu enao lol.  This was very early in my Chamoru learning journey, I was functionally fluent, but still making mistakes all the time and my Chamoru sounded like it was stiff and dry, straight out of a grammar book, because I lacked the basic organic feeling of being part of a language community.  The ways that emerge sometimes for an individual, a family, a village, a people to build off of the rules. To

This past year I was fortunate enough to help Dr. Kelly Marsh-Taitano and Tyrone Taitano with the annual island review for Guam to be published in The Contemporary Pacific. I've been reading these annual reviews for years now and they are always a wonderful resource for people who are trying to trace trends or movements in the island. These reviews sometimes have a good way of highlighting certain things that the mainstream media in Guam ignores or doesn't give much attention. For this year's review I focused on the section dealing with the Commission on Decolonization. This is one thing which the reviews often times draw alot of attention to, even if the island community in general isn't paying attention or doesn't care. I'm pasting below the Guam review from 2003, written by Chamorro Studies and History professor from the University of Guam Anne Perez Hattori: ******************** Guam - Island Review by Anne Perez Hattori The Contemporary Pacific 200

The Chamorro Studies Program (Prugraman Inestudian Chamorro) at the University of Guam is located within the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (Kolehon Atson Liberat yan Siensihan Sosiat). It has existed for four years and was officially launched in October of 2013. It was started by a faculty task force consisting of myself, Anne Perez Hattori, Evelyn San Miguel Flores, Rosa Salas Palomo, Sharleen Santos-Bamba, James Perez Viernes and a handful of others. On October 24th, 2013 a launch event was held which featured panels, performances and also the start of a Chamorro language lecture series titled "The Chamorro Experience gi Fino' Chamorro." The late Chamorro Master Blacksmith Joaquin Flores Lujan or Tun Jack was the speaker for the inaugural event. On that day we signed up seven majors and seven minors into the program. Since that time, the Chamorro Studies Program has organized numerous events and programs all meant at promoting Chamorro language, cultur

The past week has been crazy and the lack of blog posts reflects that. Between parenting, teaching, writing, film-making, play-writing, endless meetings, interviews, and planning for a summer trip, things have been too exhausting and too hectic. I'm going to try and get back on track with my blog posts about my Nicaragua trip over the weekend. In the meantime I wanted to share this interview I did recently for an undergraduate student about the origins of the Chamorro Studies program at UOG, the program I was proud to help create and even more proud to be a part of today. **************** How did the Chamoru Studies program come about? The initial incarnation of the Chamorro Studies program was developed in the School of Education at UOG. The Government of Guam was mandating UOG to train people who were able to teach Chamorro language and culture in schools and the program was developed under Dr. Bernadita Dungca in order to accomplish that. The

The Forum on the Importance of Second Language Learning that I helped organize last week at UOG was a huge success. We had a massive crowd of students and members of the community. The comments that were made came from all types of people. Some students spoke about how important it is to requires students to take second languages because it will provide them so many long term benefits that they may not be able to perceive yet. Some community members spoke about how this idea of English-only or focusing the education at UOG on a single language was like a slap in the face to the dozens of languages that are spoken daily in Guam. Some business owners talked about the need for more languages to be taught at UOG and that more languages make you more intelligent and marketable. Some teachers talked about how students who know more than one language perform better in school than those who are monolingual. The conversation was fantastic, we stayed an hour and fifteen minutes beyond our sche

One poem that had a big impact on my while I was in graduate school and cobbling together the first generations of the critical consciousness that I sport today was "Thieves" by Anne Perez Hattori. I took several courses with Anne when I was an undergrad and graduate student at UOG. She was by far the best professor I had, and the one who was most direct in terms of cutting through layers of colonial bullshit and ignorance when dealing with Guam and Chamorro history. When Anne speaks publicly, whether in an interview or on a panel she always has a way of taking something academic and shifting it to be something that a non-academic can engage with and feel that they should engage with. That is the key to someone who wants their work to have an impact beyond just academia. It is not about creating something that people will just understand, but about creating something that people will feel they need to respond to. This is only true if you accept the Marxist axiom about the n

On August 30th I'll be presenting at the 2nd Annual Marianas History Conference at UOG. Here is the schedule thus far for those who might be interested in attending. The website to find more information is: http://marianashistory.guampedia.com/ And here is a video of two of the organizers Dr. Anne Hattori (from UOG) and Rita Nauta from Guampedia giving an interview on KUAM News Extra: Tentative Conference Schedule Thursday, August 29 5:30 pm Welcoming Reception: Paseo, Hagåtña Friday, August 30 8:30-9:30 am Keynote Address, Dr. Keith L. Camacho, CLASS Lecture Hall, UOG 9:30-10 am Break 10 – 11:30 am Session 1 (A and B) Session 1A: Chamorro Agency in the Spanish Marianas David Atienza: The Mariana Islands Militia and the Establishment of the “Pueblos de Indios”: Indigenous Agency in Guam from 1668 to 1758 Carlos Madrid: 1800´s in the Marianas: A Nation in the Making Mariana Sanders, Francine Clement and Carla Smith: Social Realities and Legal Regulations

Para todus ni' ya-niha umeyak fumino' Chamoru. Taitai i tinige'-na gi gaseta Si Pedro Onedera. Mamange' gui' put meggai na diferentes na kosas, lao ha na'sesetbe i lenguahi-ta. I meggaina na Chamorro siha, ma usa i lenguahi para "na'magof" na kosas yan gi didide' ha' na lugat. Lao para Si Onedera ha u'usa fino' Chamoru para u diskuti yan kubre maseha hafa malago'-na.  Fihu ilek-hu na todu i manggaige giya Guahan pa'go ilek-niniha na ma onra i fino' Chamoru yan gaibali gui'. Lao puru ha' kuentos ayu, yan i kuentos gi fino' Ingles, pues hafa i mismo bali-na? Lao Si Onedera ha na'annok na para Guiya i bali mas ki kuentos taibali. Ha gof guaiya i lenguahi-ta yan ha na'sesetbe todu tiempo. Gi este na tinige'-na ginnen i PDN, mannge' gui' put hinasso-na put i botasion 2012 yan i mamaila na botasion gi 2014.  ************************ Ta Atan i Ileksion Liheslatibu gi 2014