NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

When San Vitores first came to the Marianas the Chamoru people were largely accepting of the new religion for a few reasons. The Spanish offered gifts to those who converted to the new religion, including sometimes precious  lulok or metal. They were the newest hottest thing on the island. Exciting simply because it was different, like when Applebee's or McDonald's first came to Guam. Some converted seeing the chance for greater power by being closer to those that they perceived might shake up island hierarchies. Some may have followed the new religion, because it truly spoke to them.  But one of the things that helped San Vitores win over the people in many ways was his ability to speak to them in Chamoru. Chamorus had interacted with Europeans for more than a century at that point via hand gestures and sailors from the Philippines and Southeast Asia who were able to communicate using Austronesian terms with the Chamorus they encountered. Spaniards, Filipinos and African slave

Retellings of Guam history focus heavily on the end of the World War II on the island, and de-emphasize the start of the war. It is like this for some obvious and some less-obvious reasons. As I've written about before, where you place the narrative locus for these 32 months of Chamoru history will heavily affect what type of lessons or ideas emerge. If you focus on the end, the triumphant American return, where the Japanese are defeated and Chamorus are liberated from tyranny, the lessons seem pretty clear. American power and benevolence and propensity for liberation and democracy spreading. Chamorus become attached to the US and its history through that ending, as an object of their grandeur or their exceptional excellence and virtue. But if we switch the story's focus to the beginning things get much more complicated. We see at the beginning of war, an island where Chamorus trust the US to tell them the truth, to keep them safe, but they also understand in an important

I used to have an assignment in my Guam History classes, where I would have my students visit different schools on the island named for a different local historical figure. They would have to interview an administrator and a teacher to learn how their school honored their namesake and how their namesake’s example or history was or wasn’t incorporated into school curriculum or activities.  Unfortunately, most schools did little in this regard. Some had a simple plaque, a statue, a poem or a song. Some had a day in which they would honor the person. Many of the schools are named for educators from the past century, usually in the village of the school that came to bear their name. Some teachers or administrators who had family ties in the village could share stories about their school’s namesake, but most didn’t know much and couldn’t share much.  I would give this assignment to help students understand the value of history, but also the potential uselessness of history. History

This month I reread Island in Agony by Tony Palomo. I have actually read it many times, but decided to take a look at it again as I was writing my weekly columns for the Pacific Daily News about World War II in Guam, and that book had been my first, comprehensive and in-depth look at it when I was a graduate student. In contrast to books by Don Farrell or Robert Rogers which also cover to varying extends the Japanese occupation of Guam, Island in Agony, feels very Chamoru and is in most ways written for Chamorus. When you read the book, you can see Tony Palomo's voice clearly trying to sound like an average American newspaperman. But in how he frames the story and what he chooses to include, you can tell he is trying to write something that will tell the Chamoru side of the story, that will stand as a testament to the Chamoru experience. Most chronicles of the war focus, as you might expect on the militaries involved. The great titans that clash over Guam. Not much attention is

Ha'ånen Guinaiya ta'lo gi otro simåna.  Estague un rigålu para todus hamyo guenao huyong ni' manamåntes put guinaiya yan i fino' Chamoru.  Estague na tinige' put courtship yan konstrumbre Chamoru put umakkamo' åntes di gera.  Tinige' este as Illuminada Perez, ni ma'estra gui' gi kinalamten para i nina'la'la' i fino'-ta.  *************************** Kustumbren Chamorro put Inakamo’ By Illuminada Perez   Annai sumuttero pat sumuttera un patgon, mana’eyak i lahi na patgon gumualo’ yan pumeska, parehu ha’ gi saddok pat i tasi, yan mamoksai månnok yan babui. I sottera, mana’eyak manlakse, manganchiyu yan manarekla gi halom guma’. Desde i diesisais años i patgon, ha tutuhun manenteresao put guinaiya yan inakamo’. Yanggen esta ti siña machomma’ i lahi yan i palao’an ni’ u maguaiyan-ñiha, pues i lahi ha sangåni i mañainå-ña para u fanmamaisen saina. Tenga i nana, i tata, i tiha yan i matlina, mañaonao manhånao para i gima’ i

Every year I do a couple episodes for the local public radio program Beyond the Fence for KPRG. Here is one of mine from earlier this year which focused on the history of the Wusstig family on Guam, who I met through my work at the Guam Museum. The family is donating the headstone that was created for their ancestor while he was a POW in Japan during World War II. To download podcast of this episode and others head to this link.  *********************** Ep. 237 “Sailor, Musician and Forgotten POW: Remembering George Wusstig” (hosted by Dr. Michael Lujan Bevacqua and produced by Tom Maxedon with assistance from Alan Grossman and Robert Wang) aired on 3/11/16. During the Japanese occupation of Guam in World War II, a number of U.S. active duty and retired military men were taken as prisoners of war to Japan. One of those was George Ernest Wusstig who was born in Germany in the 19th century, migrated to the United States where he became a U.S. citizen, and settled

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 Hagåtña 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

It is intriguing when we see epochs of time shift and change and replace each other. These are like grand markers in time, like huge arches that delineate when everything was one way and when it all changed and became something else. On Guam we have antes di gera and despues di gera which draws a clear line of memory between what existed prior to World War II and after. World War II survivors will tell you the smells in the air, the sounds of the island were different in 1940 as they were in 1945. Most people in the United States and elsewhere in the world mark recent memory with "9/11" as if to say that things were fundamentally different before September 11th, 2001 than they were afterwards. All of this is a fiction of course, but there is still a way that communities tend to lay out the stretches of time behind them in certain blocks, to make them easier to manage, but propping up these important moments as providing the keys to understand all those temporal tectonic shi

Sen tinanae' yu' gi este na simana put i Inachaigen Fino' CHamoru. Esta singko anos manayuyuda yu' gi este na dinana', komo hues yan organizer. Noskuantos anos tatte mannge' yu' column gi Marianas Variety put i hinasso-ku siha gi este na impottante na fina'pos. Antes di gera i Amerikanu siha ma sangani i Chamorro na ti magahet i lenguahin-miyu, maolekna na en yite'. Despues di i gera, i meggaina na Chamorro ma kombensan maisa siha na maolekna ma yute' ha' i lenguahin-niha ya ma fa'na'gue i famagu'on-niha Fino' Ingles. Gi 1970s esta ilek-niniha i linguists na kumekematai i Fino' Chamorro. Gi pa'go na tiempo meggai na taotao ilek-niniha na esta matai i Fino' Chamorro. Pues kada Matso, anai mandana' i estudianten Guahan yan i CNMI gi UOG para i Inachaigen Fino' CHamoru, hafa na lenguahi ma u'usa? Fino' Haya' pat Fino' Taya'? Sina ta sangan na un milagro este na kompetasion,

I worked last year on a project for the Guam Humanities Council titled Sindalu: Chamorro Journey Stories in the US Military, and that topped off more than a decade of doing research and speaking and writing about the effects of militarization on Chamorros and their lands, and also about the central place that militarism as an ideology has in contemporary Chamorro life. This is why Guam is referred to as "the tip of the spear," and why it has been given a number of other nicknames over the years, such as USS Guam, Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier. It is why Liberation Day is the largest holiday on the island each year. It is why Chamorros are thought of as superpatriots sometimes, internally and externally, and why a documentary came out recently titled "Island of Warriors." This is also why Guam has been in the past 2/3 military bases and is today almost 1/3 military bases. This militarized core is understandable given Guam's history. When we look at the past. Wh

Biba Ha'anin Mannana! Happy Mother's Day! This Mother's Day I cannot help but think of my grandmother, Elizabeth Flores Lujan, who passed away last December. She exemplified for me so much of what is awesome about Chamorro culture and Chamorro women, even if at the same time she also endured under the problematic ways in which we conceive of women's power and women's roles in Guam within a Chamorro context. With each passing Mother's Day there are no doubt so many mentions and passing thoughts of our mothers and our grandmothers as maga'haga siha and empowered and women who kept their house and their family in line. Our memories are often filled with the moments of potent female power, where women who struggled much and put up with much, seemed to fill our family lives with quiet miracles. There are different ways in which these sorts of stories of minute female empowerment and the woman as the glue that holds families together emerges. The most comm

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

 Mina'tres na Lisayu for Elizabeth Flores Lujan 12/17/13 My grandmother would cut out anything in the newspapers related to Chamorro language. She gave me several reasons over the years for why she did this (other than her being a hoarder/collector), but once she said to me, that she was worried that the language would disappear from this island just as the songs of our birds had. This statement struck me because I had grown up in an island where the only birds I’d seem to hear were planes and helicopters flying overhead. For most my age the lack of birds is a piece of Guam trivia, a metaphor to use to talk about how fragile the state of the Chamorro people, or how we should be vigilante about what comes into our community, or a footnote to discussing the brown tree snake issue. For my grandmother and her generation the native birds of Guam were half of the soundtrack of life. If you imagine the singing that Chamorros did being the social opera, th

Mina'dos na Lisayu  My grandmother’s aunties were notorious in their day as “The De Leon Sisters” They were famous as teachers, nurses, opera singers and one of them even dated the boxer Jack Dempsey while he was on island. Grandma and her two sisters Ruth and Tonette became the next generation “De Leon Sisters.” Their mother would dress them in matching outfits and have them stroll around Hagatna. People would see them and remark that they were like ducks walking to the pond.  The De Leon girls were known for being beautiful, but my grandmother, at least to me, always insisted that she was unattractive and ugly. She was a shy girl and was only asked to dance once at her school social events, although she was so nervous she was worried she would soak the hands of the boy she was dancing with. She said that people always talked about her sisters Ruth and Tonette as being beautiful, but didn’t feel like anyone saw her as beautiful. I’ve spent years interviewing

--> The Chamorro language is as old as we are. It is an Austronesian language, which means it bear similarities to many languages throughout the Pacific and Southeast Asia. It connects us to those cultures even up until today. Here below is a short history of our language. Gof ti kabales este, lao para Hamyo ni' taitiningo' put i lenguahi yan i estoria-na, este un tinana' ha'. Puede ha' ya-mu, yan nina'malago' hao nu mas.  *************** In Ancient times the ability to use the Chamorro language creatively distinguished one above all others. At large gatherings, those who could recall in vivid details the glorious history of their family, twist phrases to make an opponent seem silly in debate, or create in a spontaneous moment a song that would evoke all sort of emotions, were considered to be the height of Chamorro society. The first grammar book for the Chamorro language was created by Pale' San Vitores. He became fluent in Chamor