NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

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

When I took Chamorro at the University of Guam I was fortunate in that for CM101 and CM102 I had the same professor, Peter Onedera. As I moved from one to the next there was a smooth transition, we picked up in the second semester easily from where we had left off the semester before. Other students however had different experiences. They would take one professor for CM101 and another for CM102 and often times they would find that two faculty from the same institution would start and end up at completely different for their courses. Even now as I teach Chamorro language at the University of Guam I have noticed these gaps. Sometimes they are minor, but sometimes they can be serious. Part of this problem is the lack of any standardized textbooks that instructors can use to help maintain a continuity between various levels of Chamorro. At present instructors use a variety of materials in order to teach their courses. The books created by Donald Topping, most famous for co-a

Read below to learn more about a project I will be working on for the next few years: I Ma’adahen i Fino Chamorro gi Koleho. ************************ UOG Received a 3-Year Federally Funded Grant to standardize the Chamorro language curriculum for post-secondary instruction; it also plans to produce a textbook for student use. Starting this Fall Semester, the University of Guam will begin this 3-year project funded by the Administration of Native Americans to create a standardized curriculum for teaching the Chamorro language at the college level. The project entitled   “I Ma Adahen i Fino’ Chamorro gi Koleho” or “The Preservation of the Chamorro Language at the Post-Secondary Level” will bring together the four colleges that currently offer Chamorro language in their curriculum to work together to determine a unified curriculum for instruction for four-semesters of Chamorro language. Dr. Faye Untalan is the Principal Investigator of this project.   The Cham

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