NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

I have done so many interviews with older Chamorus that sometimes I lose track. Some interviews stay with me and I remember for the most part very clearly, others blend together. I have tapes. I have digital video. I have thousands of pages of notes in notebooks, in legal pads, in the margins of books and random scraps of paper. I have lost exact count of how many of these oral history interviews I have done, but it is well over 400 at this point.  In addition to these interviews that I've done personally, I also for many years had my students do simple interviews with elders. I have hundreds of these interviews as well, one of which I've included below from a student that I had for Elementary Chamoru 1, who interviewed her grandmother. Sometimes the Chamoru sayings or phrases that I share with my students or on social media come from these interviews.  I have so much in terms of raw material for these interviews, this cache of oral history, but I scarcely have time to do anyth

I collect as many things in the Chamorro language as I can. I have my students interview elders in Chamorro. I try to find everything online in Chamorro and cut and paste them into word documents. I have thousands of pages of photocopies children’s books and informational materials in Chamorro. I also, as much as I can try to write down or remember the things that people say to me. I have countless random pages from minutes of meetings, to the backs of student papers, to even napkins from restaurants, all of which have scribbles of Chamorro sentences on them. As I was trying to find some materials for my class tomorrow, I came across this excerpt from a conversation I had with an elderly Chamorro man last year. I really like its message. I may someday get this blown up and place it on my wall as a poster Hu faisen i lahi-hu, sa’ håfa malago’ hao umotro? Håfa na un tatitiyi i kustumbren Amerikånu? Ilek-ña tåya’ dangkolu na bidå-ta hun i Chamorro. Ilek-hu, lachi hao lah

For the past year I've had students working on the project "I Hinekka i Tiningo' i Manamko'" or the collection of the knowledge of the elders. I originally started this project with Victoria Leon Guerrero out of the need to collect some info and Chamorro sayings to be used in the text for the Guam Museum. It has evolved into a regular project that I incorporate into my Guam History and Chamorro language classes. As part of it students have to go out and interview fluent Chamorro speakers and ask them questions on the Chamorro language, sayings, unique words, and even nursery rhymes or legends they were told when they were young. Students are encouraged to ask other questions related to history, although I try to steer them away from asking questions about I Tiempon Chapones, since there has already been quite a bit of research done on that topic. It could be said that any story from our elders could be important, but I would rather focus my s

When I have my students do oral history projects with elder Chamorros, they often times groan and moan. They knew that Chamorros suffered in World War II and don't need to interview an old person to know it. They know they speak Chamorro fluently and don't need to ask them about it. I generally have my students focus their questions on certain things that elders may have heard or been exposed to when they were very young, which wouldn't necessarily be the things an ethnographer or anthropologist or historian would ask them. For example, one topic I am always interested in hearing about are legends or children's stories. What were the stories that the elders of today were told when they were kids? My students often groan about this because they assume that the stories that were told then were probably the same stories we tell today. So kids today can hear stories about Sirena, Gadao, Fu'una and Puntan and Duendes, these must be the same stories that people told t

When we look at the media landscape of Guam it is pretty simple. There are two main newspapers. Their ideological difference is sometimes stark, sometimes not. The PDN reflects a clear ideological agenda most of the time. They are the mainstream source of print media, the towering megalith and as such they tend to see their job as guiding the island and sometimes saving it from itself. The Marianas Variety is a worthy challenger at times, showing more ideological breadth and willingness to be critical of things the PDN is not. But the Variety is ultimately a challenger and something which is out there, but not read as much or supported as much in terms of advertising.  For TV there is a similar dynamic, with two stations offering daily news, KUAM and PNC. PNC offers more ideological flexibility, whereas KUAM often times appeared chained to the ideology of the political families and parties it is closely associated with. Some argue that PNC has a similar bias to the opposite side o

--> --> It is an old story. There are many different versions in many different cultures. One version goes like this: There is a family, mother, father and son. The mother is loving and caring while the father is angry and abusive. As the son grows older he comes to hate the dynamic in his family where his father is overbearing and monstrous and demeans and treats his mother (as well as the boy himself) terribly. He grows closer to his mother, loving her dearly and wishing that she could be spared this miserable life. He grows to hate his father. As soon as he is of age he moves out, unable to stand his father’s abuse any longer. From then on he tries to have as little contact with his home as possible. He still keeps in touch with his mother and wishes desperately she would leave her husband. In secret he hopes that his father’s anger will get the better of him and the world will be a better, more peaceful place if he would just pass away. Eventually t

For most people in life, the history of your family is something behind you and nowhere near as important as getting to work on time, getting kids through school, or watching to see who will win next on “The Voice.” It is something almost all will say has value, but like so many things, it gains the most value only after it is out of your reach. Stories of your family are always there as you drive on the road of life. You will see signs that hint at how you should ask grandma or grandpa questions about your family, but most people just keep on driving. Only when it is too late and you can’t ask those questions, then do you look into the rear view mirror with longing, wishing that you had stopped and wishing you had heard those stories while they were still alive. For most of my life on Guam, I spent it living in my grandparent’s house in Mangilao. From my grandfather, Joaquin Flores Lujan (Bittot) I have learned about Chamorro blacksmithing and how to make tools like the kamyo,

The past few weeks while I've been conducting the Hinekka i Tiningo' i Manamko' project for Chamorro Studies and the Guam Museum, I have naturally felt nostalgic for the days when I was conducting my thesis research for Micronesian Studies at UOG. I started off without any real focus as to what I wanted to research or write about, but just a feeling that I should talk to as many people as I can. The initial project I told people I was working on dealt with an analysis of political campaigning on Guam and how they have changed over the years. This became difficult however after most of the interviews I did with the key people in the 2002 Gubenatorial races didn't offer up anything very interesting. People talked alot, but no one said much that I felt was useless, it all chalked up to the usual platitudes as to why one person won and another person lost. During those interviews I asked to talk to people who could represent the golden age of politics on Guam, when it w