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

The one the reasons why so many scholars, activists and often times community members feel the need to rethink or rearticulate or reimagine "Liberation Day" is because of a recognition of hope integral it is or has been to our relationship to the US. World War II changed dramatically the relationship between the Chamorus of Guam and the US. It changed it somewhat from the US perspective, but it was dramatically altered from the Chamoru side of the equation. Chamorus who felt a clear distance to their colonizer, even if some were eager to be patriotic, prior to the war, emerged from the war eager to find whatever way possible to express their loyalty, their newfound attachment to America. But as I've written many times before, what Liberation Day does as the basis for Chamoru identity in an American context, is create the Chamoru as a subordinate subject, a minor footnote, that must always be superpatriotic for fear that America will withdraw funds, support, recognition an

As Pandemic Lockdown Continues on Island, Independent Guåhan will focus its April ONLINE General Assembly on the Importance of Sovereignty and honor Chamoru health care pioneer Amanda Guzman Shelton For Immediate Release, April 26, 2020 -  Independent Guåhan (IG) invites the public to attend its April General Assembly (GA), which will take place ONLINE through the group’s Facebook page on Thursday, April 30 th  from 4:00 – 5:30 pm.  The COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread across the world, with to date, more than 2 million sick. From Guam, we have seen a variety of responses to this crisis, from countries that have both effectively combated and contained the virus, and others where the virus has spread and resulted in a significant loss of life. In a crisis such as this, we on Guam are reminded of the importance of sovereignty, or the basic ability to self-govern and seek to dictate our place in the world and relationships to others.  As the world waits to see if things

Every week I get at least one request for an interview, several requests each week for information related to Guam history or the Chamoru language. Sometimes the requests can become a bit much, as I'm not able to get back to everyone. And sometimes I've responded to people close to a year later (ai lokkue'). But if I had more time I would respond to everyone I could, since the knowledge that I have or have access to, is useless unless there are ways it can get out to others.  After I gave a guest lecture in an English rhetoric class last year, one of the students contacted me asking for some help on understanding Hagåtña and its contemporary and historical place in Guam. I appreciated her wanting to know more about a village that most everyone takes for granted nowadays on Guam. So I wrote up responses to her 8 questions. Here they are below. ******************** 1. What makes Hagatna unique from other villages?  What makes Hagåtña unique is that because

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