NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

 

"I Ilun Pale'" Michael Lujan Bevacqua Marianas Variety 12/3114 This week, a very intriguing, almost ironic historical twist will be visiting Guam, with the arrival of the skull of Påle’ Manuel Solorzano, a Jesuit priest who was killed by Chamorros in 1684 during the period when some Chamorros were still resisting the Catholic intrusion into their lives. I say ironic for many reasons, but chiefly among them is the fact that the preserving of this skull represents the precise thing that the Spanish priests were so keen on eradicating. The Chamorro religion of this time was centered around ancestral worship, or the revering of the spirits of your relatives who had passed away. By revering them Chamorros believed that these spirits, these aniti or manganiti could help Chamorros by protecting them and help them in their day to day activities such as making it rain for crops, helping catch fish, or being brave in battle. For Chamorros, thei

This video is very inspiring. It captures well a type of native nationalism, born from culture and heritage, but containing political elements. The relationships between the cultural and the political is something that I have written about endlessly on this blog. I even featured some discussion on it in my dissertation because so much of the way I see Chamorro life and the lives of so many indigenous people operating today revolves around the relationship between that which is deemed political and that which is deemed cultural. When the world was cut into pieces with meat sucked from the bones of so many native peoples the new world born from that violence was divided in fundamental ways, usually conceived in binary ways, which the positive being the purview of those with guns, steel, crosses and flags and whatever was left sticking to those who lost land, language, culture and lives. In the world of today, this "modern" world, those who lost that carving up of the world ar

--> It is a surreal experience being a "professor" and a "doctor" in the sense of being an academic. Although I have the degrees and the background to give these labels the appropriate meaning, I still feel first and foremost that I am actually an artist. My sensibilities and my approaches to almost everything are more like that of an artist than that of a scholar. I constantly learn towards creativity and innovation rather than seeking the usual stability of disciplinary sheltering that characterizes most academics. This is why even though my career and so much of my reputation is tied to things such as development of Chamorro language programs, curriculum, Guam History research and the development of programs related to Chamorro culture and identity, I still yearn to create "art." I try my best to force it into the things I do, but I also want to actually create art in the sense of comic books, writing fiction and often times just painting a

Este i kannai i dos ni' pumoksai yu. Para i manmofo'na na Chamorro siha, i kannai un gof impottante na simbolu put i guinaiya i saina-mu, ko'lo'lo'na i famalao'an na manaina-mu. Anggen matai un sen presisu yan ti tulaikayon na palao'an put hemplo Si Nana'-mu pat i Nanan Biha-mu, siempre para un chule' i te'lang i kannai-na. Para todu i manmatai un chule' i ha'i'guas, sa' ayu i ankla, ayu muna'chechetton i anten-niha para i tano' i familai. Lao para un sen mangge' na palao'an ni' gumu'ot yan fuma'maolek i meggai na patte gi i familia, i mas takhilo' na simbulo i tel'ang kannai.

Every time I would travel to Japan I would be asked several things as to where I came from. #1: People would ask me if I was Ainu, the indigenous people of Japan who the government and most people pretended to be non-existent for quite a while. #2: I was from Hokkaido. I have no idea what people from Hokkaido look like, but if I was to imagine myself as some sort of Japanese person, it would be from Hokkaido. #3: People regularly asked if I was from Okinawa. I had no idea for years as to why people thought I might be from Okinawa. Even when I was living in the states I would sometimes meet Okinwans who thought I might be Okinawa. I would never begrudge people their mistakes. Being Okinawa sounds pretty cool, and besides when I travel places, it doesn't matter where, I constantly think that anyone around me could be Chamorro. I've asked some people in Okinawa so far, why people might mistake me as one of them? They have laughed and said I do look Okinawa, and the only

This week in World History we discussed the great debate over how people came into the Pacific thousand of years ago. Since so much of modern knowledge is based on European ideas, there was a consensus for a very long time that the only way in which the islands in the Pacific could have been peopled was through constant and regular, accidents and drift voyages. Since, so much of Europe was based on its ties to the land and the earth, and so much of discursive ascension of Europe, its elevation above the world was tied to the way it conquered the Ocean, it was inconceivable that people before Magellan, Columbus, De Gama and others could have braved the unknown and rather frightening ocean. Ko'lo'lo'na yanggen ti manaotao Uropa siha. Especially if they weren't Europeans. Since by the time Europeans came into the Pacific, there had been people living there for thousands of years, they could not have beaten the Europeans to them by using their own skills. Remember, people

On January 30th, 2009 the remains of 88 Ancient Chamorros which were discovered and unearthed during the remodeling of the Fiesta Hotel in Tumon were re-interned at a small monument near the hotel's parking lot. The monument was small, and contained several spelling errors in the Chamorro text used in it. In many ways it was a sad and pathetic commentary on the treatment of ancient remains in Tumon over the past thirty years. Development there and around the island has disturbed an unknown number of sites of Ancient villages, and in most cases the construction companies never reveal what they've found. Those who do or those who get caught however usually end up creating some sort of small, token memorial. I wrote about this issue last year for GU Magazine, in an article titled " Searching for a Slingstone ." For that piece I was writing specifically about the expansion at the Okura Hotel, which had disturbed the remains of 350 Ancient Chamorros, and a small scandal

September 12, 2008 Open letter by Kanaka Maoli Scholars Against Desecration As Kanaka Maoli professors and scholars we write to publicly condemn the state-sponsored desecration of a Native Hawaiian burial site at Wainiha, Kaua`i resulting from the construction of a new home at Naue Point by California businessman Joseph Brescia. For years Brescia has been trying to build a home on top of our ancestral graves despite a litany of environmental, legal and community challenges to his construction. In 2007 Brescia unearthed and then covered over the bones of our ancestors when he began clearing the area. The illegal and immoral disturbance and desecration of our ancestors’ remains must stop now. The Hawai`i revised statute 711-1107 on Desecration specifically states that no one may commit the offense of desecrating "a place of worship or burial," and the statute defines "desecrate" as "defacing, damaging, polluting, or otherwise physically mistreating in a way

I was searching for a slingstone. It is an artifact, an ancient weapon that one rarely finds just lying around Guam, however today I am saddened to find a place where I there are plenty of them. Peering through the gaps in a fence made of orange plastic which guards the multi-million dollar remodel for the Okura Hotel, I see scattered and crushed beneath backhoes and bulldozers fragments of the slingstones I am seeking. These sights of development are becoming more common on Guam, in anticipation of the massive military increases the island is expecting over the next few years. Vague but monstrously huge sums of money are being dangled before the people of Guam by local business leaders as well as Federal and military officials, and people are clamoring both on and off of Guam to get a piece of the action. Around the island we see the halom tano’ (jungle) being cleared and the tåno’ (land) being hollowed out. In places such as Okura, the excavation is resulting in huge collections of A