NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

This November I am once again participating in ChaNoWriMo or as its known elsewhere as NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month or Chamorro Novel Writing Month. This means that this blog sadly will not be receiving much attention. During this month, the challenge is to write 50,000 words of your novel. For me, I am continuing my long-standing story titled "The Legend of the Chamurai." I first started it in 2011 and I've been writing parts of it every November since then. The story so far has spanned over 500 years and a host of characters. It has spanned from the world of the dead, to Okinawa and Taiwan, to the Caroline Islands and to the northern islands of the Marianas. At present, I am writing sections of a great challenge that involves a unique or mysterious task on each of the Marianas Islands. Three champions sailing up the island chain, fighting monsters or finding artifacts on each island. Very fun, getting to use different aspects of the islands to come up w

Its that time of year on Guam, where perceived Chamorro debts to the United States balloon out of control and Chamorro attempts to prove their understanding and love for their debts and subordination appear to reach such maddeningly levels that what they owe to the United States seems to become infinite and eternal. Sina ta sangan na unu ha’ na dibin taotao diptosi taiguihi. Lao para i Chamorro siha, guaha dos. Unu para Si Yu’us, i otro para Si Uncle Sam. What else could I be referring to save for Liberation Day. A day that we could argue colonizes annually the month of July, but in truth, the notion that it was a liberation is something that has played a huge role in colonizing most every aspect of Chamorro time and space. I ma’pos, i pa’go yan i mamaila. Around the world, “liberation days” or commemorations of a liberation are very common, but Guam’s version of it can often seem like a strange bewildering experience. In most contexts elsewhere, a liberation day is a

Last year when I attended this same regional seminar in Nicaragua, I wrote a series of posts about my time here under the title of " Quest for Decolonization ." I've listed each of the posts below with easy links for those who might be interested in reading them. I touched on a variety of issues, such as United Nations politics, the history of Nicaragua and the life in contemporary colonies.  These sorts of writing projects are important for me. So much happens when I travel and it can be difficult to keep track of everything, even if I record interviews and take plenty of notes. Quest for Decolonization #1: Tinituhon Quest for Decolonization #2: Statement from the UN Secretary General Quest for Decolonization #3: Small Lands, Big Dreams Quest for Decolonization #4: The Most Famous Chamorro of All... Quest for Decolonization #5: The List Quest for Decolonization #6: Liberation Theology with Father Miguel D'Escoto Quest for Decolonization #7: Decolonial D

Ginen i blog "The Islander." Estague i palabras-ña i kantan KC Leon Guerrero, i na'ån-ña "Nangga Yu'." Gof ya-hu ayu na blog, hu diseseha na i dueñu para u na'lå'la' gui' ta'lo, sa' gof maolek na hinekka para palabras kantan Chamorro. ***************** Nangga Yu' Este ta'lo ginen as KC i kanta Nangga yu' http://youtu.be/97CNdG6faO0 Kirida bai hu mapressu pago- Darling they're arresting me today Sa hu a punta i pakikku gi tinderu- Because I put the gun to the store owner Lao ayu neni chinileku- Because baby I did it ni aniyu ilekmu mas yamu- for the ring you said you liked Munga umasagua kirida nangga yu'- Don't marry darling wait for me Nangga yu' sa ti apman yu guatu- Wait for me I'll be back soon Nangga yu sa ti apman bai hu fatto- Wait for me because I'll come back soon Makonne yu' gi gima para Hagatna-They took me from my home to Hagatna Ha godde nen

On days when I am so busy I barely have time to think or learn anything, I appreciate Rachel Maddow and the Maddow Blog on the MSNBC website. Some wonderful person, posts each of their articles to Facebook, and so at moments when I am breezing through peoples' pages, liking random things, I click on the Maddow Blog posts and it updates me on various things involving Democratic/Liberal/Progressive topics in the United States. Ti hu tungo' hayi si Steven Benen, lao milagro gui gi lina'la'-hu. Kada diha mamange' gui' put kosas pulitikat gi sanlagu ginen i inatan Inakague pat Progressive. Fihu an guaha finaisen-hu put este na gayu pat ayu na gayu, umannok chaddek unu na tinige'-na gi i Maddow Blog, kalang esta ha tungo' hafa malago'-hu.  *************** Christie: Americans have a president ‘who we don’t know’ 01/08/16 04:32 PM facebook twitter 3 save share group 29 By Steve Benen http://www.msnbc.c

-->  According to my tracking statistics for this blog, a large number of people visit one of these pages based on searches related to Guam and its military buildup. My assumption is that some of these people are journalists looking into the issue, a few more may be scholars, as my blog has been quoted in several dozen academic publications on the topic. The majority are students working on research papers, either in Guam or elsewhere about the major concerns for the military buildup and putting together pro or con arguments. In the spirit of this Christmas and future Christmases, I thought I'd post a couple more articles to help those with future research paper needs. These are a few articles that I've used in papers or presentations to make certain important points. ********************* DEIS rouses youth activism Monday, 11 Jan 2010 05:02am Marianas Variety By Zita Taitano DYNAMIC young community voices are starting to rise above the public compla

Adios Siñot Torres by Michael Lujan Bevacqua Guam Daily Post October 14, 2015 I spent last week asking several dozen people about the favorite classical musical choices of an eighty-eight-year-old Chamorro man who had just passed away. It was a saddening, sobering, but also inspiring experience. Jose Mata Torres, a man I’ve spent the last two years working with, passed away on September 28. Through the Chamorro Studies program at UOG, I assisted him with the researching, writing, editing, and eventual publishing of his memoir “ Massacre at Atåte .” The book recounts not only his general wartime experiences but also a truly heroic event where he was among a group of men in Malesso’ who rose up and killed or drove off the Japanese in their village in July 1944. I feel privileged to have helped him publish this book, which, he joked, schoolchildren may be forced to read for generations to come. When I learned of his passing, I immediately felt the

The image above is drawn from the universe of Starcraft 2 or as I refer to it in Chamorro " Sahyan Estreyas Dos."      One of the reasons the Chamorro language is dying is because it isn’t used for that many things. I try my best in my personal and professional life to use the language for everything or for as many things as I can. This is one instance. Many Chamorros today will draw a line between their "Chamorro" side or their Chamorro identity and the popular cultural forms, such as video games, movies, books, comics and so on, that they enjoy on a day to day basis in what they often feel is very fundamentally different. For me though, those other popular cultural things are not the enemy of the Chamorro language, but universes and domains in which we can extend the language into, find ways to make it at home there, and to expand our own possibilities with our language. Make no mistake, the Chamorro language is a real language, but over the past century,

Life has been keeping away from this blog for the past two weeks. It is upsetting because I haven't been able to finish up all the drafts I started for my "Quest for Decolonization" series. I am hoping to find time before the end of the month, but things are so up in the air right now. I'm teaching five hours everyday and then have film commitments, family commitments, writing commitments, activism commitments, government commitments and a host of other obligations. I have kept this blog going for more than 10 years now and so I promise that I will return to wrap things up. This year's Regional Seminar for the UN was different than any of the other experiences I've had with the United Nations and I want to be sure that I can articulate more of my thoughts. So keep coming back to this blog for the next few weeks, I have a few more things to share about my recent trip and Guam's continuing quest for decolonization.

I spent a year working on getting the book "Massacre at Atate" by Jose M. Torres published. It is a first hand account of one of the few times during the Japanese occupation of Guam that the Chamorro people openly resisted and fought back. There are countless instances of Chamorros passively resisting, but this was one of the few moments that I've been able to collect where you can point to Chamorros using violent resistance to protect themselves. There are only a few men left who took up arms against the Japanese in July 1944 and Mr. Torres was one of the youngest at that time. We had a reading in Malesso' a few weeks ago in the historic Merlyn G. Cook school. This was a followup to the large book launch that we had in February which was attended by close to 300 people. I came across this account of the book launch, that I wanted to share here: *********************** http://micronesianmission.blogspot.com/2015/02/wwii-historical-lecture-more-than-w

I completely neglected this during the past year, even though I would remember it every once in a while. 2014 was the ten-year anniversary of the starting of this blog, "No Rest for the Awake - Minagahet Chamorro." I first began it in 2004, while I was preparing for graduate school in San Diego, California. At that time I was running several websites with the help of a few other people, some of whom I haven't been in contact with for close to ten years. It was a place for me to vent thoughts, share ideas, get the word out about things. It has been by now something that countless high school, middle school and college students use for their research papers. It is something that even other scholars have used on occasion for theoretical points. I have posted on this blog 2121 times and it has been visited over 900,000 times. Over the course of this blog's life I have had two children, finished a Ph.D., lost both my grandmothers, testified at the United Nation

Body Matters   Keira Knightley's latest photoshoot is a protest against all the Photoshopping she's ever received   Kit Steinkellner November 4, 2014   When you think of a protest, you tend to think of picket signs, sit-ins, rhyming chants,and so on and so forth. What you usually DON’T think of is a topless celebrity photo shoot. However, that’s exactly what actress Keira Knightley had done with her recent photo shoot for Interview —she turned her shoot into a protest. She posed topless for the magazine on the condition that Interview would not enlarge her breasts in post-production, something that apparently happens to Knightley’s photographs constantly. Case in point, check out the (virtual) boob job Knightley received when she was featured as Guinevere on the poster of her 2004  film King Arthur. That is a cup size difference for sure. If I were Keira Knightley I’d be weirded out by my body always looking like someone else’s body every time I

I haven't been posting as much on my blog this month because so much of my writing energy has been going into NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. I reached the halfpoint point of my novel of 50,000 words two days ago and so I feel glad to have made it that far, but bad that I haven't been giving much word love to my blog. This month, I am pushing a variation of NaNoWriMo called ChaNoWriMo, or Chamorro Novel Writing Month, I'll be writing more about it later, although I did mention it in my Marianas Variety column a few weeks back. For those who want to know more about NaNoWriMo or want to participate check out www.nanowrimo.org and sign up. Come and join the rest of us writers in Elsewhere: Micronesia if you are looking for a small but dedicated community to write with. As part of NaNoWriMo, each region gets a municipal liaison. It is her job to give people info, keep them motivated and organize write-ins. Below is a message about reaching the halfway point from

A friend of mine Jesse is planning on creating a blog for collecting Chamorro song lyrics. I fully support her in this endeavor. Creating something like this would be a huge public service for the Chamorro community, not just on Guam, but everywhere. One of the main reasons that brings people to my blog is the presence of lyrics for some Chamorro songs here. There aren't many and they have been posted in scattered ways over the years. Everyday a Chamorro somewhere in the world searches for the lyrics to one of the most famous contemporary Chamorro songs "Apo Magi" by J.D. Crutch. As a result they tend to end up somewhere on this blog. I have some Johnny Sablan lyrics here as well. Music is the key way the Chamorro language has survived, even if it has started to die out in so many other facets of Guam life. It is something that even those don't speak the language enjoy and appreciate. It has helped keep the language as something you hear around the island. You c