NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Below is an account of the death of Ferdinand Magellan, on the island of Mactan in 1521. I've been reading different historians and their interpretation of the events and where they situate his death in the context of his personality and his behavior. At the conference that I was at in Madrid last month, there was quite a bit of myth-making around Magellan. Some of it is deserved, as he did guide a voyage that was into water unknown to Europeans. But the success of his mission has a tendency to lead historians to make generalizations of greatness. Many historians take the flaws in Magellan's character and then argue that they were actually strengths because of the time that he lived in and because of the obstacles, both geographic and human that he faced. For example, Magellan's tactics in dealing with the concerns or the fears of his men, is argued to be a strength since he was dealing with medieval and pre-modern superstitions about the world that he refused to let ru

For those wanting to learn more about decolonization and independence, the Independent Guåhan is offering Faninåyan meetings or small discussion groups in the community. If you, your family or your friends want to get more information, we'll work with you to set up a meeting date and we'll bring information and resources. The term faninåyan comes from the word "ina" which means to shine a light on something, but can also be used in terms of purification and enlightenment. Check out this video for more information or email independenguahan@gmail.com if you'd be interested in hosting a faninåyan.

I've been scrounging the internet looking for good articles about the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the public's response. It is such a difficult things to make sense of, because while for some it is very simple, crazed terrorists attacked some cartoonists and police because of cartoons, and the end of the discussion is everyone stand tall claiming "Guahu Si Charlie lokkue'!" from their cellphones, ipads and Facebooks. But in the larger scheme of things, this generally isn't productive. You can focus in on this one instance, but such can be deceptive, it can prevent you from seeing how that may actually change or help little. It is easy to look at the relationship between societies and say this society is bad and this is good. This society allows this while the other does not. In terms of free speech there are definitely key differences between some Western and some Islamic societies. But if you are truly trying to improve things, you also have to acknowledge the

The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon is one of the books that has had a huge impact on me. You can interpret this book to be so many things, although people traditionally focus on the call for violent nationalist revolutions as a means of decolonization. For me I have used Fanon's work, in particular this book in order to articulate so many of my own ideas about social change, in particular in Guam. He wrote a time when decolonization was a tide and it was something that he both channeled and rode. In the context of that time, but also even today when so much of the world has banished his writing to echoes of a bloody and mistaken past, there is still so much power behind them. Here is his last chapter, his conclusion to The Wretched of the Earth, which more than anything shows the humanist and idealist of Fanon, and the promise that decolonization always holds. ************************ Now, comrades, now is the time to decide to change sides. We

The concept of Liberation is something so intimate to Guam, but the way it is intimate here is so skewed that I find it so tragic sometimes. Liberation in the non-religious sense comes in the past few centuries of human thought and human events. As humans begin to see themselves as possessing things which are either God-given or exist apart from the direct machinations of a grand deity, they see themselves as having other abilities save for those that come from God's design. For example, if you believe strongly that God has an order for everything, or that everything should be left up to him or her, than why do you attempt to improve yourself or change your lot in life? If you are born poor, should you stay poor? If you are born rich, shouldn't you stay rich? Religion generally stands in the way of changing the world because even if the world appears to be wrong or unfair, there is a world behind the world we cannot perceive or appreciate, and therefore it is best that we leave

Victoria Leon Guerrero, Leevin Camacho and myself will be speaking at a teach-in at the University of Guam this Thursday on the importance of protecting the historic Pagat region here on Guam, which if the Department of Defense gets is way, will have five live-fire training ranges built on the bluff above it. The teach-in is being organized by UOG's F.I.T.E. Club a student organization which stands for Free Inquiry Towards Enlightenment. The poster for the meeting is below. Yanggen sina hao gi este mamaila na Thursday, put fabot fatto. 5:30 pm, Room 306 in the HSS Building at UOG. ************************

I got an email the other day which featured the "purest" example of ideology I've seen in quite a while. It contained an email that had been sent to my friend (who I won’t name in case she wants her identity kept secret) from a “Marxist” professor which basically attacked her for not being Marxist enough. I only know some of the context, but she had just recently helped organize an Ethnic Studies summit in San Diego and so the listserv for the conference has been the site for a lot of pointless posturing, of which this purely ideological email is a perfect example. Reading the snarky, snippy Marxist email was both hysterical and depressing. It represented on the one hand something so hilarious in the way in which the author took himself and his orthodox defense of Marxist theory, thought and intellectualism so seriously. It was depressing because it made him look like someone so sublimely out of touch with reality and even the nature of the very theories he was shrou

One of my favorite lectures to give in my World History 2 class is the one on Haiti. Especially since the earthquake there earlier this year, I find it truly important to break the silence that surrounds Haiti and its revolutionary history. I was appalled at how through months of coverage over Haiti by media in the United States, the narrative was always the same, tragedy in a third world country. Collapse in a place where collapse and disaster is a way of life. The valiant efforts by the first world in recognizing that suffering and taking steps to alleviate it, to help those helpless souls. Given the scent of human suffering its understandable that they take this angle, but what was left out of their coverage, the historical aspects was also expected but still nonetheless horrifying to watch (or rather to not watch). The media's purpose in this case was to help the people of the US "discover" Haiti. the concept of discovery is always interesting. It has the aura of lea