NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Since 2010 I have traveled to Okinawa just about every year. Usually I have gone with my friend Ed Alvarez. We first travelled to Okinawa together in 2012 to present at a number of conferences focusing on issues of demilitarization, indigenous rights and also decolonization. Ed was the Executive Director of the Guam Commission on Decolonization and had made some important connections to academics and protest groups. One of my goals at some point is to write an academic article about the ever-evolving conversation in Okinawa about decolonization and political status. It is fascinating and often goes far beneath the radar, as most focus on the demilitarization and anti US base protests. But since I have been traveling there, I have regularly heard the makings of a decolonization conversation. When I say this, I don't mean it looks the same or sounds the same, or takes the same shape as Guam's. I mean that for Okinawa, which faces a number of fundamental and structural issues ab

I first traveled to the United Nations to testify in 2007. I testified along with two other Marie Auyong and Rima Miles before the Fourth Committee on the situation in Guam. We came in the wake of a larger delegation the year before which featured Victoria Leon Guerrero, Julian Aguon, Sabina Perez, Fanai Castro, Tiffany Lacsado and Kerri Ann Borja. That trip represented a big moment in sort of post-nation Chamoru/Angel Santos activism in Guam and the diaspora. The trip first came from a conference in San Diego that I along with a few others had organized in April 2006 about decolonization and Chamoru issues. It was, as far as any of us could tell, the first of its kind in the diaspora. The gathering of so many critical and conscious Chamorus in one place led to a great number of things, one of which was a period of new engagement around the United Nations. Chamorus had been traveling on and off to the UN since 1982. There were high points, usually when the Government of Guam wanted

Next month I'll be back in Washington D.C. to resume my research about federal territorial relations that I began last year. Much of my focus last year was on Guam and its commonwealth movement, but as I conducted interviews and sifted through files, I also found more and more references to the commonwealth of the CNMI as well and found its evolution and devolution to be even more fascinating. Even just the contrast of reading about what has taken place there for the past few decades in federal documents versus local government is striking. Take for example when a number of sovereignty provisions that had been negotiated through the commonwealth were lost about ten years ago. This process was referred to the in CNMI as a "federalization," akin to a takeover by the federal government. Within the federal government however it was referred to as as normalizing of a relationship, whereby those provisions were considered to be only temporary and would eventually be done away

Gaige yu' giya Hong Kong para este na simåna. Guaha konferensia guini, ya hami yan si Isa para bei in fama'nu'i. Bai hu fannge' siempre put i hinanao-hu.

I am currently in St. Vincent and the Grenadines for the United Nations Committee of 24 Regional Seminar. I was invited to intend to speak as an expert on the situation in Guam and the Chamorro people's ongoing quest for self-determination and decolonization. This is my fourth time to be invited to speak at the UN C24 Regional Seminar, as I attended once in Ecuador in 2013 and then twice in Nicaragua in 2015 and 2016. I have never been to this part of the world before, meaning the Caribbean, and so I am excited not only to represent Guam, but also to learn more about the struggles for independence and decolonization that have ta ken place on these many islands. I'll be writing about the happenings of the regional seminar and my experiences under the theme of "Decolonization in the Caribbean." Watch this space over the next few weeks to read my posts.

I traveled to Japan last month with Ed Alvarez the Executive Director for Guam's Commission on Decolonization. We were in Japan for just a few days but we were able to give a number of talks at two universities in the Kansai area thanks to our friends Ronni Alexander (Kobe University) and Yasukatsu Matsushima (Ryukkoku University), who arranged our visits to their institutions of higher education. Our visit also got us some coverage in the newspapers Tokyo Shinbun and Chunichi Shinbun. I have no idea what they are saying in the articles or in this article below taken from the website for Ryukkoku Uniersity, but I am hoping they are either speaking positively about the message we had about decolonization in Guam or about the illustrious nature of my beard. Si Yu'us Ma'åse ta'lo nu si Ronni yan si Yasukatsu para i ayudon-ñiha gi este na hinanao! Gof ti apmam, lao gof gaibåli sinembatgo. ************* グアム政府事務局長、グアム大学教授による特別講義を開催（地域経済論ほか） 12/26/16 Ryukkoku Universit

Gaige yu' giya Grand Rapids, Michigan gi este na simåna para i kada såkkan na konferensia para i NASAA (National Assembly of State Arts Agencies). Gof umachågo' iya Guahan yan iya Michigan. Siña este i uttimo na sakkån-hu gi CAHA, nai sumesetbe yu' komo membron board desde 2011. Gi este na konferensia mandanña' membro ginen i arts council gi diferentes na states pat territories, ya ma diskuti hafa guaguaha put prugraman art siha gi i bånda Federåt. Ma diskuti lokkue' diferentes na strategies put i prublema yan chinanada siha i arts councils ma fafana' på'go.

My column for the Guam Daily Post about my most recent visit to Okinawa. There were some serious questions about the nature of Okinawan struggle for decolonization and their place in the global order as a people that were being discussed. I got to participate as much as I could in these talks, all adding more content to my research on their independence movement. ****************** --> “The Indigenous Idea” by Michael Lujan Bevacqua The Guam Daily Post March 16, 2016 Over the weekend I attended a symposium at Okinawa International University on the topic of whether or not the Okinawan people are “indigenous.” For some, this may seem like a strange question, as on the surface Okinawans seem to simply be Japanese. They look like Japanese, sound like Japanese, how could they be indigenous? A few decades ago, the idea of even considering Okinawans to be indigenous would have ranged from being ludicrous to heretical. This was due to a long period of coercive ass

I have returned from yet another trip to Okinawa. This was my sixth trip there in five years. I have been there for conferences, symposiums, research trips and consultations. Although I have mainly spent time on the main island of Okinawa, in its southern densely populated area, last year I was fortunate enough to attend a conference in Ishigaki Island to the south. I have amassed quite a few posts about each trip, talking about the things I have witnesses and the things I have been told about. I even used interviews from some of my trips to create episodes for the Guam-based public radio program Beyond the Fence.  I am considering, re-posting some of my favorite posts from my trips. We'll see if I actually sit down to do this, or if it just remains a thought in my head. 

Gumugupu Muna’mahålang yu’ Nu Hågu Yan i matå-mu Gaige chågo’ Guatu gi tano’-hu

Put i estaba yu' giya Hapon gi este na mes, ti meggai na tinige'-hu gi este na blog. Para unu na mes tinane' yu' nu asunto Hapon yan i fina'pos guihi, ya ti hu gof tatityi hafa masusesedi giya Guahan yan gi Estados Unidos. Lao pa'go matto yu' tatte para Guahan, ya achokka' bai hu konsigi tumuge' put i inaligao-hu giya Hapon, bai hu tutuhun kumukubre ta'lo otro na asunto, put hemplo i botasion para i presidente gi sanlagu. Desde humalom Si Trump gi i inacha'igi manatlibas todu. Esta kalang manracist i meggaina na taotao gi patidan Republican, lao manlasinehyo siha ni sinangan Trump. Ya mas oppan yan annok ayu na chinatli'e'. Estague ocho na puntan para taotao Asian (lao sina lokkue' Pacific Islanders) ni' taimanu sina ta nega (kontra) ayu na klasen kandidatu siha. **************** Here's 8 Ways Asian Americans Can Stand Up to Racist Presidential Candidates August 26, 205 by keithpr Republican presidentia

I will be in the Southern California area at the end of this month for the upcoming Chamorro Cultural Festival in San Marcos (on March 28th). I went out to it last year and did some outreach for UOG and Chamorro Studies and had a wonderful time. Since we are supposed to begin building our online certificate program in Chamorro Studies this summer, I felt it would be good to go back out and keep people up to date of what we've been doing and keep networking. In addition to the Chamorro Cultural Festival I'll also be helping with the FESTPAC diaspora auditions. Next year Guam will become the most important place in the Pacific for two weeks as it hosts the largest arts and culture festival in the region. For this event Guam CAHA is including a group of people from the diaspora as part of the delegation. These auditions and workshops will take place the day after the Chamorro Cultural Festival, the 29th in San Diego. I'll also be doing more UOG/Chamorro Studies outreach

During this trip to California I am meeting up with people I haven't seen in years, in some cases, I haven't seen or heard from them in close to a decade. It is interesting to experience the memories that people have of you after a long stretch of time. Are you frozen in time to them? Have they imagined  future for you even if it matches nothing that you have done since you last saw them? Today I met up with someone who heard me read poetry a long time ago in San Diego, when I was attending grad school at UCSD. We had only met a couple of times, but for him it was an important meeting because I was the first person from Guam, he had met, who talked about Guam in a critical way. He had heard me read a poem on Chamorros being a footnote to the American Empire. It is something that struck and stuck with him ever since. For me, I cling to moments like this, and I thread them together to create my personal necklace of relevance. It is so easy sometimes to feel like nothing I do

Esta gof apmam este na hinanao-hu, lao ti mismo munhayan. Matto di lamita ha'! Esta munhayan i fine'nina na patte. Lumiliko' yu' giya California ya hu bisita diferentes na inetnon Chamorro guihi. Na'yafai este sa' sumugon yu' gi kareta para 1000 na miles gi tres dihas ha'. Pa'go mafatto yu' giya Ecuador. Para bei hu fama'nu'i guini gi i UN Regional Seminar. Para bai hu fa'nu'i i kumiti put i estao pa'go giya Guahan, ya bai hu apatte siha ni' inaligao-ku put i "decolonial deadlock." Estague i inatan ginnen i kuato-ku gi i hotet.

The past few weeks have been crazy. You may or may not have noticed this on the lack of posting. The sparse amount of posts in no way means that I haven’t been doing anything. The truth is the opposite, I have been doing way to much lately. Sen tinane’ yu’, ya esta liso yu’ para bei lalango. I am working on two Administration for Native American Grants. One to standardize Chamorro curriculum at the college level. The other to create a publishing house at the University of Guam that will publish Chamorro children’s books. I’m not writing them alone, but for those familiar with ANA grants, there always seems to be an endless amount of workplans, appendixes and so on to tweak and fine tune. Another grant that I need to finish by next month is for the Guam Preservation Trust, and is requesting support to hold a mini-conference in the fall on language and culture shifts amongst Chamorros today. I am working with Faye Untalan, who teaches Chamorro at UOG on th

I haven't posted for the past few days because I've been so busy with my trip to Okinawa. Here is the symposium that I participated in yesterday. I'll be writing much more about it later, but for now I need to pack and head back to Guam.

I'm heading to Okinawa today for another conference. This time I'll be speaking at Okinawa International University and also talking during a town hall meeting in Ginowan City. The topics once again will be decolonization and demilitarization, things that I have researched extensively in the context of Guam, but have been researching in an Okinawan context since last year. I'm sure I'll be posting while I'm there.

When I visited Okinawa last year I was fortunate enough to visit a language school started by a group of activists who are working towards the revitalization of Uchinaguchi or the main dialect of Okinawa. I had met most of them over the years at conferences in the states or on solidarity trips around the Asia-Pacific region. I was impressed with their grassroots efforts and in the year since they even received a small government grant to provide stipends for the community members who were offering their time to teach the classes. In these classes parents and children would work together to learn the language. Unfortunately when I visited last week the school was on vacation and wouldn't start again for several weeks. I thought it would be nice to share some of the photos I took last year. Part of the benefit of these types of trips is not only the inspiration you can feel from seeing people who at work who are committed and dedicated. It is also important to learn about each othe

“Okinawa Part 3” Michael Lujan Bevacqua Marianas Variety 3/6/13 This coming week I’ll be in Okinawa. This will be my third trip there in the past year and a half. For my first trip I joined a delegation of Chamorros who attended the Japan Peace Conference, an annual gathering organized by peace activists. Different prefectures take turns hosting the conference, the only condition being that it must be held in an area with “contested” US military facilities. Last year I travelled with Ed Alvarez, the Executive Director of the Commission on Decolonization and former Senator Marilyn Manibusan on a weeklong speaking tour to different universities and community groups. The focus for this trip was “decolonization.” We often hear about Okinawa through the concept of “demilitarization,” since almost 1/5 of the main island is US military bases. As the bases are both a scar of the war that engulfed hundreds of thousands of Okinawans and a testament to their