NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

After attending a conference where everyone couldn't stop talking about Ferdinand Magellan for three days straight, I could not help but think about one of the more intimate ways that the explorer has been invoked within my family. Many Chamoru families will mention Magellan in the usual ways, as the source of civilization, Christianity or modernity, as the limit of Chamoru existence, where prior to Magellan there is primitivity and savagery. They may mention him generically as being the first colonizer or the beginning of the end for the Chamoru people, even though he did not directly colonize Guam, and such a process would begin more than 140 years later under the guidance of Påle' San Vitores.  The interesting way that my family and in particular my grandfather Tun Jack Lujan, the late Chamoru Master Blacksmith would bring in Magellan's gifts, was through the metaphor of metal. Metal is always brought into play to provide meaning to the early years of European con

This article about my grandfather, the Chamorro Master Blacksmith Joaquin Flores Lujan or "Tun Jack" was first published in the Pacific Daily News on October 14 and October 21, 2016. I have been missing my grandparents like crazy since they passed away in 2013 and 2015, and sometimes only writing about them can help me overcome the sadness I feel.  December is always difficult, as this is the month that grandma, Elizabeth Flores Lujan, passed away three years ago. This is also a difficult month emotionally because of all the family emphasis and for Chamorros, the fact that December 8th represents when our elders, i mamparientes-ta, i manamko'-ta, were swallowed into the beast of a great war.  I keep writing about my grandparents because I find myself remembering things that I struggle with at other times. It don't know why that is the case, perhaps it is because I feel more secure in the fact that as I am writing/typing, I am keeping their stories live. Kee

National Endowment for the Arts For Immediate Release March 23, 2015 It is with great sadness that the National Endowment for the Arts acknowledges the passing of 1996 National Heritage Fellow Joaquin Flores Lujan, a blacksmith who helped to preserve Guam's blacksmithing past, an aspect of the island's Chamorro culture that combines Spanish colonial and local influences. Joaquin "Jack" Flores Lujan was born March 20, 1920, in Guam. He was the only child to learn the art of blacksmithing from his father, who in turn had learned the skills from his uncle. He mastered the graceful lines and fine finishes of the short Guamanian machete with inlaid buffalo horn or imported Philippine hardwood handles; the preferred angle and bevel of the fosino (hoe); and the practical applications of the other tools. As late as the World War II era, blacksmithing played an essential role in Guam. But the time-consuming work of learning the craft and the