NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

While in Valladolid, on a chilly afternoon, I walked through a house with cramped staircases and low hanging doorways. There were small beds in darkened corners. Aged chairs and paintings. Iron pots and kitchen implements. No doubt much of what was in there, had been placed for effect, but you could still feel the age. This house is known as Case de Cervantes, it was a home where the writer Miguel Cervantes stayed in the early 17th century. Today it is a small museum that features small bits of information about the writer's life. You will also find similar Case de Cervantes in other parts of Spain. Miguel Cervantes is best known for his book Don Quixote, and called the greatest writer in the Spanish language and the first modern novelist. Historians of nationalism are always quick to remind us that the political history of a place doesn't have as much of a role in creating national identity as historians usually imply. Arts and culture, can play a much more profound role i

The first book that I bought for my daughter, prior to her even being born was a children's book that focused on the tale of the slaves who killed their captors aboard the ship The Amistad and after a long legal struggle were allowed to return to Africa. I only read it to her a few times over the years because the subject matter was difficult and the historical and racial politics difficult to unpack. Over the years I've tried to do the same with other books, especially liking to read to the kids books that focus on the experiences of Native Americans and African Americans. Parenting is a convoluted endeavor no matter what ethical commitments you do or do not feel. There are always problems, limitations, blindspots and ways in which your best intentions or goals backfire. But pushing your children to accept difficult truths and also feel the both responsibility and capacity to change things for the better is essential. It is one reason why, in my own creative works, includi

For a few hours on the last day of the UN C24 Regional Seminar, we were given a tour of some historic locations around Kingstown, the capitol of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. This image is from a canon in Fort Charlotte, which was built high atop a hill overlooking the capitol by the British in the late 18th century. As we toured the fort, our Vincentian guide shared many colorful, sometimes humorous and sometime tragic stories about his island's colonization. He connected the struggles today, to those of the past. He echoed what so many had told us over the week we and other experts and foreign delegates were in the country, that everywhere you go, you see the legacies of native genocide and African slavery. From the fort's battlements he showed us failing banana plantations, areas where underground economies are surging, the divisions between rich and poor neighborhoods around Kingstown and even incorporated some Caribbean musical lyrics as well. When I took this pi

The start of each UN Committee of 24 Regional Seminar usually begins with a type of plenary or keynote speech/statement. This is usually a prominent political leader or activist from the country or region that is hosting the seminar or a high-ranking elected official of the host government. As this year's seminar is in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, attendees were treated to a speech by the country's Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves. His speech moved in and out of a variety of different topics, although there was one part that struck closest to home for me. Early on in his remarks he discussed his country achieving their independence almost 40 years earlier. He said that while he was a child raised in colonialism, he had grown into maturity through fighting for independence. For many countries, the birth of their nationhood is far in the past and so those who invoke it, do so across great temporal and rhetorical distance. But for a variety of former colonies, your independence

When George W. Bush was President, he was hardly a socially or politically polished individual on the surface. Despite coming from a very wealthy and elite background, and attending elite institutions of education his manner and appearance was that of a folksy gentlemen. The type of person you might want to BBQ with and share alcoholic beverages with, but maybe not have in charge of the United States of America. The US has had a variety of Presidents, all except one white, many of them lawyers, all men, most of them coming from a political background, meaning they had served in some capacity in government. Their demeanor could be quite different, in that their approach to how to interact with people or with their staff could range widely. But all, including those who might appear to be more "folksy" and "unpolished" nonetheless retain a seriousness. The weight of the office affects their personality. It drives them to be better, or at least appear to be better as

Unu na parehu na sinisedi para hami yan i nobia-hu Isa, na dumangkolo ham gi kumunidat ni' gof gaihinengge yan umeskuela ham gi eskuela ni para i manggaihinengge lokkue'. Para guiya, Lutheran gui'. Para Guahu SDA. Lao gi i kareran-mami gi lina'la', in dingu ayu na lina'la. Hunggan manhohongge yu' gi aniti, yi'us yan todu ayu siha, lao ti parehu yan antes. Gi inestudia-hu gi koleho yan i intaitai-hu/inaligao-hu komo academic, pa'go na meggai mas meggai na tiningo'-hu put i diferentes na hinenggen taotao, lao ti sina dumichosu yu' nu unu na hinengge pat guma'yu'us. Gi i klas-hu put Estorian Mundo, sesso hu kefa'nu'i i estudiante-ku siha put na ti kabales todu i sisteman hinengge gi hilo' tano'. Achokka' un sen hongge na i gima'yu'us Katoliko i mas kabales na rilihon, gi i inestudian estoria, sina ta li'e' na ti uniku ayu na rihilon. Ha a'ayao meggai gi estoria-na yan i kustumbre-na ginen otro ma

This image is taken from the play Pågat, written by myself and Victoria Leon Guerrero and directed by Michelle Blas. The play was performed at UOG in the Spring of 2014 and received a great deal of attention from the local community. The choreography for the play came from Master of Chamorro Dance Vince Reyes, who has been touring the world recently as a prominent Chamorro folk artist with his group Inetnon Gefpago. This image in particular comes from what he calls the silhouette dance, which was performed to the tune of "Safe and Sound" by Taylor Swift, except sung in Chamorro. It portrays a Chamorro woman during World War II being beaten and raped by a Japanese soldier. She is able to endure however through the help of other women, who support her. The issue of comfort women and sexual violence on Guam has always been something on the edge of my academic consciousness, as during my oral history research it would also pop up, albeit in vague and impossible to pursue ways.

The Michigan GOP's War on 'A People's History' by Matthew Kovac September 3, 2015 Common Dreams Michigan State Senator Patrick Colbeck is at it again. Back in 2013, Colbeck sponsored a bill calling for schools to institute a  Patriot Week  that would indoctrinate students with nationalist and militarist “history” lessons. Now, in a series of red-baiting  Facebook   posts , Colbeck is railing against late civil rights activist and historian Howard Zinn and the use of his book A People’s History of the United States in Michigan classrooms. First published in 1980, A People’s History popularized “history from below” by emphasizing the struggles of those overlooked by mainstream historical accounts: indigenous people, African Americans, women, and working people. In the decades since its publication, this bottom-up approach to U.S. history has sold more than two million copies. Zinn’s work is hardly a new target for right-wing censors. In an  e

People often conceive of colonization as being a formal process carried out by militaries or governments. These institutions play essential roles and the political system naturally becomes the primarily target for most movements for decolonization, but as I have stated many times, the process is much more diverse and complicated. Although it is easy to focus on what we consider to be the formal and concrete forms of power, they way that things are forcibly imposed, the world of the abstract, the conceptual and the ideological can have a deeper and more lasting impact. If we see for example in two former epochs of colonization in Guam, the formal ways in which things were imposed on Chamorros did not necessarily have a significant colonizing impact on the identity and consciousness of Chamorros. The imposition of governments on Guam by the Spanish and by the US led to great outward changes on the island, and histories tend to conflate the effect on the outward appearance of the i