NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

ISSUE 18: Sustainable Islands While sustainability is often associated in the mainstream with the practice of “going green,” for island communities, it means much more. Sustainability includes a multi-tiered system of people, resources, legends, heirlooms, land, traditions, and practices. In this 18th issue of  Storyboard , writers and artists are invited to draw inspiration from all elements of what sustainability means to islands and island peoples. Possible topics to explore include, but are not limited to: •Traditions • Land Ownership • Land Development • Ocean Practices • Fishing • Planting •Money/Currency • Health • Religion • Resources • Recycling • Reusing • Materialism  •Legends • Stories • Degradation • Consumption • Balance • Inheritance • Ancestral Connections  •Traditional Healing Storyboard: A Journal of Pacific Imagery  is accepting submissions of previously unpublished work from the original writer or artist for  Issue 18  until  Monday, December 10, 2018 . The j

It is strange to study and document the impacts of colonization. There are always incredibly obvious ways that colonization affects a community, but there are always more minute and less perceptible ways it happens. One way that we can see colonialism in very dramatic but almost invisible ways, is how Guam, because of its attachment to the US, often times imagines itself to be somewhere else on the planet and something else entirely, whether it be politically, economically or environmentally. Colonization makes it possible for people on Guam to conceive of this island in the Pacific as not really an island, but an imagined extension of the US, therefore not capable of having its own interests or its own limitations, advantages and so on, but simply accountable or a beneficiary of whatever the US contends with. Just because the US flag flies over the island, doesn't mean that Guam is like California or Wyoming or Nevada or Alabama. It is an island in the Western Pacific and to ima

Given recent developments in North Korea, new missile systems out of China and the Trump administration trying to both disengage from the world militarily and bomb the hell out of it, I would love to see an update of this article, which is from 2015. The resistance continues, scattered across many islands. ******************* Islander Unite to Resist a New Pacific War by Koohan Paik Common Dreams November 4, 2015 Last September, I attended a remarkable gathering in Okinawa of impassioned young people from all over the Asia-Pacific. They convened at a critical moment to urgently discuss ramped-up militarism in their region. Thousands of hectares of exquisitely wild marine environments, peaceful communities and local democracy are now under extreme threat. Participants hailed from: Taiwan; Jeju (South Korea); the Japanese Ryukyu islands; Indonesia; New Zealand; and the Japanese Ogasawara islands. I was invited to represent Hawaii, where the headquarters for t

Ilek-na Si Henry Kissinger, ayu na sen dangkolu na galabok taotao, put iya Micronesia, “There are only 90,000 people out there. Who gives a damn?” I meggaina na taotao guini ti ma tungo’ put este na sinangan ya ti ma tungo’ lokkue’ hayi este na Henry. Lao para i manggaitiningo’, ti mannina’manman nu este. Ayu na hinasso, ayu na pine’lo, put i mineddong-ta guini gof annok gi i na’an-ta. Atan i na’an ni’ mana’i hit para este na lugat: Micronesia. Kumekeilekna “dikike’ na isla.” Sigun hafa hu fa’na’an i “pragmatics of size” taya’ gaibali giya Micronesia, todu taibali. Hunggan, buente anggen malago’ hao bumuteya hanom tasi, sen gefsaga’ este na lugat. Lao dinirihi i hinasson i taotao sanhiyong ni’ tano’. Ayu nai muna’hasso siha put finitme, siguridad, yan anggokuyon na fuetsa. Para siha i hanom yan i tasi, ti anggokuyon, machalek, todu tiempo matulailaika. Todu i tumuge’ i Bipblia ginen ayu na hinasso. Hafa ilek-na guihi put este? Estague ginen as San Mateo: Enao i humungok

For "Sindalu" the Guam Humanities Council Exhibit that I am working on, one of the tasks I did was to collect as many of the articles about Chamorros that have died in Afghanistan and Iraq as possible. Part of the problem with collecting these articles is that many of the Chamorro soldiers who have died lived elsewhere and were recruited outside of the Marianas. Sometimes these soldiers will show up in lists of dead from the Marianas, sometimes they don't. These lists are also more complicated by the fact that some of them will include the deaths of soldiers who were deployed but not killed in combat and others will exclude them. What makes it even more convoluted is that the metrics for counting the dead has changed as well. During Vietnam, the number was strictly Chamorros, even though there were a handful of soldiers from other islands in Micronesia who did serve. But in the Wars on Terror, the fights in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Horn of Africa, more and more non-C

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 is well known around the world as a site of protest. Its history has been marked with numerous protests regarding the many US military bases that is "hosts" as well as its colonial and neo-colonial treatment by the Japanese central government. Just last year over 100,000 people gathered for a demonstration. Okinawa is an island of protests, some big and some small. All protests are not equal. There is a logic to how they are perceived by the public. Some will appear to be more important than others. Some sites of protest will appear to be more essential than others. People will be more easily drawn to them. They will see those who stand along the fence, along the road, holding signs as being heroic. They will see places beside them where others should stand, where they could themselves stand. They will see this protest as representing important things, even if it violates laws and social norms. Other protests will be seen as less important. There will be an ever g

“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

The_Target_Village by LemmyCautionTK  Please watch this video above. It is subtitled and discusses Okinawan resistance to US bases there, most recently protests about the use of the Osprey in the northern forests. I will be heading back to Okinawa in March for another study and solidarity tour. I'll be speaking at a Island Language symposium at Ryuku University and visiting programs dedicated to revitalizing the Okinawan language. I'll also be meeting again with anti-base and independence advocates there. I'm also hoping to see more of the museums and cultural areas while I was there. During my last trip I was limited in terms of what I could see because my schedule was so packed. This time I'm hoping there will be more room to negotiate. For those who want to see my thoughts on my previous two trips to Okinawan please check out the links below: Occupied Okinawa : My trip in May 2012. Okinawa Dreams : My trip in November 2011.

After several days of lecturing, presenting and meeting with people for our Okinawa trip, Ed Alvarez (the Director of Guam's Commission on Decolonization) and I were given a rest day. One of the organizers of our trip Yasukasu Matsuhima, a professor of economics at Ryukyu University in Kyoto took us on a tour of various parts of central Okinawa. One of the highlights of the day was when we were taken to a string of islands to the Eastern coast of Okinawa all connected by bridges. On one of the islands Hamahiga, we visited an utaki, a sacred place where one would pray to spirits for various things ranging from having a safe journey, to increasing the harvest for a season, to helping increase the chances of a woman getting pregnant. Women played a significant role in this aspect of Okinawan religion as often the chosen women alone, or uta would be able to visit these places. In the area around Shuri Castle in Naha, there was an utaki which eventually became a private sacred place f