NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

My 19 month old Makåhna, admiring the såkman model that is part of the Hinanao-ta Exhibit at the Guam Museum. I love bringing people into this part of the exhibit, where we can see the features of Chamoru life at the time of contact with Europeans. Their religion and culture. Their weapons and style of warfare. Their diet and architecture of their homes. And of course their navigation and seafaring abilities.    This section is always tinged with some sadness though because of what awaits in the next gallery of the exhibit, the consequences of colonization, one of them being Chamorus losing this connection to the sea and the depth of knowledge to navigate the open ocean as their ancestors before them had done for millennia.    But just as when I see my children playing near this model, hope is also on the horizon as well, if you look a little further. Chamorus have been learning from others in Micronesia for decades now about how to carve and how to navigate and the ...

  I've pasted below a column written by Chamoru writer and filmmaker Dan Ho, that he penned by the Guam Daily post in 2021 to both commemorative and criticize Indigenous Peoples Day in 2021. The title alone gives this away,  "It's un-Indigenous to celebrated Indigenous Peoples Day," and it is one reason why even though Dan Ho doesn't contribute much to these types of conversations anymore, at least not in local newspapers or media, this article still circulates this time of year because of the catchy, polemical title.  Given how some things have shifted, discursively, narratively, culturally, rhetorically in different societies across the world, to provide more possibility for indigenous peoples, and that the fact that more and more people each year are now ditching Columbus Day in favor of Indigenous Peoples is emblematic of this. This shift, like so many, doesn't mean that indigenous people are sovereign, it doesn't mean that land has been given back, it...

More than a decade ago, a statue was unveiled in Hagåtña for the late Angel L.G. Santos in the park which bears his name in memoriam.  It has been more than two decades since the passing of this iconic Chamoru figure. It has always intrigued me the way Santos morphed in meaning locally – from a patriotic, military-serving young Chamoru, to a loincloth-wearing taimamahlao chattaotao activist, to politician and defender of human rights, to visage on stickers, T-shirts and symbol of Chamoru strength and pride. Angel Santos and Nasion Chamoru worked hard, in particular in the 1990s, to push to the forefront of the island’s consciousness issues such as Chamoru rights, especially around political status and land.  One of their biggest successes is not the sinahi-necklace-wearing that has become so commonplace, but rather their protest efforts in getting the Chamorro Land Trust implemented and formalized.  Debates over the changing of the rules last year for the Chamo...

Last month, my family launched our latest bilingual Chamoru-English children’s book titled “An Tåya’ Elektrisidåt” or “When There’s No Electricity.” In the book, three Chamoru children, based on three of my own kids, struggle with boredom after a typhoon has devastated Guam, leaving them without electricity and without data for their cellphones. With some helpful guidance from their nånan biha (grandmother) they are reminded that there are still plenty of ways to have fun on Guam, even without their iPads or video games. Across the book, the children learn that through their island’s natural beauty, cultural and community, there are still plenty of ways to enjoy life. They participate in a village-wide chongka competition, they go hunting for duendes, they enjoy the beauty of a Guam sunset. They hear stories of ghosts and spirits and taotaomo’na. My personal favorite is when they say the rosary for their devices that are dead and no longer have any charge. While many people have ...

Before we say “Adios” to August, let us look back at this month and how important it has been in the past for Guam, Chamoru and Marianas history. When I first started working as curator at the Guam Museum in 2021, I was given some of the late Tony Palomo’s notes on Guam history. In addition to being a Guam war survivor, an author, a journalist, an elected leader and a historian, Siñot Palomo had worked as the administrator for the Guam Museum towards the end of his life. Part of his duties at the museum was to publish a regular series in the Pacific Daily News highlighting “This Month in Guam History.” It is my honor as the curator of the Guam Museum to continue this tradition. Let’s look at some of the events that happened in Guam and the Marianas in the past during the month of August. ************** 343 years ago: In August 1681, Don Antonio de Saravia was appointed governor of the Marianas, and during the following month, he appointed Chamorus to the positions of assi...

Chris Perez Howard was born in 1940 to Mariquita Aguon Perez and Edward Neal Howard. When the Japanese invaded Guam the following year, his father, a US Navy sailor, was taken away as a prisoner of war, leaving his mother and family to care for Chris and his younger sister Helen. By the war's end, Mariquita would, like hundreds of other Chamorus during the occupation, become a victim of Japanese brutality. As a result, Chris would have few memories of her and soon after his father’s return to Guam at the end of the war, would be taken away from Guam and not return for almost two decades.  In the 1970s, Chris found his way back to his island home and begin to conduct research into the life and death of his mother. He pored through military archives and also interviewed family and friends, all of which helped him put together a literary portrait of her as an intelligent and resilient Chamoru woman.  In 1982 he published a biography for her titled, “Mariquita: A Tragedy o...