Okinawa Part 3
“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
subordinate status to the rest of Japan, they are regular objects of protest.
The discontent over the bases is constantly evolving and has
helped to create a small but determined decolonization movement. Okinawa has
had an independence movement ever since its forced annexation by the Japanese
in the late 19th century. This movement has always been torn
however, as you can see in other movements for the restoration of an old
regime, such as in Hawai’i. Should Okinawa return to the old political status
of the Ryukyu Kingdom? Or should it become something else? Okinawa is actually numerous islands and
dialects, how would they become unified? Okinawans have always retained a
distinct ethnic identity despite attempts by the Japanese government to
force/encourage them to assimilate. We will see how much this difference in
ethnic identification and grow to sustain a movement for a different political
identification.
On my trip last year, many people wanted to know more about
formal processes of decolonization, such as the Commission on Decolonization,
the meaning of different political status options, and how to hold a
plebiscite. Although the decolonization process in Guam stalls and disappears
regularly, we nonetheless have an infrastructure in place that others can look
to when seeking ideas or inspiration. The people I spoke to were also looking
for theoretical guidance, or ways of theorizing decolonization ideologically.
It is not a word that is commonly used in Okinawa and so sometimes the
questions were very direct “how does one decolonize?” “Is decolonization always
the same or does it change from one place to the next?” “Does decolonization
mean doing everything yourself?” “What can your relationship be to your former
colonizer? Can you remain close or would that not be decolonization?”
This trip to Okinawa is slightly different. I will still
have meetings with decolonization and demilitarization activists, but the focus
of this trip is to discuss language revitalization. The main Okinawan language
Uchinaguchi is in a similar state that Chamorro is. Both are considered
endangered and within a few generations of face extinction because the youngest
generations don’t speak or understand them. Although more and more people are
complaining about the Chamorro language classes in GDOE, whenever I’ve
discussed the classes with Okinawans they become jealous and wish they could
create similar enrichment classes.
At the University of the Ryukyus I will speak and
participate in an “Island Language Symposium” focused on different islands
where they are working to revitalization the native languages. Activists and
academics from New Zealand, Guam, Hawai’i, Okinawa and even Wales will talk
about the state of their languages and share ideas for how to revitalize them.
The theme for Chamorro Month this year is “Tungo' i Fino' i Mañaina-ta yan
Na'setbe Kada Diha” or “Know the Language of Our Elders and Use it Everyday.”
As part of my talk I will describe how colonization has affected the Chamorro
language, even the point where we are stuck today and cannot take the final
step to revitalize our language or bring the Chamorro language back to a
healthy and vibrant point. We have come to the point where we can be proud of
the Chamorro language, and have in many ways rejected the colonial lies that
used to make us feel like our language was something that needed to be thrown
away. We are now at a point where the language is “beautiful” and all studies
show that nearly everyone, non-Chamorro and Chamorro states that the Chamorro
language is wonderful and should be preserved. But why isn’t the language
returning to a healthy state?
Why don’t Chamorros who are fluent in the language use it
with their children? How have we come to this point where people substitute
having a convincing accent for speaking the language or they show their love
for the language by getting tattoos and t-shirts but not actually learning and
using it? This will be a focus for the symposium, how do we get people past the
simple rhetoric on the “beauty” of the language, and actually get people to use
it again?
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