Only the Dead Don't Dream

I matai ha’ na taotao ti mangguiguife” or only a dead person does not dream.

Not a common Chamoru wisdom saying, but one with profound meanings on two different levels.

In the first, more practical way, everyone, from the richest, to the poorest, to the happiest, to the saddest, wants something more out of life. There may be dramatic differences, and what they want may be big or small. It may rip the fabric of social reality or do nothing more that create a minute ripple.

Only those who have passed away are not capable of imagining themselves or the world differently. This saying is meant to nudge someone or remind them that the point of life is change, growth, evolution. That there will be plenty of time for the opposite in death.

But the saying also holds extra, critical meaning for Chamorus people as a colonized people, where not just their lands, language and culture have been stolen or hijacked, but even their ability to dream for themselves or their people.

Over centuries different colonial administrators and then historians wrote about Chamorus as docile, carefree and unbothered by a desire for change or for progress. As they were deprived of basic self-governance in their own lands by the Spanish and then by the United States, this was justified because the people, in their culture and in their nature, seemed unperturbed by it, they appeared to want nothing more out of life then to just farm, fish, get drunk.

All of these ideas were bolstered by the notion that Chamorus had ceased to exist and were no longer a pure people or no longer had any culture. That the last real Chamoru died years ago and whatever Chamoru exists today is a mongrel like mockery of their ancestors.

Chamorus have changed dramatically over the past four centuries, but still have retained a continuous sense of identity as a distinct people. They have also maintained a regular tradition of speaking out and insisting on more from their colonizers. Chamorus fought Spanish colonization in its earliest phases and then pushed for reforms in the last century of the Spanish colonial era. From the start of the American colonial period in 1898, Chamorus sent petitions asking for greater rights and a chance to participate in their local government.

Colonization is built on a variety of insidious lies, and its efficacy depends on to the extent those lies are accepted into the reality and vision of possibility for the colonized peoples. Some they see through as lies, some they take to heart. Some appear to be negotiated and navigated, but still find meaningful purchase through other means.

One of the most pernicious lies deals with the future. The process of colonization asserts that the colonized individual, the people are not long for this world, they are in fact, always already disappearing, their culture is inauthentic and being lost, they are disappearing, they are just a shadow of what they once were. In order to effect their political death to authorize the colonial project overall, the conditions are created for their cultural and social death.

The future, rich in possibility only lies through the colonizer. Through assimilation, through giving up culture, language, land, through giving up the ability to dream for yourself and accepting that moving into the future, progressing, advancing, becoming something more will always involve moving closer to the colonizer, embracing their dreams, their way, becoming more like them.

It is for this reason that there is a decolonial edge to this saying. The Chamorus, despite all that has happened to us and the colonial context in which we still find ourselves, continue to dream. We continue to dream about decolonization and a change to a better political status, continue to dream about the possibility of reunifying our islands again, dream about bringing back our language to a healthy state, dream about finding more ways to reconnect those in the diaspora with those in the Marianas.

In this way, one can also invoke this saying in response to the colonial common sense that Chamorus don’t want change, don’t want something more or don’t exist. I matai ha’ ti mangguiguife, lao i Chamoru guaguaha ha’ meggaigai para u guifiyi