NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

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 centur...

  I have been around and involved in movements and organizations that do work around language and culture for more than 25 years now. Sometimes I think of my start in these discussions as beginning when I started to learn Chamoru 25 years ago while a senior at the University of Guam. But in truth, it started in small ways a few years earlier while I was helping my grandfather sell his blacksmith tools at this shop at the Chamorro Village in Hagåtña and at different cultural fairs. While I was by no means an expert and often times could care less about the conversations around me, because I was my grandfather's driver and his helper, I ended up participating in cultural politics years before I became passionate about them. Sometimes as I look back, given how involved I've been it is easy to feel that things have changed or things are different because I am so familiar with the issues that what might seem inconsequential to some or minor to others, seems major or significant to m...

This Saturday, September 20th, Independent Guåhan will be holding a Teach-In at Senator Angel Santos Memorial Latte Stone Park from 2 - 4 pm titled "From Hurao to Fanohge: 350 Years of Chamoru Resistance." This event is free and open to anyone. The title comes from two key events in understanding Chamoru history and resistance to colonialism in its different forms across time.   In September 1670/1671, Maga’låhi Hurao who had been gathering families who were frustrated with the new Spanish presence in the Marianas and forming a coalition to oppose their interference, was arrested by Spanish soldiers and taken prisoner in the church. Hurao's speech is meant to be an example of the rhetoric that he was using that was inspiring so many families to come forth and offer their spears and slingstones in support of his cause.   An estimated 2,000 warriors surrounded the church, which had been hastily transformed into a fort, to demand his release and the surrender of the ...

This month, Lulai, my third oldest started her first year attending the Maga'låhen Hurao Charter School.  She had begun attending the Hurao Tiempon Somnak over the summer, but now this month has begun attending the Hurao school in earnest and Desiree and I are excited to say the least.  It has just been a few weeks, and so far guaha na biahi ya-ña, guaha na biahi ti ya-ña.  Every day she both enjoys attending school but is also struggling with separation anxiety saying "Ma'å'ñao yu' yan mahålang yu' para si nanå-hu yan si La'yak" (I'm afraid and I miss my mom and La'yak). Lulai's older siblings, Sumåhi and Akli'e' attended Hurao on and off in different forms over the years, sometimes the summer programs, sometimes the after school programs, and later even helping as aides.        All of this was across more then 10 years, yet Hurao wasn't to the point yet where it was an immersion or charter school in earnest.    After taking pi...

This month Filamore Palomo Alcon, artist, art teacher and owner of the Guam Gallery of Art at the Chamoru Village and an uncle of my through the Lujan extended clan network, passed away. He had been struggling with health issues for some time and his gallery was closed by some of his friends earlier this year after being open for almost three decades. For this reason, he had become less active in recent years as an artist and promoter of local arts, but it is painful is still painful to imagine that someone who was such a fixture in the Guam art scene and so influential in the movement develop Chamoru artistic consciousness has left us. When my grandfather, Tun Jack Lujan had a blacksmith shop at the Chamoru Village, the Fil’s gallery was a regular stop for me or for grandpa to check in with Fil on art, on Chamoru Village business, on cultural politics on island. Sometimes I would go visit him while grandpa would watch the shop and sometimes, I would go visit him while grandpa stayed...

  Lulai continues to speak more and more Chamoru about more and more things.    In her third year, I've been  encouraging her more and more to start responding in Chamoru by playing games, providing commentary in Chamoru to movies or videos she was watching on YouTube, telling stories in Chamoru, reading books.    At first most of her Chamoru was blooming in the areas where I was prompting it.    I would say "nihi ta hugåndo este" and she would start speaking Chamoru in response to the idea that Chamoru has to be used for the game we are about to play.    But in the last week, and in particular since her younger sister has arrived, she has started to use Chamoru more and more organically and unprompted, telling stories in Chamoru that she starts herself and even creating her own games in Chamoru that she now invites me to play.   To give you a good example of the language growth in her, take this character, Lotso from the film Toy S...