NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Over the years, as I’ve traveled around Asia and the Pacific, whether for research, for conferences, for solidarity actions, I’ve found a list of places similar to Guam, that you could call ambiguous. They belong to a certain country, but they don’t really feel like it at times. Okinawa is one such place. There is way that history and culture have combined to create a rift between Japan and Okinawa, that is invisible most of the time, but is the stark the next. There was a sense of pride and identity that could not be explained solely through references to regionalism or local love. It was something more, and something very similar to what we see on Guam. The particularities of history have created the situation where you can stand in either Guam or Okinawa and say with great force that these places are either American or Japanese. Colonialism and imperialism have taken these places and remade them. They might have said they did so for the benefit of the people there, but they noneth...

The position of the non-voting delegate in the US Congress is something I've been fascinated about for many years. As a scholar I’ve channeled this fascination into research. Over the past fifteen years I’ve conducted more than 50 interviews from different people who have been in some way tied to the non-voting delegate position.   I’ve been able to sit down and interview former Guam delegates Bordallo and Underwood, former US Virgin Islands Donna Christensen, former (and now deceased) American Samoan delegate Eni Faleomavaega and current delegate from Washington D.C. Eleanor Holmes Norton. In addition, I’ve also interviewed people who have worked on territorial issues in the US federal government, including those who have worked in the Guam delegate office from Won Pat and even to current delegate San Nicolas.     I dedicated a chapter of my dissertation to discuss the strange and peculiar position of the non-voting delegate. The so-called greatest country in the wo...