NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

  Prior to World War II, Sumay was the second largest village of Guam and because of its location near Apra Harbor, was very economically important as a hub for the island in terms of communications and trade. Because of this status, the families with ties there had a great deal of pride in their village identity and community.   The Trans-Pacific Cable Company, which laid the first telegraph wire across the Pacific, set up its station in the village in 1903. Sumay was also the landing site for the China Clipper from Pan American Airways, which built a hotel there in 1935.    Most of the first bombs that fell on Guam in the Japanese attack on the island on December 8th, 1941 were dropped on Sumay because of its strategic importance. The US Marine Barracks and tanks from Standard Oil were both hit. Within days after the Japanese invasion, all residents were evicted.    The bombardment and subsequent re-invasion of the island by US forces in July 1944 almost ...

A student from my Zoom Chamoru classes recently asked me for some suggestions for some Chamoru sayings or words of wisdom that she could use for a speech she had to give for a friend's wedding.  I get this type of request pretty frequently and so over the years I have a number of lists of ways to say "I Love You" in Chamoru. For years that was one of the my most visited pages on this blog, a simple page that had more than a dozen different ways to say "Hu Guaiya Hao" ranging from the poetic and deep, to the silly and sexy.  When I looked at many of those lists, I realized that the majority of the ways love was expressed, was indeed written in Chamoru, but not necessarily rooted in Chamoru. What I mean by this, is that alot of the sayings were simply translated from English or variants of ways that love would be expressed in English.  For me, I am definitely in support of these sorts of things, I love having our language adapt and take on new forms, especially wh...

My time with Lulai Lumuhu is filled with dancing and singing. Desiree always said that she would pay attention to my voice while she was in the womb. When she heard others, like Sumåhi and Akli'e' she would kick and move. But when I was speaking to her she would stop and listen. Ti siguguro yu' esta på'go, kao este kumekeilekña na ya-ña i bos-hu pat ti ya-ña i bos-hu. Kao ha respepeta yu', pat kao inespåpanta? I try as much as possible to sing Chamoru songs to her, knowing that she'll hear English and other songs from just about everywhere else, she'll be hearing Chamoru from me. The song that soothes her the most is "I Puti'on." Akli'e' and I do a nice duet of the song for her to help calm her when she is cranky. Over the years I've collected several dozen Chamoru children's songs from before World War II, many of which are fragments. Songs then were different then the way we think about them now. People took tunes they liked a...

When relationships end, people may fight over pets, fight over furniture, collections, kids. One thing that has always struck me, for certain, but not all relationship apocalypses is songs. Music where affection and attachment were forged and welded together with tunes and lyrics from particular artists. It provides the rhythm to togetherness, to grooves of the “us.” When a relationship ends, the rhythm of togetherness sometimes sours, turns grimly bitter. What once caused joy, now feels like it creates bone cancer. Songs or artists that I shared with someone and used to make me smile, now make me retch, make the skies insidiously darken in the space between beats. The muscles remember, even what the mind or heart wishes it could forget. For one particularly tough relationship, the music of Tegan and Sara was part of the soundtrack of us. For years I enjoyed it alongside her. For my girlfriend at the time, she was a twin and adored the duo, and introduced me to their music...

A special presentation by Chamorro Studies student at UOG as part of the 2019 MARC Seminar Series. Sen gefpågo este na dinanña'. Ya-hu taiguihi na fina'pos, sa' ta na'fåmta' i lengguahi ya ta na'gof oppan gui' lokkue'! It featured presentations by students at the CM102, 202 and 302 levels. It also featured some very special presentations by my CM340 of Chamoru Culture students. One of whom Joe "Dågu" Babauta is included below in a video with his original song that he shared.

Ti siguru yu' hafa maolek na pinila' gi Fino' Chamoru para i palabara "avalanche." Sina un deskribi gui' gi Fino' Chamoru komo un nåpu pat un pakyo'. Sina un usa palabra siha ni' para u ma deskribi i kinalamten-ña pat i fuetså-ña, pat i piligro kada mana'fanhuyong. Ti siguru yu' hafa i mas propiu na pinila'. Manhahasso yu' put este sa' unu na kanta ni' gof ya-hu (ya hu e'ekungok gui' pa'go ha' na momento) i na'an-ña "Avalancha" ginen un inetnon danderu ginen España "Heroes del Silencio." Anai i fine'nina hu hungok i palabra, ti hu komprende hafa ilelek-ña i taotao, lao gof ya-hu i bos-na yan i tunada. Ya kada mafåtto i koru ya ma essalao "Avalancha!" malago' yu' tumachu yan umessalao lokkue'. Kada hu hungok ya na påtte, hu imahihina na ma'u'u'dai yu' un kabayu gi hilo' un nåpu niebes ni' pumopoddong ginen un takhilo' na okso. M...

I participated in a round table discussion earlier this week on education in Guam and its relationship to Chamorro language and culture. We were asked to share our viewpoints on different aspects of this issue, ranging from what we might feel public school education on Guam is doing right and what we feel it is doing poorly. The Chamorro language program in DOE is a very curious institutional animal in terms of analysis. Students are mandated to take Chamorro language in both elementary and middle school and can take it as an elective in high school. Compared to other indigenous groups that are trying to revive and institutionalize their languages this is very impressive and Chamorros can be considered to have a real advantage. But the Chamorro language program in Guam's public schools is impressive in the abstract but in practice it is incredibly ineffective. I polled my students this week about their experiences in Chamorro language classes in DOE. Most focused on the fun act...

Today in class will be learning about the Wars Against Spain in the early 19th century. It is a period where Spain loses all of its colonies in Latin American (except for the Caribbean) in less than 30 years. In order to understand the roots of those anti-colonial wars we need to understand the indigenous forms of resistance that continued for centuries even after Spain had colonized, converted and enslaved most of Latin America. We'll be learning today about Tupac Amaru II who led an uprising against the Spanish in 1780. Below is a song written by Alejandro Romualdo that I sometimes share with my students. And hunggan, kumayu Si Tupac Amaru yan Si Tupac Shakur. Tupac Shakur was named after Tupac Amaru.  A CHORAL SONG FOR TUPAC AMARU By Alejandro Romualdo Valle Lo harán volar con dinamita. En masa, lo cargarán, lo arrastrarán. A golpes le llenarán de pólvora la boca. Lo volarán: ¡Y no podrán matarlo! They will blow him with dynamite. As on...

I just finished watching The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. I had worried that the film would drag on due to the fact that they were taking a relatively short book and transforming it into 3 films, totaling as much as 9 hours of screen time. The book Breaking Dawn was not worthy of two films, and this was blisteringly apparent when both Part 1 and Part 2 seemed to drag on forever during certain sections. I was worried about a similar fate for the first Hobbit film. While I did cringe during certain parts, I did have to admire the way they extended the film, but still kept it entertaining. I recently reread the Hobbit and found that so much of the richness of it was in my head. The writing is very sparse and not very detailed. Even fact it seems that Tolkien's true passion was writing songs, since the books are littered with ballads from every race in Middle Earth. But this is one of the hallmarks of fantasy writing. The writing itself may not be the most lyrical or ...

Translating songs from English to Chamorro has been a favorite hobby of mine for a while. When I was first learning to speak Chamorro this was a fun necessity. It helped me, albeit in small fragments, practice the structure of making short sentences in Chamorro. One of the first songs that I translated was a favorite of mine at the time, "Yellow" by the band Coldplay. The lyrics, like many of that sort of generic, but somehow epic pop songs are incomprehensible. They are meant to be so fehman, but don't really make sense. They feel as if they make some sort of higher sense, but when taking in a literal and direct way, you might wonder how bulachu or bileng the songwriter was when he was penning these lines. Needless to say, after so many years "Yellow" remains one of my favorite songs to sing in both English and in Chamorro. I often sing along in Chamorro as its droning tune and repetitive lyrics wind their way to their conclusion. Note that the translatio...

My brother Kuri recently graduated from UOG and one of the last classes that he took was a philosophy of religion class. I’ve always enjoyed it when Kuri takes philosophy classes because he’ll talk to me about his readings and I’ll share my ideas with him. Although I would probably never be hired into a philosophy department, my social scientific training was primarily philosophical. Philosophers created the foundations of all social sciences. When I was in Ethnic Studies, it was frustrating having to read so many long dead white Europeans pontificate about the world, but later on I realized that such is the power of knowledge. Their ideas became part of the regimes of knowledge we know today. They moved from being the rantings of a particular person into the universal ways in which we are supposed to see the world. One discussion we had recently was over the issue of Pascal’s Wager. Here is the gist of what Blaise Pascal proposes: 1.      There ei...

As I already mentioned in an earlier post on the second to the last day of my trip to Okinawa our hosts held a small party in our honor. The meeting was held in a cafe which will soon be open owned by Midori Teruya. Midori was kind enough to escort Ed Alvarez and myself around Naha and Ginowan on our last day in Okinawa, and took us to several locations including a mall for some last minute shopping, an independent movie theater to watch the film Standing Army, and the Sakima Art Museum . Over our ten days in Okinawa we spent alot of time at Midori's Cafe and the Okinawan language school on the floor above. The school is free for the public and is just getting started. I took some pictures, video and notes while I sat through one of their sessions and will hopefully we writing about it later. As the Chamorro and Okinawan language are in similar not too healthy states, that was something that I had constantly discussed with people. While we were sitting at the cafe sampling...

Este na videos siha ginnen i Dinana' Christmas para i sagan famagu'on para i dos famagu'on-hu. Todu i famagu'on dipotsi mangahulo' guatu gi me'nan todu i manaina, ya mambaila yan manganta. Egga' na'ya este na video siha. Annok na mungga siha i dos famagu'on-hu.

A reception was held on the first day of the conference to welcome the activists from Okinawa and Japan and also celebrate the presence of the overseas delegates from the Pacific. As part of this reception, there was food, music, and gifts were exchanged. During one particularly touching exchange, we all received beautiful Article 9 folders. The gift came from the daughter of a very famous communist community leader in Okinawa. He had been the Naha city mayor in the 1950's and later a member of the Diet. He was imprisoned for two years prior to becoming a politician for hiding two suspected communists who were supposed to leave Okinawa. He came to prominence at a time when the island was part of Japan, but governed by the US military after World War II. He had been instrumental in getting the island returned to Japanese control in 1972. I apologize for not posting an image of the folder now, I'll be sure to take one later. After receiving these gifts we all joined hands and...