NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

What does Liberation Day on Guam make you think of? Does it remind you of parades? Beauty queens? Canopies? Columns of military marching? Does it remind you of rain? Fireworks? Playing games at the carnival? Spending time with family? I think of all of these things and one thing that most might not: I think of people chastising me for not really knowing what Liberation Day is really about. Today many people know me for writing a regular newspaper column. For the past 10 years I’ve had a column in the Pacific Daily News, and for around six years before that I wrote a column in the Marianas Variety (now known as the Guam Daily Post). But while I was a graduate student, I would sometimes write letters to the editor of the Pacific Daily News and occasionally they would get published. One of the first of these letters was published in 2003 and at that time there was a discussion around the official naming of Marine Drive to Marine Corps Drive. While Guam’s central road was well-known as Mar...

The one the reasons why so many scholars, activists and often times community members feel the need to rethink or rearticulate or reimagine "Liberation Day" is because of a recognition of hope integral it is or has been to our relationship to the US. World War II changed dramatically the relationship between the Chamorus of Guam and the US. It changed it somewhat from the US perspective, but it was dramatically altered from the Chamoru side of the equation. Chamorus who felt a clear distance to their colonizer, even if some were eager to be patriotic, prior to the war, emerged from the war eager to find whatever way possible to express their loyalty, their newfound attachment to America. But as I've written many times before, what Liberation Day does as the basis for Chamoru identity in an American context, is create the Chamoru as a subordinate subject, a minor footnote, that must always be superpatriotic for fear that America will withdraw funds, support, recognition an...

I left the University of Guam in January, after teaching there for more than 10 years and probably teaching more than a 1000 students during my time there. Some students I can definitely say I had an impact on because they have told me as much and I've seen them blossom into professional careers. A few of my former students have become elected officials in Guam and some have PhDs of their own now. For some, maybe the impact was less obvious or pronounced, but there may have been something. Something said. An assignment required. Something gleaned. Who knows what, but somewhere in my scattered approach to how I would hold a class, something stuck with them. Sometimes I find students, who years later refer to something I said, or a space I created and how it really changed their view of certain things. One thing that former students from UOG would regularly tell me is that they liked that I seemed to care about the island. This, according to them, was a contrast with most of th...

--> Another Liberation Day has come and gone, and with each passing year, more and more questions emerge about the meaning of this important event and our relationship to it. More people seem willing to question whether or not the US return to Guam in 1944 was a liberation, but for each person who earnestly asks that question, there is usually another who raises their voice in indignant defense of the liberation, demanding that it not be questioned. For them it is a sacred event for our elders and should require our patriotism and gratitude and nothing more. One of the misconceptions that people have in life, is the notion that something sacred should not be questioned or analyzed. I would propose instead that something sacred holds such depth and power, that its meaning can sustain questioning or scrutiny. If people shout down those who have earnest questions about Liberation Day in the name of it being sacred, more likely they are scared of how the concept will fal...