NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Chenchule' kumekeilekña nina'i para ayudu gi maseha håfa na cho'cho' familia pat cho'cho' gi halom i kumunidåt. Siña ha' mana'enñaihon salåpe' pat efektos yanggen guaha gupot nobena, fandanggo, måtai, bautismu, showern nobia pat showern påtgon yan yanggen guaha makompliåñios. Gof ayudu på'go na tiempo este i kostumbren Chamoru ni' chenchule', pi'ot ha' sa' gof guaguan siha i bentan nengkånno' gi tenda. Yanggen guaha måtai gi familia, meggai na tåya' plånu ya ti mampriparao i familia para i manadan gåsto. Mangof guaguan lokkue' i ata’ut yan i para ma'entieru. Guaha nai kahulo' ha' i gåsto gi tres pat kuatro mit pesos. Ti opbligao i familia na para u fanna'chocho, lao kostumbren Chamoru na para ma'agradesi i finatton i taotao gi che'cho'-ñiha. Guaha lokkue' meggai na familia ginen i chago' para u fanmanayuda ya nisisario na u mana'fañocho. Tenga ma...

Ever since I first began learning Chamoru my interest in Chamoru music has continually grown.  I grew up sometimes hearing Chamoru music, but couldn't understand it and didn't really connect with it.  But from the first time that I sat down with my grandmother at the dining room table and had her help me translate the CD "Chamorro Yu'" from Johnny Sablan, kinenne' yu'. I have been hooked.  To this end I have been collecting Chamoru music, whether in CD, cassette or vinyl form.  I've collected whatever I can from newspapers, magazines and scholarly sources related to Chamoru music.   I have also been fortunate enough to sit down with many musicians and talk to them about their experiences and why in a world where English dominates, they chose to record and release music in Chamoru. Last month I was very very luck, gof suettettette, to be able to pick up the album "Ai Saun Diroga" by Chamolinian II while searching for Chamoru music online.   Fr...

  The grandmother of my partner Desiree, Tan Agnes Duenas Perez (familian Pepero) passed away last month at the age of 92. Her youngest great-grandchild is our daughter Lulai, born just last year. I am so thankful that they got to meet before her passing. I am also glad that I have was able to spend some time with her and listen to her stories. She was just 11 years old when the Japanese invaded Guam. She was the eldest of her siblings and helped care for them during this traumatic time. From her auntie Tan Amanda Guzman Shelton, a pioneering Chamoru nurse she learned some basic skills for helping the sick and the elderly. Soon after the war she married musician Josephat Mauro Perez and began to raise a large family. She spent time in those immediate postwar years helping to start the network of community centers and programs for manåmko’. Her family would become prominent in the village of To’to’ and well known for their musical talents. Tan Agnes had 12 chi...

  Last month, Tun Adriano Baza Pangelinan, a pioneering Chamoru artist and former professor at UOG passed away. I met Tun Adriano many times over the years, primarily when I was an art major at UOG. Tun Adriano was always an intimidating figure. My art professors such as the late Joe Babauta and Ric Castro, were both confident and outspoken, but became very circumspect and respectful when Tun Adriano was around. He wasn't the first Chamoru to paint or draw in a modern sense, but he was one of the first Chamoru artists to blend artistic styles from famous European movements like Fauvism and Impressionism with local culture and life. That blending and refusal to accept binary choices was pioneering. It wasn't too long ago that Chamorus felt that in order to achieve anything in life they need to give up their culture, their heritage, their island. This was part of how the United States entered into Guam, filling the island with demoralizing ideas in that wha...

Despite the social distancing lockdown and remote work for my office over the past month, it has been difficult to find the mental brain space needed to write regularly. I mean this in terms of creative writing, but also political writing. So much of my brain space has been taken up by worrying about so many different things, I've found it hard at times to focus or give myself the space to take on the many other writing projects I have waiting for me. Thankfully I have been able to work through some of the thoughts I have on the COVID-19 pandemic and Guam's political status in my weekly column for the  Pacific Daily News. This hasn't gotten me many new fans, in fact the columns that I published for three weeks at the start of the lockdown phase have been some of my most hated since I started writing for the newspaper a few years ago. I won't get into way people seem to take particularly gleeful hate in my columns lately, but I felt compelled to share them here. Afte...

Every year, at some point during at least one of my classes I'll mention the name "Janet Benshoof." It isn't a name commonly known on Guam, at least among the general population, but it was a name that was notorious for a short period in the early 1990s, and one that probably deserves more attention. Janet Benshoof was the ACLU attorney who came to Guam to lead the fight against the strictest and harshest anti-choice, anti-abortion law within the US and its empire as of 1990. She was the only person arrested under that harsh anti-abortion law that made national headlines. Reading her obituary though I saw that her work was truly international, joining causes for the betterment of women's lives across the globe. In her obit below from the New York Times there is even a section that deals with her time in Guam and a quote from Former Governor of Guam Joseph Ada. One day I'm gonna write an article about that time in Guam's History, because it represents...

Below is an account of the death of Ferdinand Magellan, on the island of Mactan in 1521. I've been reading different historians and their interpretation of the events and where they situate his death in the context of his personality and his behavior. At the conference that I was at in Madrid last month, there was quite a bit of myth-making around Magellan. Some of it is deserved, as he did guide a voyage that was into water unknown to Europeans. But the success of his mission has a tendency to lead historians to make generalizations of greatness. Many historians take the flaws in Magellan's character and then argue that they were actually strengths because of the time that he lived in and because of the obstacles, both geographic and human that he faced. For example, Magellan's tactics in dealing with the concerns or the fears of his men, is argued to be a strength since he was dealing with medieval and pre-modern superstitions about the world that he refused to let ru...

One of my first introductions to Native American Studies was the book Ojibwa Warrior: Dennis Banks and the Rise of the American Indian Movement. I was at that point in graduate school in San Diego, and learning a great deal about different ethnic movements around the United States, and while much of the readings focused on the larger groups in the United States, such as African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans, I was grateful that each course had books or readings that situated Native American struggles and experiences as well. I knew the basic, general history of how Native Americans went from being a diverse array of tribes and peoples, to losing almost all their sovereignty and land to colonial settlers across North America and also Latin American depending on how you want to define the terms. But by reading this book and others by scholars and Native American activists I began to understand more of the structural and historical connections. In Banks' book he talked abou...