NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

  Ya-hu este na litråtu. Lao guaha råson siha, ni' muna'ti ya-hu lokkue'.    I posted this image a few months ago on the Guam Museum's social media as well as my own.    It shows a Guam classroom in the late 1940s. Manggagaige todu, i ma'estra yan i estudiante siha gi halom un kuatto. Tumotohge i ma'estra gi me'nan i pisåra. Esta matuge' guihi i leksion. Uno na hobensita tumotohge mientras i otro manmata'ta'chong. Håfa ilelek-ña este na påtgon? Kao magacha' gui'? Pat kao gof osgon na estudiante ya ha kehåhayi i otro estudiante lol. Hekkua'.   Regardless of whatever is happening in the image itself, I have mixed feelings about this picture, reasons I really like it and reasons it makes me feel uneasy. I like this picture because it shows Chamorus just a few years after the end of the Japanese occupation, life is returning to normal. Schools have been built or rebuilt. Education which was paused or disrupted for two to three years becau...

  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...

After finishing up an online  lecture  series last week for the Guam Museum and the cultural diasporic group Håle' Para Agupa', one of the attendees in zoom asked me where I get all this information from, is it in books, are there movies or documentaries. I responded that there are a fair amount of books out there and some documentaries, especially if you are looking for World War II history in Guam. There are many more books out there than in the past, and what is nice is that more of them are written by Chamorus or at least people who have ties to Guam, but who may not be ethnically Chamoru.  I do my best to read whatever I can out there that is connected to Guam, to the Marianas and to Chamoru issues in anyway, and this doesn't only mean things formally published. I enjoy going through documents, archives, newspaper and magazine articles, transcripts from interviews that others have conducted. But one great source of in...

  The second episode of "Faisen I Guam Museum" is happening this Tuesday, July 27th at 11 am Chamorro Standard Time on the Guam Museum Facebook page. If you have questions about Guam History, Chamoru culture or heritage, comment with them or email them to me at michael.bevacqua@dca.guam.gov and I'll select some to try to answer as part of the livestream. The first one held last month was a lot of fun, I'm really looking forward to this one and continuing the community outreach on behalf of the Guam Museum.

One of the earliest Chamoru translations of an American pop song I ever did.  I came across it recently while I was searching on some old external hard drives.  It is to the tune of the Coldplay song "Clocks"which came out in 2002.  I remember I had started translating the song, working to come up with some basic lyrics.  I was hindered in my translation by the fact that the title frankly, gi minagahet was weird or sucked in Chamoru.  Clocks, didn't make sense in Chamoru. It may barely make sense in English for the song gi minagahet.  "Reloh siha" mungga yu' nu enao lol.  This was very early in my Chamoru learning journey, I was functionally fluent, but still making mistakes all the time and my Chamoru sounded like it was stiff and dry, straight out of a grammar book, because I lacked the basic organic feeling of being part of a language community.  The ways that emerge sometimes for an individual, a family, a village, a people to build off of the...

I put this together for a Chamoru language curriculum project I was working on a few years ago. It was meant to be an appendix to go along with other cultural components about learning Chamoru. The list started with the work of Malia Ramirez and then I added on a few more here and there. It is by no means meant to be exhaustive or complete. Chamoru family names are still evolving, although perhaps not at the rate they have previously. For every Chamoru, there are a number of names they can claim, but unless they are running for office, tend to only invoke one or two when representing their identity.  I returned to this list recently while discussing the topic in one of my Chamoru language classes. For many Chamorus in the states or who grow up on Guam without much emphasis on their heritage, they assume that their "family name" is their last name. I have had many troubling conversations with young people who assert that their clan name is "Leon Guerrero" or...

Ha'ånen Guinaiya ta'lo gi otro simåna.  Estague un rigålu para todus hamyo guenao huyong ni' manamåntes put guinaiya yan i fino' Chamoru.  Estague na tinige' put courtship yan konstrumbre Chamoru put umakkamo' åntes di gera.  Tinige' este as Illuminada Perez, ni ma'estra gui' gi kinalamten para i nina'la'la' i fino'-ta.  *************************** Kustumbren Chamorro put Inakamo’ By Illuminada Perez   Annai sumuttero pat sumuttera un patgon, mana’eyak i lahi na patgon gumualo’ yan pumeska, parehu ha’ gi saddok pat i tasi, yan mamoksai månnok yan babui. I sottera, mana’eyak manlakse, manganchiyu yan manarekla gi halom guma’. Desde i diesisais años i patgon, ha tutuhun manenteresao put guinaiya yan inakamo’. Yanggen esta ti siña machomma’ i lahi yan i palao’an ni’ u maguaiyan-ñiha, pues i lahi ha sangåni i mañainå-ña para u fanmamaisen saina. Tenga i nana, i tata, i tiha yan i matlina, mañaonao manhånao para i gima’ i ...

I'm working on an exhibit for Humanities Guåhan, and its put me back into researcher/scholar mode. I've been pouring through books and reports for the past week looking for various bits and pieces of information. Part of this meant re-reading some books and archival documents I hadn't touched in over a decade. Given the way in which conversations over decolonization and self-government have begun to take on a new character lately, I was particularly attracted to passages that can help me or others reflect on our development over time, how far Chamorros and Guam may have come, or haven't, especially in the context of their political connection to the US. There are many ways that we can say that Guam has changed over the past 500 years or over the past 100 years. As we remain in the era of American colonialism, I am mostly concerned with the impact of the US and its policies. As I have written about in a variety of ways, these changes are tangible and very real, but a...

Hami, i Taotao Guahan by Michael Lujan Bevacqua The Marianas Variety July 29, 2015   On December 17 th , 1901 a group of more than thirty men, primarily Chamorros gathered in Hagatna. Most prominent on their minds was the political status of their island Guam, which had been taken by the United States during the Spanish American War three years earlier. Since the transfer of power, confusion over Guam’s future hung like dark foreboding clouds. Although the American flag flew over Guam, the United States had not set up a government in which Chamorros would now enjoy the glories of American democracy. They had established a military regime which the US Navy total control over the lives and lands of Chamorros. The group that gathered in Hagåtña represented some of the largest landholders, the wealthiest families and some of the most educated Chamorros of the day. They carried last names familiar to us today, such as Perez, Torres, Dungca, Quitugua, Mart...

The Chamorro Land Trust was a government program born as an idea and hope during an expansion of Chamorro consciousness and then implemented and given life during a period of heated activism and protest for Guam. When we look back at the work of Chamorro rights pioneers such as Paul Bordallo or Angel Santos, the Chamorro Land Trust is a key, tangible piece of their legacies. The Chamorro Land Trust's mission is to provide land to landless Chamorros and for the benefit of the Chamorro community, but different administrations have always found ways to blur that or to quietly sneak around or shockingly expand what that might mean, giving away lands meant to be held in trust for the Chamorro people to all sorts of public and private enterprises. The late Senator Ben Pangelinan once said, "anggen ta manteni i tano', ta susteni i taotao." If we hold onto the land, we sustain the people. A very true point that is important to remember as Guam is sold off to foreign compa...