NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

It is time again for another round of Heritage Hikes courtesy of yours truly and We Are Guahan. This month we’ll be having three hikes to Hila’an (June 12 ), Haputo (June 18) and Pågat (June 25) and our theme is “I Kantan I Latte Siha” or “the song of the latte.” This is our third set of hikes, and our goal is to offer the community a chance to visit certain places of natural beauty on Guam, get some exercise and also learn about the cultural history of the site. So far we’ve had hundreds attend our hikes and even got an excellent article in the most recent issue of Uno . The first two sets of hikes “Tungo’ i Estoria-ta” and “Un Nuebu na Inatan” focused on exploring and learning about local places that have played a crucial and sometimes tragic role in Guam’s history of American militarization. We visited sites where people were displaced because of strategic military interests and also places where people protested in order to protect Guam’s natural beauty and resources. Despit...

From Ten Thousand Things : On May 23rd, Art teacher and peace blogger Sung-Hee Choi was arrested and detained with seven other people at Jeju Island for nonviolently protesting the South Korean government seizure of property belonging to 1,500 villagers in Gangjeong, Jeju Island, South Korea. The Lee administration wants to destroy this beautiful region of tangerine groves and greenhouses on the Gangjeong coast to make way for a navy base intended to house destroyers equipped with missile systems. At the time of her arrest, Sung-Hee Choi was holding a banner with the message printed on it: Do not touch even one stone, even one flower! She was arrested for simply holding the banner. She did not do anything to obstruct the South Korean government's destruction of the Gangjeong villagers' property. ************************ Below is a poem that was written by Sung Hee-Choi while she has been in prison. The revolution comes in time we do not know. It comes suddenly w...

I had a bunch of work to do this weekend but I barely touched it. I wish I had some lofty and important reason for nothing getting my stuff done, lao gi minagahet taya'. Although I am a bit jetlagged and still feel kind of under the weather because of my recent trip, that wasn't enough to make me waste a whole weekend. The real reason I wasted so much time and the reason I'm posting this at 4:23 am, is because of MLG Columbus, which is a gaming tournament taking place this weekend in Columbus, OH. At this tournament professional video game teams are competing for thousands of dollars in cash prizes. One of those games happens to be the only video game I really play anymore Starcraft 2. Today is the last day of the tournament there, which is bringing together the best players from the United States, a few from Europe and elsewhere, as well as a handful of South Korean players. Hopefully once this is over than I can get back to my life.

We Are Guåhan is pleased to announce its third series of "Heritage Hikes: I Kantan i Latte Siha." The previous 2 series of Heritage Hikes have been a major success with over 240 people showing up to see and learn about Guam’s history. The upcoming Heritage Hikes will include 2 new sites, Hila’an Village and Haputo, as well as a hike to Pågat Village. It also includes We Are Guåhan’s first hike scheduled on a Sunday. The hike schedule is as follows: •June 12, 2011 – Hila’an Village (Difficulty: Easy. Duration: 2 – 3 hours) Meet at Tanguisson Beach Park. •June 18, 2011 – Haputo (Difficulty: Easy. Duration: 2 – 3 hours) Meet at NCS Finegayan. •June 25, 2011 – Pågat Village (Difficulty: Medium. Duration: 2 – 3 hours) Meet at Pågat trailhead along The Back Road. The hike to Haputo is subject to the discretion of the Department of Defense. If you are interested in attending the hike, you will need to submit your Social Security Number to DoD and sign a waiver by June 10....

While I was in San Diego attending graduate school I worked with alot of the Chamorro community out there, in particular the non-profit group CHELU Inc. CHELU stands for Chamorro Hands in Education Links Unity and it was created to support the Chamorro people and the maintenance of their health, their language and their heritage. I served briefly as a board member to CHELU, during which time I helped write for them a $100,000 ANA or Administration of Native Americans Grant, to study the state of the Chamorro language in San Diego county, which hosts the largest population of Chamorros anywhere outside of the Marianas. The grant was called Tungo' i Estao i Fino'-ta , and despite the group being rejected for the same grant the year earlier, with my help we received it and the study was conducted. When I helped organize three Famoksaiyan conferences in San Diego and the Bay Area, many Guam clubs or Chamorro groups were not supportive and sometimes openly hostile of what we were...

I will be teaching Guam History this summer at the University of Guam and so I'm trying to put together a new syllabus for the condensed schedule of a summer intersession class. As I'm trying to figure out what lectures to keep and what should go, an interesting sort of Guam history question came to mind. Which of the periods of Guam History over the past 500 years would I consider to be the most traumatic for students to learn about? In my World History 2 class (1500 CE - the present), I teach it in such a way that it is meant to be a crash course in horrible things that the First World did to the rest of the world, focusing on colonialism and how people have attempted to liberate themselves from its grasp. In my Guam History class I take a similar approach, spilling out on the floor each week a laundry list of horrible things that have happened to Chamorros and to Guam. But amidst all the truth telling, which is the period or the story, the moment in Guam History that is th...

I'm in Las Vegas this week celebrating the graduation of my brother Jack. I've been writing quite a bit, but haven't found time to post anything online. I've been in the states for almost two weeks, but in a few days I'll be back on Guam. I'll try to post something before I board my plane next week, just because I feel lazy for leaving my blog so dormant, even though so many things have been happening on Guam and in my life. I have been keeping up my posts at my Tumblr though ( I Pilan Yanggen Sumahi...), so you can check out there if by some weird chance you are starved of my content.

Esta mas ki un simana desde hu li'e' i lahi-hu. Sumasaga' ham yan i che'lu-na na'ya giya Kalifotna, ya gagaige ha' gui' giya Guahan. Antes di humanao yu', pine'lo-ku na ti para bai hu mahalangi gui'. Mas mafnot ham yan i che'lu-na, Si Sumahi. Ya achokka' hu guaiya i lahi-hu, kalang ti gos mafnot ham. Hunggan bunito na paton gui', sen kinute lokkue', lao put i mampos pumapatgon gui', tataya' ha' substansia. Kalang un mampos kinute na taya' gui'. Ti ya-hu umoppan este na hinasso, lao este i minagahet. Esta ki sina kumuentos gui', ti siguru yu' hayi gui'. Ti siguru na ha hulat kumomprende yu'. Annai hu atalaki i mata-na, kao ha tungo' hayi yu'? Siempre u matulaika este, lao para pa'go, i siente-ku na kalang hu nanangga i lahi-hu, ya ti apmam siempre u fatto. Lao mahalang yu' sinembatgo para i gof kinute yan gof "clueless" na mata-na. Nina'atdet este na siniente...

Ti siña mumaigo’ yu’ achokka’ gof yafai yu’. I can’t sleep tonight even though I’m exhausted. I’m in Sacramento at the NAISA (Native American and Indigenous Studies Association) Conference. I spent the day hanging out with some Chamorro graduate students, attended some panels, walked around downtown Sacramento. Now I’m back in my hotel room, finding myself missing someone terribly, but unable to sleep. I was going through my computer, looking through the digital equivalent of ancient, dusty files, seeing if I could bore myself to sleep. I came across a folder which I hadn’t look at in quite a while, full of the lyrics to old Chamorro songs. These are songs that all older Chamorros know in some form or another, but which aren’t as popular nowadays for obvious reasons as changes in taste and the decline of the language in general. When I was going through the lists of songs whose lyrics I've collected over the years, I remembered a story involving one of them. Many years ago, ...

This came via Bruce Gagnon at Organizing Notes and The Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. ************************* Dear Friends: This morning I received an urgent message (see below) from Jeju Island, South Korea saying that yesterday eight leaders of the protest effort against construction of a Navy base had been arrested. Global Network board member Sung-Hee Choi was one of those arrested - her second time in recent months. Gangjeong village resident Professor Yang Yoon-Mo is now in his 45th day of his hunger strike while in jail for trying to block a construction truck. He has vowed to die in jail unless base construction is halted. We need your help. We must show the South Korean and U.S. governments that people all over the world are following the story on Jeju very closely and care what happens. You can write to the South Korean Defense Attaché assigned to Washington DC. at this email and demand an end of the Navy base construction. defenattache...

Every few months I remind people to visit No Base Stories of Korea , and get updated on the latest in the South Korean people's struggles against militarization, both from their own government and from the United States as well. This post is yet another reminder to go over there and check the blog, which is run by artist and activist Sung Hee Choi. I recently finished an article where I discussed some of my experiences while I was in South Korea last year on a solidarity research trip. Some of the places which Sung Hee regularly provides updates about are areas that I visited, where I got to learn in detail about the struggles that took place or are taking place against militarism. As I wrote in my article, one of the things which made this trip important was the fact that it wasn't your usual "solidarity trip" where everything is neat and tidy and ready to be wedged into an assume matrix of solidarity formation. There is a formula to how we form solidarity, a simp...

Pa'go na ha'ani, Hami yan Si Sumahi (i hagga-hu) para bei in falak iya Kalifotna. Para bai hu famanu'i gi un konfrensia giya Sacramento gi este na simana. Ya Si Sumahi para u bisita Si Nana-hu yan otro na membron i familia-ta. Esta kana dos anos desde sumaga' yu' gi lagu, ya gof malago yu' bumisita i manatungo'-hu siha ginnen i Dippatamenton Ph.D. Esta hu faisen Si Sumahi, hafa malago-na na para bei in che'gue annai gaige ham gi sanlagu. Hu ofresi gui' ni' tres na inayek: The Monterey Bay Aquarium, the San Diego Zoo, Disneyland. Achokka' hu sangan i na'an-niha este na tres, ti ha gof tungo' hafa siha ginnen i na'an ha'. Pues, hu sangani gui' ni' didide' put kada inayek. Para i aquarium hu sangani gui' na "ayu nai manasaga' i guihan yan otro na klasin ga'ga' tasi siha." Para i zoo, hu sangani gui' na este i "fangga'ga'an para i manasaga gi i tano' na klasin ga...

I heard months ago that Guam had some mentions in Wikileaks, but was never actually able to look into it beyond seeing Guam on the index. Thankfully, the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun has saved me the trouble of searching for Wikileaks for some of the juicier Guam mentions. These revelations are pretty significant, they reveal some major problems with the buildup, the plans and even the the reason why there was an early mention of a billion dollar road being built on Guam, that was quickly and quietly swept under the carpet and never mentioned again. We'll see what kind of impact that have locally, and see what sort of response JGPO and others can come up with to try and counter the Wikileaks revelations. ************************ EDITORIAL: Leaked Documents Reveal Shocking Japan-U.S. Diplomacy 2011/05/06 WikiLeaks has published vast troves of internal and confidential government documents that normally would have been kept inaccessible to the public for a certain, usually...