NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

--> English is my mother tongue, in the sense that it is the language that I grew up with and speak most comfortably. It is my first language. It is however not my favorite language, not the best language and certainly not i mas takhilo' para Guahu. I am a non-native speaker of the Chamorro language as I learned to speak it when I was 20 years old. It is natural for me in some ways, but still unnatural in others, primarily when talking about things that are difficult in general to express in a Chamorro lexicon. This is not only something that I struggle with, but as the Chamorro language has become more and more limited in how and where it is used, many people find themselves constantly switching to English since a potential part of their conversation is something few people have actually used the Chamorro language to convey. For example, on the rare occasions that I've tried to discuss Foucault or Derrida in Chamorro, when speaking in general about it, there...

Lumiliko' yu' gi i "Leeward" na banda gi i ma'pos na simana giya Oahu. Un atungo'-hu, malago' gui' fuma'nu'i yu' hafa ha fa'na'a'an i magahet na Hawai'i, ya pues in hami humanao. Ti hu gof tungo' ayu na banda. Estaba managa' ham giya Kunia, anai Si tata-hu macho'cho'cho' gi Del Monte gi fama'yan pina siha. Hu gof tungo' iya Manoa yan iya Honolulu, put i Unibetsedat yan i malls siha guihi. Lao unu pat dos biahi ha' di hu bisita i Leeward na banda. Gi minagahet sen gefpago este na islan Oahu. Lao para Guahu mas hu ripara i chinatpago, put hemplo i mantaiguma', i tahdong na fina'militat, ya taimanu na masasakke' ha' kada diha i tano'-niha i mannatibu na Hawaiian siha. Put este siha mas na'triste este na lugat. Ti ya-hu bumisitanaihon. Ai adai, i pumasehun-mami nigap, ha na'gasgas i ante-ku. Ginen sanlagu yu', ya hunggan gof gaiprobechu i bida-hu guihi p...

I have been off island for two weeks and so I haven't been teaching my weekly Chamorro lessons, but I'm grateful that others have stepped in to take over and keep people reviewing the language even in my absence. It is interesting how you do not realize things, or gain the ability to reflect on things, unless you encounter something that forces a contrast or a reflective moment. I have offered these language classes for years now, literally four years and although I've always enjoyed them, I never really realized the impact they could have. For me it was just teaching people who wanted to learn Chamorro, Chamorro. It was just another battlefield in the struggle against language death. But last month my Chamorro classes at Java Junction got a lot more attention than I ever imagined, with people from all over the United States emailing me asking to join them. Several media outlets covered my classes, which felt strange to me, because they are such simple, small things. ...

"Translating the Garrido Manuscript" Michael Lujan Bevacqua Marianas Variety 3/26/14 This Thursday, March 27 a very special presentation will be held at the University of Guam and titled “The Garrido Manuscript: A Unique Glimpse of the Chamorro Language in 1798.” The public is invited to come and learn about the translation of the oldest document known written in the Chamorro language, from 1798, more than 200 years ago. The presentation will begin at 6 pm and take place in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Lecture Hall at UOG. This presentation is sponsored by the Micronesia Area Research Center and the Chamorro Studies Program. Dr. Carlos Madrid, a research associate at MARC has spearheaded the project with essential assistance from Jeremy Cepeda, a Chamorro teacher at Simon Sanchez. Lenoard Iriarte from I Fanlalai’an Oral History Project, Pale’ Eric Forbes, Rosa Palomo from the Micronesian Language Institute and myself also a...

I am exhausted right now, but it is the yinafai i gaitininas, the exhaustion of the righteous as one of my friend states. As she likes to joke it is as my blog says, the feeling that there is "no rest for the awake." This weekend I manned a booth at the Chamorro Cultural Festival in San Diego on behalf of Chamorro Studies at the University of Guam. We are in the process of developing an online Chamorro Studies certificate program. UOG President Robert Underwood sent me to California and Hawai'i to network with Chamorros and Guam clubs to gauge the interest in offering a program like this. I expected the response to be positive, but nowhere near as positive and excited as it was today. Nearly every single person who stopped by the booth signed up expressing their interest in what we want to offer. It was a day filled with plenty of interesting moments and stories. Chamorros from all shapes, sizes, colors and levels of consciousness came up to me sharing their opinions ...

From the Harvard Crimson. A friend posted this on Facebook and couldn't not post it somewhere. It is a very good account of the type of internal trauma that someone can go through when the world around them, especially the structures of power that they are supposed to trust, casually dismiss them or tell them that nothing can be done. You end up taking on all the diffuse violence that passively sits in the world, uncaring and banal. It is from The Harvard Crimson: Dear Harvard: You Win By Anonymous 21 hours ago   Editors’ Note : This is a first-person, present-tense account of the aftermath of a sexual assault that took place in 2013. For reasons of both style and substance, we have left it in present tense. I’m writing this piece as I’m sitting in my own dining hall, only a few tables away from the guy who pressured me into sexual activity in his bedroom, one night last spring. My hands are trembling as they hover acro...

Bai hu kuentos put Pagat yan i kinalamten put para u prutehi gui' giya Guahan. Maila anggen sina hao para este na kinentos put i asunton environmental giya i Marianas, ko'lo'lo'na giya Pagat, Pagan yan Humatak. Gof excited yu' para bai hu saonao este na diniskuti.

March 29, 2014 Chamorro Cultural Festival San Diego, CA 10 am - 6 pm DIRECTIONS to the Chamorro Cultural Festival - March 29, 2014: Market Creek Plaza is near the corner of Euclid Avenue and Market Street, near the three corners that situate the Tubman-Chavez Multi-Cultural Center, the Malcolm X Library, an d the Elementary Institute of Science. The Plaza's bright and unique architecture is instantly recognizable. Market Street Plaza 310 Euclid Ave., San Diego, CA 92114 (Corner of Market St. and Euclid Ave.) By Car From Downtown, drive east on Market Street and turn right at Euclid Avenue, or go east on the Martin Luther King Freeway (94) and exit at Euclid Avenue going south. Turn right to get to Market Creek Plaza. From Interstate 5, go east on the Martin Luther King Freeway (94) and exit at Euclid Avenue. Turn right to get to Market Creek Plaza. From East County, go west on the Martin Luther King Freeway (94) and exit at Euclid A...

Gaige yu' gi Tumblr . I am on Tumblr. Ti ya-hu mureblog. I do not like to reblog. Hu rikokohi gi iyo-ku Tumblr, i fina'tinas-hu I am collecting in my Tumblr, things I have made. I ltratu-hu siha ginen i isla-ku. My pictures of my island. I litratu-hu siha ginen i hinanao-hu siha My pictures of my trips. Infotmasion put i che'cho'-hu gi koleho yan gi kuminidat. Information about my work at UOG yan in the community. Parehu i ison-niha yan este na blog, lao mas ha aguiguiguiya i fina'litratuh siha iyo-ku Tumblr. My tumblr and my blog have the same purpose, lao my Tumblr is primarily for visuals. Ti meggai iyo-ku followers (dadadalaki siha). I don't have that many followers. Lao kada biahi na umafakcha'i ham yan un follower, nina'gof magof yu'. But each time I meet a new follower, it makes me very happy. Ti pinacha' i korason-hu anai ma sangani yu' na ma li'e' yu' gi PDN. It doesn't do much ...

During this trip to California I am meeting up with people I haven't seen in years, in some cases, I haven't seen or heard from them in close to a decade. It is interesting to experience the memories that people have of you after a long stretch of time. Are you frozen in time to them? Have they imagined  future for you even if it matches nothing that you have done since you last saw them? Today I met up with someone who heard me read poetry a long time ago in San Diego, when I was attending grad school at UCSD. We had only met a couple of times, but for him it was an important meeting because I was the first person from Guam, he had met, who talked about Guam in a critical way. He had heard me read a poem on Chamorros being a footnote to the American Empire. It is something that struck and stuck with him ever since. For me, I cling to moments like this, and I thread them together to create my personal necklace of relevance. It is so easy sometimes to feel like nothing I do ...

MARC. Colonial studies Working Group  PRESS RELEASE The Garrido Manuscript: A Unique Glimpse of the Chamorro Language in 1798 by Dr. Carlos Madrid and Jeremy Cepeda. University of Guam, CLASS Lecture Hall Thursday, March 27, 2014 – 6 pm. Expected duration of the event: 1 hour. A one-of-a-kind document written in the Chamorro language of the 18th Century is being brought to light as a result of research recently conducted at the Micronesian Area Research Center, University of Guam. The Micronesian Area Research Center and the Chamorro Studies Program are presenting a translation of this document to the community and offering a rare look into what the Chamorro language looked and sounded like more than 200 years ago. In 1798, Manuel Garrido, a Chamorro and official of the Spanish Government of the Mariana Islands was asked to translate into Chamorro news received from Manila regarding the victory of Spanish and Filipino soldiers against British...

On Saturday, my special projects class "The Uprising at Atate" traveled to Malesso' in the South to take pictures of the two memorials at Tinta and Faha. Malesso' has the most notorious "village" story of the entire war. Despite being far away from the centers of Japanese power, by the end of the war it is the site of two massacres (Tinta and Faha) and one uprising (Atate). For this research project we have been studying why the massacres sites, which are zones filled with trauma and victimization have become so important in WWII memorialization, while Atate, a space where Chamorros fought back and killed their Japanese captors holds little to no significance over how people see the Tiempon Chapones tale unfolding. Finding the exact location where the uprising at Atate took place has proven difficult, as those who have been there are generally too old to travel there, and other know the general area and can point at it from afar in a way which is attemp...

Because of Tinian's role in the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, you will always find it mentioned in intriguing ways. Tinian is invoked in peace studies and anti-nuclear activist rhetoric in the same way Guam is mentioned in military strategic analysis and history. Both are empty sites from which violence is projected and structures of power are maintained.  Rarely however do either of these sites achieve their own purpose in these mentions, instead they just serve to enhance the potency of other places and other projects. This is one of the reasons I wrote my dissertation, to try to give some shape and form to this dynamic, through which you can mention places like Guam and Tinian a million times, but never say anything about them. Below is a quote from the late Father Zabelka, a chaplain in the US Air Force and blessed both the pilots and the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I came across this quote from him in Howard Zinn's book ...