NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Being back in the states has made me nostalgic for when I was a grad student. The nostalgia primarily comes out around book stores, because that was one of my favorite pastimes while I lived in San Diego. A friend of mine who I haven't seen since I left grad school and finished my Ph.D. is on the verge of defending her dissertation in Ethnic Studies. All of this is for some reason reminding me of my dissertation. The days I would spend in coffee shops working on it. The hours spent poring through books and articles researching it. The times I would spend while driving across California contemplating it and then rushing to write hasty notes on anything I could before a random, but precious thought escaped me. One of the central scandals that drove my dissertation was the issue of "symbolic" or "fake" votes for the delegates from the colonies of the United States. It was a site that was so rich with material for illustration my arguments, I could have written...

I wrote an entire dissertation about some of the blind spots and forms of hypervisibility that Guam is cloaked in. I based my theoretical framework on the idea that Guam is something that is largely invisible to the world, but also at the same time fairly secure in its identity as something military belonging to the United States. Guam is often regarded as a place that affords the United States strategic flexibility. I built off this to argue that the island's political status, it being a place that flickers in and out of existence on the one hand, but is rarely questioned as being something the US clearly has the right to militarize and control, gave the United States far more than just strategic possibilities, it gave them larger political abilities. Strategic labiality was a phrase I sometimes used, where the ambiguity of the island provides the US with far more than just a small island, a sliver of real estate in the Pacific. My dissertation was easy to write, because of the ...

Some of the posts about the Andrea Smith, is she or isn't she Cherokee issue. My thoughts on this are currently larger than my energy level to write or type. Today was a long day, with plenty of things happening and so I'm not sure I could tackle a topic like this right now. There are ways that this brushes up against Chamorro issues, but also ways that I see this as being distinct and a facet of Native American life, the ways that they determine authenticity, the sources and forces in which it is formed. ******************** Why Realness Fails Us in Native Studies Chris Finley https://againstpoliticsofdisposability.wordpress.com/ In the shadow of the Rachel Dolezal scandal, mostly non-Cherokee Indigenous academics have raised an alarm about Andy Smith’s identity once again.  I want to point out that it is mostly tenured faculty that are doing this.  I want to know why you have an investment in Andy’s identity in particular.  Indian identity...

In Vivian Dames' dissertation on the Chamorro place inside and outside of what she referred to as "the circle of American belonging" she devotes a chapter to the first three non-voting delegates that Guam sent to the US Congress. She conducted interviews with both Robert Underwood and Ben Blaz, but at the time of her research Tony Won Pat had already passed away and so she instead interviewed his daughter Judi Won Pat, current Speaker of the Guam Legislature (a position her father historically held). She attributed to each of them a different identity as politicians in Washington D.C., a different approach to their job that made them effective despite being simultaneously included and excluded from Congress. Each of them didn't have much power in the formal sense, but were able to capitalize on something in their background or in the political climate that made it possible for them to accomplish things in the center of American power. Won Pat, took advantage of ce...