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The True Meaning of Liberation Day

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What does Liberation Day on Guam make you think of? Does it remind you of parades? Beauty queens? Canopies? Columns of military marching? Does it remind you of rain? Fireworks? Playing games at the carnival? Spending time with family? I think of all of these things and one thing that most might not: I think of people chastising me for not really knowing what Liberation Day is really about. Today many people know me for writing a regular newspaper column. For the past 10 years I’ve had a column in the Pacific Daily News, and for around six years before that I wrote a column in the Marianas Variety (now known as the Guam Daily Post). But while I was a graduate student, I would sometimes write letters to the editor of the Pacific Daily News and occasionally they would get published. One of the first of these letters was published in 2003 and at that time there was a discussion around the official naming of Marine Drive to Marine Corps Drive. While Guam’s central road was well-known as Mar...
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A New Name For a Stolen Collection

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In June I spent two months in Hawai'i as part of a fellowship I received this year, and while I have missed home and missed my family so much, what an amazing and productive time it was. Gof gaibåli.    Part of the Te Raingi Hirao Curators and Caretakers Fellowship that I was honored to receive from the Mellon Foundation and the Bishop Museum, supports the continued repatriation/rematriation of the 10,000+ Chamoru artifacts that have been in Bishop Museum's collection for more than a century. For the past week and a half, myself, Nicole Delisle Duenas from the Guam Cultural Repository and other fellows from the program have been working with those very artifacts, preparing them so that they can make the journey home later this year.    This massive collection of artifacts from across the Marianas, known as the Hornbostel Collection, was deaccessioned by the Bishop Museum last year. Due to its size though, it was decided to return it in phases or to use an appropriate...
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Chamoru Reflections on America's Independence Day

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This week, Guam is preparing for Typhoon Bavi which will hit the Marianas. While that is obviously the most present thing in our minds here in the Western Pacific, in our particular corner of the American Empire. Much of the United States is focused on other things. For more than two centuries, this time of year is reserved for celebrations, commemorations, mythology-making around the origins and destiny of the United States. It is July 4th, Independence Day, a time where much is said about the genesis of the United States, but many of the most basic and most critical questions remains painfully unasked by most. This year's commemoration is meant to be larger and greater because it falls on the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. While the celebration is both smaller, laughable and more visibly partisan and usual, because of the current administration, these are sometimes lamented as exceptions to the norm, but from a certain perspective of the Unit...
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Carrying the Next Generation (Literally)

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During last month's HITA Talk at the Guam Museum focusing on expressions of Chamoru identity across time, my four year old Lulai walked up on stage and asked that I hold her while I was presenting.    I had already started to talk about my section of the talk which focused on the pre-World War II version of the Guam Museum which was started in 1932 and destroyed during World War II.    Before I had gone up on stage and started presenting, I had asked Lulai, "Håfa malago'-mu? Kao para un såga guini gi siyå-mu pat kao malago'-mu hao tumattiyi yu' gi piso?" (What do you want? Will you stay here in your chair or follow me to the stage?) Lulai was insistent in that moment "Bai hu såga guini, maolek ha' yu'." (I will stay here, I'm ok)   Part way through my presentation, she started walking up onto the stage, arms out, indicating na malago' gui' mahoggue. I knew it would mean that my focus would be divided, but it also made me happy.   ...
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How to Save a Language

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Years ago I was teaching a series of basic Chamoru language classes for The Hurao School, what they call Eskuelan Mañaina. These are the classes that are required for parents of children in the Hurao after school, summer camp and now charter school. They have taken on different forms, and sometimes are attended by dozens of people, sometimes a handful of people. They goal has always been to encourage the parents of children in Hurao's programs to learn and use more Chamoru, to support their children who are also learning. It is one of the sad realities, that some children have been stunted in their language growth because after being immersed in Chamoru at Hurao, they return home and then are surrounded by English.  Nowadays these classes are much more organized and sometimes are divided into different levels of learners, but when I was teaching some of them, it was everyone, fluent, not yet fluent, elders, all mixed together. Sometimes we were able to focus on lessons, drills, act...
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