NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

The art scene on Guam has been growing in recent years, and I am excited that part of this is due to the work that we have been doing at the Guam Museum. The museum has been hosting, collaborating with and just in general creating more and more spaces large and small for non-profits, groups, individuals to showcase their artists work, sell it and just in general build more capacity within our island’s creative community. Due to the unfortunate closure of the café and gift shop at the Guam Museum during the pandemic, the space was turned into a café art gallery through the work of artist Dawn Lees Reyes, the Guam Museum Foundation and the Flame Tree Freedom Center and since last year has been hosting almost monthly new art exhibits. Currently in the space you can visit the group show “I Tutuhon” which features works from almost a dozen local artists. Across the lobby on the first floor of the museum you’ll find the rotating gallery, where we have a large exhibit that changes eve...

  2026 is the 100-year anniversary of the dream of the Guam Museum for the Chamoru people, at least as far as we know. What does that mean historically and what does that mean for this year? The October 1926 edition of the Guam Recorder, featured an article titled “Guam to Have a Museum.” It discussed how the Guam Teachers’ Association has taken up the issue of Guam’s culture and history disappearing at its September meeting, and that a call to the community would be made for the collection of artifacts and other materials. Ramon M. Sablan who would later to become the first Chamoru medical doctor was put in charge of organizing the collecting. The article mentions that the island’s 3,000 school children and also the Guam Militia would also be utilized to help stir up community interest and donations. It is unclear today how effective this effort was because the Guam Museum itself wasn’t started until several years later and under very different circumstances. But nonetheless t...

It is a joyous point in every Chamoru child’s life when you discover this yellow flower, which has a name that will make you giggle endlessly, tåke’ biha, which translates to old woman’s poop.    I remember seeing them growing near my grandparents house in Mangilao when I was young, but not knowing what they were called.    Lao fihu taiguini gi dumångkolo'-hu, ti meggai tininingo'-hu put trongko yan tinanom siha, pi'ot tiningo' put siha gi Fino' Chamoru.     It wasn’t til I was 20 years old and actively learning Chamoru that my grandmother told me what they were called. I broke out laughing and so did she.    I am reminded of this recently for a few reasons. Firstly, the first year I started teaching my Zoom Chamoru classes, I had transitioned from offering them in coffee shops on Guam to largely students who had grown up in Guam who were attending in person, to now hundreds of students attending, most of whom had never really lived in Guam o...

  2025 was the 10th year of existence for the Guam Bus , a creative company that my brother and I started to publish Chamoru language books, comics, flash cards and other products for learning the Chamoru language and telling Chamoru stories.    Our first book released in 2015, written by me and illustrated by Jack was "Sumåhi and the Karabao" featured my oldest Sumåhi hearing karabao stories everytime she rides Siñot Aguon's karabao at the Chamorro Village. Although it wasn't the plan to always have the children of the Guam Bus be the stars of the books, that is how things have evolved in the decade since.    "The Adventures of Akli'e'" followed in 2017, and featured my second oldest Akli'e' as the star of the book, learning about traditional Chamoru tools from his great-grandfather and Chamoru legends and history from his great-grandmother.    Sumåhi, Akli'e' and then my third oldest Lulai would be the main characters in "An Tå...

Recently the Guam Cultural Repository, which is located on the campus of the University of Guam, officially became a part of the Guam Museum and the Department of CHamoru Affairs. We have been preparing for this transition for a while, and despite some bumps in the road, it remains exciting in terms of what it will means for the museum and also allowing the many collections and artifacts from our island's past to be rediscovered and researched anew. Last month, we welcomed one such collection to the Guam Museum that really exemplified this.       On June 2, 1690, the Spanish treasure galleon Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Zaragoza y Santiago sank in the lagoon near Cocos Island, off the coast of Malesso’. All on board survived, and despite some conflicting accounts, nearly all the treasure on board, which included perhaps 2 million silver coins, was assumed lost.   In 1991, a salvage operation began, seeking to recover the galleon’s lost treasure and any artifacts...

Recently I visited the Faniyakan Sinipok or the Guam Department of Education Immersion school to hold a storytelling session with the families of the program's students.  Similar to the families for I Maga'låhen Hurao Charter School, while the children may progress and show great development in the Chamoru language, unless the parents are fluent or are working hard to learn Chamoru on their own, they will fall far behind and not be able to support the learning of their children.  I've seen it many times in the Hurao school where children begin to develop fluency, but they hit a ceiling because first, the limited amount of peers that they can speak and identify with, and second, because their family can't match their fluency or learning level. While their families are interested in having them learn Chamoru, the parents themselves are often not fluent or not actively committed to learning, and so their children will quickly hit a ceiling.  It is for this reason that when...