NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

I wonder if anyone has ever put these two movies together. Disney's The Kid starring Bruce Willis and Hum Kisese Kum Nahin starring Tariq, Rishi Kapoor, Ajit and the mampos sinexy Zeenat Aman. Taimanu na bai hu na'dana este na dos? Maolek na finaisen. There are probably alot of things which couldl be discussed from these two films, but what I noticed the other day that seemed worth mentioning, was the return of the child, and not just any child but you as a child. In The Kid, Bruce Willis in confronted by himself at a very young age, when he was a seemingly hopeless fat kid. Together they investigate why the kid has appeared and ultimately work together to help Bruce Willis in the now confront portions of his life which he had long repressed in order to gain some consistency. In Hum Kisise Kum Nahin, Kajal Kiran's character experiences her own return. Her and Tariq's father had made a pact when they were young to wed their children. As years have passed Kajal's fath...

Un nuebu na tano' matto. Matulaika i lai guin giya Blogger ya para mo'na sina in na'hiyong i litratu-ta siha fa'setna. Estaba guaha downloads yan otro na inatkagueti, lao pa'go, ti mappot. Magof hu mampos put este, sa' enlugat di i tinige'-hu ha', sina hu na'li'e hamyo i pinenta-ku siha. Yanggen un na'tunok i inatan-mu, pon fakcha'i unu pinenta-ku. Enaogue tes, sa' ti gof siguru yu' taimanu ma'cho'cho'cho este, lao esta gof exicted hu put i sinina siha.

I've already gotten some wonderfully annoying responses from my last post where I was complaining about the seriously undiscussed contributions of fluent speakers of Chamorro to the loss of the language. I should be use to this sort of thing by now, after all, each time I publish a zine and there is Chamorro somewhere in it, I get a flood of emails from concerned citizens who take from their busy schedules of saving the Chamorro people and language, to tell me all the things wrong or bad about my Chamorro. If these were actually mistakes or typoes, then the correcting might actually be welcome, but it usually never is. (oh and if there is a typo, its treated as if I don't know how to speak the language, according to one speaker who went back into my writings from like years ago, he confronted me with "sinangan Maria" and told me he had no idea what this meant. Well if he had noticed that it was a typo and not my actual grammar, maybe he could have saved us both some g...

I recently watched the Seinfeld episode "The Move(s)/ Assman," and for me it could used to make a good point about language loss amongst Chamorros. In the episode, Jerry pisses off David Puddy who is the only honest mechanic in New York. So while Jerry tries to find another mechanic after his car starts making noises, he thinks they are all cheating him on their estimates, (making them up). George looks at him like he's a retard and says oh course their making them up, no one knows anything about cars, they could say anything!, Oh looks like you need a new Johnson rod! Chamorros who are attempting to learn their language as an adult are confronted with something similar. A language which is hardly unknown to them, from which they must rely on mechanics or fluent speakers to help them know it. But the problem is, and what deters alot of Chamorros from following through and actually becoming fluent in the language, is that fact that these mechanics might be cheating them. I...

Hu testes yanggen ma'cho'cho'cho este.

After so many months of endless discussion about Chamorro Hip Hop I finally decided to give it a shot. As I've said before, I don't have anything intrinsically against Chamorro Hip Hop, I think its a fine idea, but what does it mean to seek this? Why desire it? Why not just be a Chamorro that makes Hip Hop? Why the need the put Chamorro in front of it? Also, what are the mechanics that would make it so? Language? Content? Musical style? The problem when people say they are making this is, they assume that because they're Chamorro, what they make will be Chamorro Hip Hop. Sometimes I am very willing to believe this, but other times I like to get into the identity and cultural issues that are being ignored when this takes place. But to make things clear, there shouldn't be a singular definition anyways. It shouldn't be that only Hip Hop lyrics in Chamorro are really Chamorro Hip Hop, or that only songs which use the belambaotuyan are really Chamorro Hip Hop. Its not m...

I've been watching and thinking about the anime Evangelion for months, ever since my younger brother made me watch it. Today I came across a fan wish story, which actually involved Evangelion, Ranma 1/2, Oh My Goddess and guess what? Hunggan, magahet hao, Guam! That's as good a sign as any for me to hurry up and write about it. For those looking for pop culture site to start learning about psychoanalysic, an ideal site would be Evangelion, with its remix, Evangelion: Rebirth and Death as well as its mulligan The End of Evangelion. Even if you're only vaguely familiar with psychoanalysis ("tell me about you're mother"), its possible insights are way too palpable in Evangelion. First there is the obvious relationship between Shinji and his father, as well as the father's melancholic attachment to Yui his dead wife (which creates Rei). Then there is Shinji's never-ending desire for Rei, that he barely seems to understand (which could have something to do ...

I just spent the last week in Hawai'i visiting my father and some friends. Its always an interesting experience when I spend time in Hawai'i and for so many different reasons, of which I'll soon be ranting about I'm sure. I've spent most of the summer working on articles, papers, curriculums and comic books (yes, stay tuned, more soon on this) and so I decided that I would like to take a break for the six days I'm in Hawai'i. Taking a break for me means reading alot of different kinds of books. Usually I'm pretty good at finishing them, but for some reasons I was so gagu on this trip that I didn't finish ANY of them. I did manage to start reading more than half a dozen books though. The problem is, that with school starting less than a month from now. I don't know if I'll get to finish them. Anyways, here's a list of the books that I started but did not finish over the past week. Wiggstein's Poker (on page 134) The Perfumed Sleeve (on...

Pumasehu yu' gi i hard drive-na iyo-ku computer, ya hu fakcha'i este na tinige'. Para i klas-hu Social Theory, kada na simana debi di hu fangge' unu na papet put i tinaitai-na ayu na simana. Ya-hu mamatto tatte gi i tinige'-hu ni' bihu, sa' sina hu li'e hafa matulaika, yan sesso mana'lemlem yu'. Michael Lujan Bevacqua Social Theory b Professor Da Silva May 16, 2005 Politics of Friendship Beautiful book, too much so, which is why its beautiful. The play so obvious in the ways that statements are made and then retracted, how threads of arguments are taken and then swiftly abandoned. What we can see in this book, as well as others such as Spectres of Marx is a political change in Derrida. Spivak calls this change a shift from the guarding of the question, to the experience of the impossible. To what do we owe this shift in Derrida’s public writing? Part of it no doubt has to do with his conceptualizations of the I and the Other, which some describe ...

Just thought I'd share a letter I wrote to the editor of the PDN a few weeks back. I don't think they've printed it, so I thought I might as well share it here. Alot of the thoughts in this I've already made known on this blog or in Minagahet so if you're familiar with my whining it won't be that new. But nonetheless these problems are very real and very very invisible to just about everyone on Guam. The fact that these scandals are either horrifying or meaningless to most people shows how deeply colonization affects our understanding of what they take place and what they mean. We get horrified because these scandals question our Americaness or we don't care because they are just another reminder that we aren't American enough yet. Anyways, here's the letter: In all our lives there are regular moments where reality itself, in all its harshness appears before us and we are given two basic choices. We can either transform ourselves based on this revela...

Just want to apologize to anyone who's looking for new posts. I won't be able to post for about a week or so, (bai hu tinane' bumisisita mamparientes-hu giya Hawai'i). I'll be sure to backpost once I get back to my computer in San Diego.

Per the request of a handful I'm posting the text for the article I wrote last week for the anti-racist feminist zine Third Space. The title of it "Things to Do in Guam When You're Dead" interested some and wanted to know more about what I meant by the title. Hayi matai? Ya yanggen matai hao taimanu guaha chine'gue-mu? Hafa kumekeilek-mu umbre? Fine'nina na diniseha-hu na fatta' yu'! Rather then ramble on for several paragraphs and constantly miss my points because I keep thinking to myself, "didn't I already write this somewhere?" I'm not sure if I'm supposed to do this. Meaning whether or not Third Space has rights to it or anything. But oh well, taya' guaha. "Things to do in Guam When You're Dead" People often ask me why I decided to go into academia. I’m a Chamorro, from Guam, one of the world’s last official colonies and a military base for the American Empire. Shouldn’t I be out in the streets where the rea...

Just received the following message from Jennifer Kanoelani Miyamoto, a Native Hawaiian attending school in California. For those unfamiliar with what is taking place in Hawai'i surrounding the Kamehameha School read on. Controversies such as this are important sites for those seeking to analyze how American idologies continue to colonize indigenous peoples. How discussions on "equality" and "democracy" take place in very narrow ways, yet to those within it seem to encompass the entire realm of possibility. For example, Bush's rhetoric on freedoms is actually incredibly narrow, despite the fact that whether you are on the right or the left in this country, you accept this wittled down conversation as if everything in the universe has been covered. For example, even Liberals who criticize Bush on his sowing the seeds of freedom, do not tamper with the bedrock notion that American does nonetheless have the corner market on it. Whatever anyone else has, its the...

I've recently self-diagnosed myself as a dating hysteric. The social cues which we are supposed to collect throughout our lives, just don't make any sense to me. Even as I see them right before my eyes, taking place, I find myself uncertain what the hell is going on. A few months ago (some of you who read this blog regularly for example), I met a girl who plays video games and I knew immediately that I was attracted to her. But interpreting some sort of return movement or reciprocal emotion was a completely different story. We spent an entire day together, and my mind ran at Pentium 5 speed trying to decipher what she was saying, how she was acting, whether any of it meant that she liked me. You know you are a dating hysteric when dating feels more like combing through a pop culture database. We get our ability to feel attraction from the construction of fantasy spaces,which we build from elements of movies, popular images, people in our family, our childhood, etc. While I had ...

Here is another one of those moments which one must recognize, if only because of the fact that it seems like the universe is trying to communicate something to you which you can't understand. While googling "Guam" and "blog" I came across this interesting entry. I'm well aware of the US military presence in Guam (and wouldn't mind them quitting GUUAM), but Uzbekistan? Ai na triniste, este na dinigu, oh how I hardly knew thee.... Uzbekistan Officially Quits GUUAM Uzbekistan officially announced on May 5 that it quits the GUUAM, a grouping of Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldova, the Georgian Foreign Ministry reported. The Uzbekistani authorities sent an official notification about the decision to the Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin, who currently chairs the organization. In keeping with comments and predictions made in my previous post it seems logical that given GUAM’s increasingly pro-west direction and recent announcement to help ...

One of my friends doesn't watch mainstream movies because the representations there are so lame sometimes. Thin characters, easy plots, base stereotypes and social roles. For example, while describing to him my affinty for Bollywood films, he claimed that he really wasn't into those types of films, because they drip in social messages about beauty, class, sexuality, gender and so on. For example, "you won't see any dark characters dancing around trees." A fair, but easy point. One common amongst today's "critical" left. Its not that this point isn't true, for it usually is. But its more that this point isn't enough for anyone except the person doing the pointing out. Getting past this point is one of the reasons why the study of ideology seems so important nowadays. Ideology is what helps us know what we are supposed to see. What in our lives we are supposed to be attentive to. So for example, in film consumption or viewing, there are differe...

Considering all the buzz over Guam's recent appearance in the New York Times over its super-status as a choice military recruiting site, I thought it might be prudent to post the following link. http://www.counterrecruiter.net/

If an indigenous person from the Pacific were asked to name the movie that best represents the life of an indigenous person today, what would they chose? Whalerider. An obvious choice, everyone seems to think its about indigneous survival. But when you really look at it, what are the problems that must be overcome? For them, survival is overcoming the indigenous obstacles that hold the Maoris back. The problem with this is that its too simplistic in a bad way. Its so simplistic, that it actually fits perfectly with recent statements by Bush Insular Deputy David Cohen, that the real problems Pacific Islanders face today are internal to their cultures, finding ways to get rid of those problems that are holding us back. How about Once Were Warriors . For along time, the only movie for the Pacific outside of Elvis flicks,, Robinson Crusoe films and Tora! Tora! Tora! An inspiring film, however harsh. The answer to the problems that plague indigneous peoples today is to seek that spiritual...

Despensa yu' sa' noskuanto na ha'ani desde pumost yu' guini. I just finished up an article for Third Space, a anti-racist feminist zine published out of the University of Victoria. Lana, I'm slowly learning how hard it can be to shrink down my rambling into 1500 words. Gos mappot umbre, sa' payon yu' nu este na klasin tinige' (gi i internet, kalang taihinekok). The article turned out pretty good. I'm intending it to be the last chapter of my latest master's thesis out here in San Diego. This past year has been a big learning experience for me in terms of writing. After seeing so many of my friends struggle with writing their thesises and dissertations I decided at the start of my Ph.D. program last year, to do all I can to avoid getting stuck and incased in writer's block. Despite already getting a master's degree in Micronesian Studies, I have to complete a new thesis for my Ethnic Studies doctorate. So to that end, since August of last ...