NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

I should be working on my qualifying questions, but since this is related to what I'm writing about now, I figured I could take a break to post it. One of my questions is about the potentially productive relationship between "cultural studies" and "pacific studies" to form a super hybrid critical creature called "native pacific cultural studies." The point which I will be making about how these two disciplines can learn from each other is through a recognition of the crucial particularities and specificities of "the Pacific." The Pacific is a region of the world which is constantly stepped over and forgotten, even paradoxically when it is being invoked. For instance across from Ethnic Studies as UCSD we have a program called International Relations and Pacific Studies. It is really a joke that they call themselves Pacific Studies, because no one I have ever talked to there knows anything about the Pacific and Pacific Islands. When they speak

Posting will most likely be sparodic for the next few weeks because I'm gearing up for my exams in my department. What this will entail is me turning in my final draft for my propsectus or my proposal for my dissertation on Tuesday. I will then receive a list of questions from which I will choose two and have one week to answer and then turn back into my committee. My committee is made up of five faculty, three from my department (Yen Le Espiritu, Ross Frank, Pal Ahluwalia) and two from outside (Jodi Blanco and Keith Lujan Camacho). Once they get my answers, I will have week to prepare for my oral defense on June 12th. This will entail a two hour defense/discussion with my committee, where they will challenge me on certain points, make recommendations and suggestions about how I can improve my project. I'm writing like crazy this weekend, so I can turn my prospectus in on Tuesday. I'll be writing like crazy next week also. I think I'll post tomorrow a little bit of my

SIGN THIS PETITION FOR JUSTICE FOR THE MARSHALL ISLANDS, read below for more information: ------------------------------- Justice for Nuclear Survivors ABNONO - (PETITION) Bravo H-bomb Anniversary March 1, 2007 TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE: TO THE U.S. CONGRESS: TO THE AMBASSADOR OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: We ask the American people to educate yourselves on the injustices that we Marshallese suffered as a result of your 67 atomic and nuclear tests! Kemij kajitok bwe dri Amerka ren katakin ir make kin bwid im entan ko rar walok nan kim jen 67 Nuclear test ko! We ask the U.S. Congress to reconsider passing the Changed Circumstances Petition (CCP) that our RMI government submitted to you in Sept. 2000! Kimij kajitok iben US Congress bwe en bar etale im kale CCP en im kien in an RMI ear lelok nane ilo Sept. 2000! We ask Ambassador Clyde Bishop to advise the Administration of the United States of America to change your position on the CCP! Kemij kajitok iben Ambassador Clyde Bishop bwe en

I wrote a response to a " Filipino American Guamanian Activist " a few days ago, which you should check out before you read this post since its a continuation of the conversation I started in my response. To sum up his points however, he basically made two comments on my blog about how I, as a "Californian" should stay out of the affairs of "Guamanians" meaning those who live on Guam and therefore have the right to talk about Guam. For this person, Chamorros being the indigenous people of the island meant nothing, and they should have no connection to the island or rights to the island if they don't live there. Needless to say, this "activist" probably found what me and Famoksaiyan are doing out here very threatening. Annok na sen kaduku este na taotao. At one point he waffled back and forth between telling me he has lots of Chamorro friends and likes Chamorros, and then warning me that soon there will be more Filipinos and Guam and they will

I posted last week about the work of the Lumuba Zapata Coalition at UCSD in a post titled Truth to Power . They have a blog where you can see the latest updates on their struggle to keep the Dimensions of Culture program at UCSD from loosing its radical social justice dimensions, and becoming a program about celebrating simple "diversity" and "multiculturalism." Here's the link to their blog Lumuba Zapata blog . I'm also pasting below videos that were uploaded on Youtube, of a protest/teach-in they had a few weeks ago.

Over the past few days I’ve gotten two very interesting comments on my blog which I thought would be instructive to share with everyone, at yet another two layers in dire need of decolonization, the relationships between Chamorros and Filipinos and the relationships between Chamorros on Guam and those in the diaspora. They are both from the same person, who has an interesting way of posting comments that have nothing much to do with the posts he’s commenting on, but which simply function as a vehicle for him to say what he wants. By the way, the person is anonymous so I really don’t know if it’s a man or woman, boy or girl, but from the way it writes I’m assuming it’s a young boy. Its entirely possible though that the person commenting is completely made up, since the ideas the person is proposing and the way he’s sharing them are very silly. The person professes to be a “Filipino American Guamanian Activist living in Guam” which sounds almost too perfect to be an actual person. It sou

An email from Michael Moore, along with some Youtube videos about his new movie " Sicko." Gof malago yu' bei egga' este na kachido! Ti sina hu nangga esta ki malangu yu' nu este na kachido! ************************ "Sicko" Is Completed and We're Off to Cannes! May 17, 2007 Friends, It's a wrap! My new film, "Sicko," is all done and will have its world premiere this Saturday night at the Cannes Film Festival. As with "Bowling for Columbine" and "Fahrenheit 9/11," we are honored to have been chosen by this prestigious festival to screen our work there. My intention was to keep "Sicko" under wraps and show it to virtually no one before its premiere in Cannes. That is what I have done and, as you may have noticed if you are a recipient of my infrequent Internet letters, I have been very silent about what I've been up to. In part, that's because I was working very hard to complete the film. But my silen

I’ll be away for a conference for most of this weekend, ya mumåmatmos siempre yu’ gi i tumutuge’-ña i dissertation-hu, so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to post much. Pues hinasso-ku, taimånu na bei na’bula’ este na lugat, ya na’atok i tinague-ku? Hu fakcha’i este na kachido ta’lo giya Youtube, ya hinasso-ku na maolek na bai appati hamyo ni’ este siha. Bula na maolek na tinigo’ guini giya este siha. Despensa na kulang massa’ yu’ gi i kachido-ku, ti ya-hu i ta’chong nai ma na’fata’chong yu’. Buente puru ha’ Youtube na bei post guini para i weekend. Siempre mas tiempo para i che’cho’-hu yanggen hu cho’gue este… Para Hami na tres gi i kachido siha (Julian, Victoria yan Guahu), meggai masasångan na debi di in falagu’i Ofisinan Senadot pat Pulitikat. Sa’ manhoben ham, ya meggai i che’cho’n-måmi esta yan mangehilo’ ham esta lokkue’ gi diferentes na kinalamten (inetno) para i taotao-ta siha yan i islå-ta. Para i otro na dos, hu gof konfotme na maolek ayu na hinasso, lao para Guahu, siempre ti m

I've got another conference coming up this week, but thankfully no flying this time, since its so close by. The conference is up at University of California, Irvine, is titled " The Contested Terrains of Globalization " and is sponsored by the Global Studies Association. The paper that I'll be presenting is titled "The Materiality and Fantasy of Empire: The Case of Guam," which is part of my intended dissertation. I'll post my short abstract of it below which you can check out, but to quickly summarize my paper, I'd have to say that there is something about the political and discursive status of Guam today which is very instructive to those looking for the structure and tendencies of Empire today. I have often noted that the banal political ambiguity of Guam today clues us into tendencies in the global order which are just taking root now, but which will soon become the norm. Check out the abstract below, for a tiny bit more information. “The Materi

I will be posting more about this soon, bai hu prometi hamyo este, but for the moment, since its late ya gof yayas yu', I'll just say a little bit now. This past week the long await War Reparations Bill for Chamorros on Guam passed the House of Representatives and will soon move onto the Senate . A key word in this issue is "recognition." The bill in question is titled "The Guam Loyalty Recognition Act." For so many Chamorros we are encountering or approaching an important moment here, in our history of desiring to be American, feeling American and being rebuffed or rejected in our attempts to be American. If this bill passes and we receive this compensation, it will represent an important moment the Americanizing of Chamorros, which is a process all predicated upon the United States "recognizing" us. Or us being in a subordinate and marginal position and being "liberated" from that position by the benevolence, goodness and greatness of

Someone complained to me a few weeks ago that my blog is too political now, and there's nothing personal about it anymore. I don't see why or how that is a bad thing, its much better to be complaining about the fake vote we now get in Congress, or the dangers of patriotism in Guam than complaining about my "lack" of a social life or the former terrors of my dating hysteria. But apparently the way I connect nearly everything I can get my hands on to sovereignty, decolonization and colonialism is too "political" for some people. So let me try and make one of those clean blog post today, which don't teach much or enlighten much, but are kind of cute, and become more about connecting people to myself, than connecting all of us to the world. ******* For the past four weeks I've been travelling like crazy, four airplane flights in four weeks. Perhaps for people who travel regularly this isn't much, but for someone who gets carsick if he isn't dri

I don't usually pay much attention to what happens at UCSD, since as a grad student I spend most of my time on my computer in my office, only venturing onto the campus itself for food. But my interest has been caught over the past few weeks because of a fight and protest over the basic destruction of a program on campus that has long been committed to the teaching of the need and the providing of the tools of social and racial justice. I don't know as much as I should know, and haven't been as involved as I would like to be because I've been travelling and writing the past few weeks, but here is a very instructive letter written by a TA in the program, which can give you a sense of what's going on, and how it is connected to the different ridiculous rightist pushes that are taking place across American campuses today to promote their ideas which are so marginal that they are only responsible for so much of the foreign and domestic violence in the world today. In the

Its been a while since I put up a new blog user image, and so after a heard a quote over the weekend, I thought it might be a good time to change it. Lately, I've been becoming more and more of a cricket fan, after watching the movie Lagaan, and watching a few matches, and most recently the ODI World Cup Final between Sri Lanka and Australia ( ai lana, sa' manggana' i Australians Siha ). It can sometimes move slowly, but the joy or appreciation of someone staying at the crease for hours and hours, and racking up a century is worth the waiting and slower pace. People in the United States often treat cricket as if its an insane, lazy boring game. But after seeing several matches and learning the rules of the game, it is obvious in my opinion that cricket takes more skill and stamina than baseball. I’m in Oklahoma City this weekend at the Indigenous Studies Conference, which is basically an informal, historical, difficult and very inspirational gathering of scholars who are do