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...