NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

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...

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...