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 editorial is written from Maine, by longtime peace and demilitarization activist Bruce Gagnon. I first met Bruce in 2010 during a solidarity tour to South Korea. I learned so much from him, as he is so much more involved in international peace and demilitarization work than I am. The stories he shared of his struggles, his travels, the victories that movements he's participated in have garnered were both so educational and inspiring to me. In this editorial he poses something which Guam, as the Tip of America's Spear, as Fortress Guam, as a strategically important base to the US should consider, but rarely does. What if the massive amount of money that the US invests in bases and weapons, was used for something else? Something that didn't destroy, attack or defend, but provided stability in a more direct sense? In Guam we have become so accustomed to the variety of militarism that exists in the US, we constantly forget to ask questions about its nature, and whether t...