Chamorro

Recognizing the tensions between decolonial and postcolonial frameworks, this essay argues that a combined post/decolonial approach can illuminate colonial processes and reassert indigeneity. Writing as a Chamorro and a haole scholar, we weave together examples from Guåhan and Hawai'i to illustrate how a joint mobilization of decolonial and postcolonial approaches expose settler colonial processes and resistances. This essay also considers how combining these frameworks rearticulates and positions identities—in similar and distinct ways—to recenter indigeneity. Our conversation engages intersectional theorizing and resistive practices to perform Pacific moves beyond colonialism.

Als ein Ergebnis der Kolonialzeit wird die Weltsprache Spanisch heute nicht nur in Europa und den Amerikas, sondern auch in Asien und Ozeanien gesprochen. Dieser Band erschliesst der Linguistik die asiatisch-ozeanische Hispanophonie erstmals als sprachliches Areal. In den Blick genommen werden die drei wichtigsten Sprach- und gleichzeitig Kontaktraeume des Spanischen in Asien und Ozeanien: die Marianen, die Osterinsel und die Philippinen. Die hier gesprochenen lokalen Varietaeten des Spanischen wie auch die autochthonen Sprachen (Chamoru, Rapanui, Cebuano und Chabacano) werden linguistisch mehrdimensional - strukturell, soziohistorisch und kontakttheoretisch - untersucht. Dabei wird der Frage nachgegangen, in welcher Hinsicht die Varietaeten des Spanischen in Asien und Ozeanien ein separates sprachliches Areal darstellen und welche Bedeutung dem Sprachkontakt zukommt.

The people of the Mariana Islands have a practice of identifying people and providing people as individuals with nicknames rather than using first names. This is generally not the same as identifying families with clan names; that’s a different but often similar story. I would not be surprised if many of the reasons for people earning nicknames would parallel the same reasons for how or why Chamorro clan names evolve.

As a Chamorro genealogist, I often wondered about how many nicknames may have evolved over first names. On April 4, 2013, I launched this topic within the Facebook (FB) group Chamorro Roots – Håle’ Chamoru in an attempt to document and gather data from other group members. As of April 1, 2014 (no not April Fools), Lou Torre Montez, one of the Group’s Administrator/Moderators reported out that there were 655 entries. There were no additional entries through April 3, 2014 to mark the end of one year’s worth of data contributions.

When I started this pilot project I was not quite sure how the results would turn out. Initially, I wanted to set some inclusion and exclusion criteria for submission entries, but then realized that I might not capture the essence of people’s contributions and effort; and perhaps even frequency to distinguish between common, unique or even spin-­‐off nicknames.

It was also a way to connect with people to share their experiences and knowledge so any contribution was better than none! It is a great way to recognize people that contribute and have become a part and source of a community with a common interest; recognized by publishing these results. Hopefully, this effort will continue to spark interest and motivate others to contribute their knowledge and experience.

In the last contribution of part four, Steve Pagel ties in again with the reflections of the theoretical articles in this volume by demonstrating how a non-ecological analysis and the use of ‘non-natural’ data can result in essentially misguided judgments. His subject matter is the historical contact between two genetically and typologically unrelated languages: Spanish and Chamorro on the Mariana Islands. Pagel compiles heterogeneous contact typological evaluations of Chamorro from the last decades, in which classifications in and beyond several categories of the contact/mixed/new language type are proposed. By examining the underlying methods and empirical data, he reveals individual problems and ultimately proposes an alternative classification of Chamorro, guided by an ecological analysis and based on ‘natural’ data.

Mainstream history of the Mariana Islands presents the CHamoru as indigenous people who were transformed after the conquest (1668-1700) into a Hispanicized population losing their Austronesian cultural tradition. I instead emphasize the role of CHamorus during these years as active participants in their history and vehicles of what I call "adaptive resistance." In this paper I present some of the ideological interpretations that have been included in the historical narrative. They have been accepted without conducting a critical analysis of the sources and have been crucial to establish this narrative. Anthropologists have long accepted, with great relief, that our discipline renounced the search for absolute objectivity demanded, paradoxically, by many other sciences. The acquiescence to reality has allowed us to accept alternative sources of knowledge, such as poetry, novels, or songs. It allows us also to be missionaries, dancers or even pirates, or all at once. We abandoned the schizophrenic use of the third person of the plural in our writings and embraced our authorship, our "I." Claiming our authorship, we acknowledged our passions and mistakes. This acceptance better equipped us to deal with the contradictions and complexities enclosed in historical events and their commemorations. While reflecting on the anniversary of the arrival of Magellan to these islands, we have seen that there are different perspectives of the same historical event. The Government of the Philippines claims today that Lapu Lapu's killing of Magellan should be the main event to commemorate in 2021. Meanwhile, the Spaniards will celebrate with pride Magellan's or Juan Sebastián Elcano's incredible achievement.

With the advent of technology, the Chamorro Roots Genealogy Project has evolved from a personal family project into a CHamoru peoples' project with a database containing over 344,000 names and globally accessible over the internet. The technological presence is not only for CHamoru-specific genealogists. Its accessibility is also important for an ever-growing CHamoru diaspora population of over 147,798 in the United States, where the majority of the CHamoru population now resides. In this paper, I will discuss some of the Project's history, technological tools to network, communicate, and collaborate on the Project's data. This includes the publication of the transcribed 1920 and 1930 Census of Guam with observational comments. The essay concludes with a brief observation of methods, use and results of social media as a key collaborating mechanism that is the genesis for further developing a comprehensive index of CHamoru family clan names and a first name-nickname dictionary. The global accessibility of these resources produced from this Project will continue to add to the availability of CHamoru genealogy resources locally and abroad. More importantly, perhaps it will provide a key data-mining resource for scholars to review and interpret data that will enable another aspect to the knowledge-base of CHamoru history from a genealogical lens.

ABSTRACT
In light of the United States' 2011 declaration of an economic and military policy refocus-ing on the Asia-Pacific region, Kuan-Hsing Chen's argument for Asia as method can be expanded in Asian American critique to consider Asia and the Pacific as method. A critical analysis of Asian American settler colonialism in Hawai‘l
and in the United States constitutes one such methodology that mobilizes a mode of self-reflexive inquiry in Asian American critique and conjoins it to a decolonizing and deimperializing movement in Asia and the Pacific, underscoring the need for Asian American settlers to challenge the US settler state and its assault on indigenous peoples and to enact a future beyond empires. On a global scale, US settler colonialism and its seizures of indigenous lands enable and are enabled by US imperialist practices in Asia and the Pacific. The Moana Nui 2011 conference in Honolulu countered the militarized capitalism of empires represented by APEC and the TPP, illustrating the ways that peoples of Asia and the Pacific can build on each other's struggles and enact economies that will sustain us beyond empires, economies premised not on the production of scarcity that drives capitalism but on the restoration of abundance.

This is the first of two articles in which the Marianan tale of the Chaifi is re-edited as it was published by Georg Fritz, the German district captain on Saipan, in 1906. I will be concerned here with the intercultural and intertextual dimensions of that tale, examining literary aspects like genre, motifs, and themes, as well as the motivations of the author. The analysis is followed by a reprint of the tale as published in Fritz (1906b), a free English translation, and the first publication of a personal letter in which Fritz provides important information as to the authenticity of his narration.

War for Guam. Documentary film, 57-minutes, color and black and white, 2015. Produced, directed, and written by Frances Negrón-Muntaner. A production of Polymorphous Pictures, produced in association with Independent Television Service (ITVS), Pacific Islanders in Communications (PIC), and CAAM with funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). Distributed by Third World Newsreel, 545 Eighth Avenue, Suite 550, New York, NY 10018. Available at http://warforguam.com/buy.html

This article is the second part of the re-edition of the Marianan tale of the Chaifi as published by Georg Fritz, the German district administrator in Saipan, in 1906. The first article (Pagel, this volume) re-edited and translated Fritz' German version of the tale printed in Der Ostasiatische Lloyd (Fritz 1906b) into English, providing also a literary analysis of the tale (including questions of genre, the origin of several motifs, aspects of interculturality and intertextuality). The present article reprints and re-edits the bilingual version of the Chaifi as published in the Mitteilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen (Fritz 1906a), and comments on a anumber of linguistic aspects, particularly concerning Fritz' usage of the Chamorro language.

Según la historiografía institucionalmente aceptada de las islas Marianas el indígena chamorro desapareció del archipiélago totalmente tras la brutal represión colonial española en el siglo XVII, dando paso a una cultura mestiza y campesina de origen filipino y español. Sin embargo, el análisis crítico de las fuentes primarias españolas presenta un panorama distinto que nos permite pensar en dinámicas complejas que apuntan hacia la continuidad y el cambio frente a la ruptura total. Encontramos en los textos históricos indicios de estructuras socioculturales indígenas durante gran parte el siglo XVIII que sin duda se integraron como parte del ser chamorro en los siglos posteriores.

My name is Lehuanani Marie Taitano.

I would prefer no religions at all.

I am Chamoru.

C-H-A-M-O-R-U

C-H-A-M

C-H



But

the assistant shakes

her head, scrolls through a drop-down

list of pre-existing ethnic

conditions.



She shakes her head,

brow furrowed, pointer finger

clicking, tapping, wagging no.



That’s not an option.

Guåhan’s history of Spanish colonization and inflicted genocide, Japanese occupancy, and American militarization poses profound effects on CHamoru land, rights, physical health, and language survival. These include instances of “celebration colonialism” such as Liberation Day, in which CHamorus celebrate the date that the United States dropped 124 tons of bombs on Guåhan to liberate them from the Japanese ([lukao] 44). Through an analysis of his 2017 anthology from unincorporated territory: [lukao], this essay examines how Dr. Craig Santos Perez casts light on the complex inheritance of native CHamorus via an intimate portrait of diasporic CHamoru identity. Furthermore, I argue that Perez’s view of Pacific Islands as an interconnected unit — in the same vein as Tongan-Fijian writer Epeli Hau’ofa’s idea of a “sea of islands” — furthers the anthology’s alternate function as an inclusive call for justice on behalf of all transpacific peoples affected by American militarization and colo...

With the advent of technology, the Chamorro Roots Genealogy Project has evolved from a personal family project into a CHamoru peoples’ project with a database containing over 344,000 names and globally accessible over the internet. The technological presence is not only for CHamoru-specific genealogists. Its accessibility is also important for an ever-growing CHamoru diaspora population of over 147,798 in the United States, where the majority of the CHamoru population now resides. In this paper, I will discuss some of the Project’s history, technological tools to network, communicate, and collaborate on the Project’s data. This includes the publication of the transcribed 1920 and 1930 Census of Guam with observational comments. The essay concludes with a brief observation of methods, use and results of social media as a key collaborating mechanism that is the genesis for further developing a comprehensive index of CHamoru family clan names and a first name-nickname dictionary. The g...

In addition to its central role in the organization of gender systems and its numerous effects on different parts of the grammar, animacy reveals itself as a significant, sometimes even determinant factor in diachronic processes like the reduction of morphological complexity. As illustrated by the three case studies presented in this talk, animacy offers a transparent semantic criterion that helps substantiate several formal distinctions in languages, thereby reducing the amount of morphological complexity or unpredictability inherited from earlier stages in the evolution of different linguistic systems.