We Are The Ocean
The Reclaim Guahan Rally is a little over a week away, and already I can feel something in the air. Inetdot yu’ ni’ este na manglo. It is the kind of goose-bump feeling that you get when some sort of amorphous social change is just on the horizon.
A multitude of people, with a multitude of identities, agendas, wishes, hopes, hatreds, who perhaps abstractly make up a community (such as Guam), are being brought together somehow. There is a site, there is a force, a momentum, in which they are being bound together.
On a day to day basis, they may know they inhabit the same space, may claim the same tano’, odda’, hanom tasi yan aire as their home or their homeland, but they still feel divided, are divided. There are certain people who are ruining the island, there are certain people who are fixing the island. Then there are the majority of people who are simply trying to live their lives.
Generally, most people don’t see themselves in this equation, not an active member of the community, but an observer, who stands outside it and contributes by simply complaining about society or telling everyone else who is at fault if things aren’t gof maolek. They argue that there are horrible things wrong with the way Guam is, but see themselves as outside of the solution, they feel no obligation to make anything happen, but leave the answers to who is saving and who is ruining Guam, always up to other. The general way this happens is they complain that activists or the Government of Guam are ruining everything and we simply need more Federales and more military to fix everything.
But what happens when some change is approaching, or even the possibility of something radical taking place, is that people start feeling draw together.
A space, an event, a force, an idea, something emerges which has the power to start to weave together, loosely at first, the disparate threads of identity that we find in a community.
To use a Pacific Islander metaphor, it can often feel like the ocean flooding around you, pushing you, moving you from all sides, filling in the spaces between each of us.
Becoming the force which can bind us together and literally drown us and wash away the identities or the particularities which divided us, and then engulf us into some cause, some movement, some shared desire or dream.
I am truly hoping that the Reclaim Guahan event becomes one of these sites from which we can empower people, and people can find a way to come together to seek and embody solutions, rather than to simply talk about the problems and wait for someone to liberate us.
As we stand at the edge of something perhaps revolutionary or radical, I am reminded of the seminal essay “Our Sea of Islands” by the late Tongan scholar Epeli Hau’ofa, which was recently published in his book of essays and creative writing We are the Ocean. The essay challenges the longstanding European, Western and colonial assumptions that the Pacific is full of emptiness. Empty islands, empty people, no chance for sustainability, sovereignty, nothing but dots of dependency and shattered cultures, all isolated from each other by a vast ocean, which separates us and is the source of our weakness. Hau’ofa calls on peoples in the Pacific to re-imagine themselves in their islands, in the Pacific and in the world. He calls on them to rethink primarily the ocean and its metaphor in our lives, not as something which divides us, but connects us, brings us to each other. The ocean is in us, it is our strength.
He ends his essay with this poetic and inspiring call, which I find at the center of the hope that this Reclaim Guahan Rally will instill:
Oceania is vast, Oceania is expanding, Oceania is hospitable and generous, Oceania is humanity rising from the depths of brine and regions of fire deeper still, Oceania is us.
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Comment by Kel Muna on 19 May 2009:
The only thing I can add is this: the power is in the people. Whether the results are good or bad, it all stems from the collective action or inaction of people. Significant and effective changes and results aren’t (and can’t be) achieved by one person’s actions alone. It’s going to take a collective, forward effort by many folks in order to take an idea and materialize it. People have to stop the yip-yap and start getting up and getting out in order to even start seeing a difference. I, for one, will definitely be there on Saturday!
Who else will be there?
Comment by Michael Lujan Bevacqua on 21 May 2009:
Magahet enao sinangan-mu Kel! Biba!
I just thought I’d share with everyone a comment that someone left on one of my blogs yesterday after the K57 interview.
“heard you on the radio. you’re a nice guy but misdirected. guam will never be a country and the guamanians aren’t motivated enough to change.”
When me and Eva Cruz were on Jesse Anderson Lujan’s show earlier this morning I mentioned it there, because that’s what we have to confront. So many people will tell you that everything is impossible, that change cannot happen, or that Guam can’t take care of itself, can’t sustain itself. I agree, that if you have an island full of people who believe that, then that will be the truth. But if you can get enough people off of their daggans and out into the community, whether in big or small ways, committed to make a difference, than you can do almost anything.
Comment by victoria-lola aka ms lg on 22 May 2009:
biba miget! gof bunita yan magahet este na post. and kel is right, we can only do this together. so get off your daggan and come to the ocean. nihi ta chule’ tatte guåhan.
Comment by si selina on 24 May 2009:
We are, indeed, the ocean. But what I’d like to see is a realistic solution to get families to start bonding in ways that don’t include Texas Hold ‘em while their children are (literally) out on the streets running wild without attention.
I’d like to see people who are more committed to preventing drug use and drug abuse on Guam.
I want to see solutions in helping children and adults who suffer from mental illnesses or mental disorders.
I want to see our island transcend from a community that does NOT talk about sexual abuse or sex offenses within families.
Because I am not qualified in any of these areas I am pretty ignorant with resolving any of the above, but it doesn’t mean that I’m not listening or not paying attention.
What I AM qualified in is talking to my family, my friends, and my colleagues.
I chose to leave the private sector so I could study and analyze GovGuam’s budget processes, and I am extremely satisfied that I made the move!
I am getting a deeper understanding of how fiscally irresponsible a lot of OUR OWN people have been… how abusive our LOCAL government is with spending tax dollars. I am grossly disappointed that rather than addressing our island’s problems with producing programs that actually work, they instead haphazardly make budget decisions that leave us back at the drawing board.
The Department of Chamorro Affairs is more interested in having a grant writer from Mental Health transfered over (for about $70k) than it is in actually filling the Administrator position under the “Chamorro Language & Culture” division. The governor is cool with the fact that The Commission on Decolonization has a 10×10 office space that they share with the Ancestral Lands Commission (so I’m told). This year, the COD presented a budget requesting a little over $170k for only personnel funding. They were told to stay w/in their budget ceiling thus leaving them without the proper supplies, equipment, and resources for actually promoting the plebiscite or educating the people about our self-determination. All this means is that this administration is not concerned with our quest for self-determination.
What’s even more amusing to me is that many GovGuam officials are pretty blatant with their motives to sustain their laziness and their lack of innovativeness. It’s true… ONE bad apple really can spoil the bunch. It’s no wonder we’ve lost all faith in our governmental system.
So until people wake up and pay attention (or actually sit and watch the public hearings), then maybe more people will be at our rallies. Maybe Victoria and Mike wouldn’t get such asinine comments. Maybe I wouldn’t be so irritated with Chamorus who explicitly ask for money so they can pay their rent while using their own money for BINGO.
And interestingly enough, there is SOOOOOOOOO much talk about who wants federal funding and federal grants. What the hell? Has this become the norm?
A very close and wise confidant of mine said, “Sa’ipan has two industries… the manufacturing industry and federal grants.”
For a lack of better words, it seems like so many of our government officials are more closely identified with prostitution. (I’ll get slammed for this, but this is my opinion.) And I say prostitution, because it seems like so many people on this island are willing to sacrifice their dignity, their pride, their integrity, and accountability in exchange for a vote, a top spot in this ridiculous popularity contest, or even just to be recognized for something that at first seems glorious when it’s really trite.
I have never been interested in getting people to agree with more or in just making a point about all of this. I am more interested in getting people to realize why they feel the way they do about living on Guam, because some friends in the states think Vincent and I were nuts for coming back. I hope that someday I can change that sort of reaction from others when people say they want to come back to Guam.
*Sorry… I was so touched by the lack of attendance at the rally yesterday that I am so inspired to get back to where I left off before I moved off-island ten years ago. I’m back… I’m home… I’m ready.
Comment by si selina on 24 May 2009:
I have to correct the first sentence in my last paragraph. (I was so eager to write.)
I meant to say, “I have never been interested in getting people to agree with ME…”
Comment by si hima on 28 January 2010:
Oceania as Epeli Hauófa beautifully describes it…
“Oceania denotes a sea of islands with their inhabitants. The world of our ancestors was a large sea full of places to explore, to make their homes in, to breed generations of seafarers like themselves. People raised in this environment were at home with the sea.”
“…we all know that only those who make the ocean their home, and love it, can really claim it as their home. Conquerors come, conquerors go, the ocean remains, mother only to her children.” - Epeli Hau’ofa