00:04:59.400That sort of, that leads to what later becomes hundreds of years of Spanish colonization.
00:05:05.700At the start of the 20th century, there's a change in powers and the United States takes
00:05:10.640Guam for its sort of strategic military needs. And what we see now is that Guam in the 21st
00:05:18.180century, Guam is one of the last formal colonies left in the world, where much of the world has
00:05:24.340decolonized, where many former colonies have sort of moved through a process where they now sit
00:05:30.940beside those who once colonized them in international forums, in negotiation at the United
00:05:36.920nations, Guam remains one of those places that is still a colony, sort of a remnant of the old way
00:05:45.080of doing things, the way of doing things that everyone is supposed to agree that shouldn't
00:05:50.580exist in the world anymore. And so you can see that in a number of different ways. But Chamorros
00:05:56.060on Guam feel it the strongest because we have the longest history of that colonization. If you live1.00
00:06:02.860on Guam today, you're a resident of Guam, you cannot vote for president of the United States.
00:06:09.300You don't have electoral college vote. You elect a single non-voting delegate to the U.S. Congress.
00:06:16.220But despite this, all federal laws apply to Guam. And the federal government can dictate and mandate
00:06:23.800whatever they want for Guam, despite Guam and other territories being left out of the democratic
00:06:30.000discussion about the course of the United States in general, but also what will happen to the
00:06:37.080island itself. And so the U.S. took Guam because of its strategic value. In 1898, it was because
00:06:45.480U.S. ships, you know, they were coaling ships. And so you needed all these points across the
00:06:52.600Pacific to fill ships. But eventually, that strategic value has changed to not just a
00:06:59.740link in a chain, but now it's also a point in, I guess, as one former military officer
00:07:06.660called it, a cloud of islands so that Guam and other islands and Micronesia around it
00:07:13.640are the points from which the U.S. can project force into Asia, but they're also a buffer
00:07:20.160so that they become something that can sort of muffle or deter any force projection back
00:07:28.320across to the United States. And so this puts Guam in a strange position because on a daily basis,
00:07:37.780the American flag flies over the island. People are U.S. citizens on the island.
00:07:44.080And the educational system is very Americanized. We are an extension of U.S. Netflix. So we see
00:07:52.200what's trending and what's number one in the United States. And we watch alongside people
00:07:55.700in the United States. But on a daily basis, we don't know whether we are included in the United
00:08:02.000States so that when Joe Biden or Donald Trump talks about America, is he including Guam in that?
00:08:11.160Or is Guam just what many military commanders refer to it, the tip of America's spear? Is Guam
00:08:19.500a strategic asset? Is Guam something that is not a part of America but exists apart from America
00:08:27.140and its purpose is to be wielded, to be sharpened, and so on? And that's why when talking about
00:08:35.900militarization, Guam is an island which is just over 200 square miles, but it is almost one-third
00:08:43.220U.S. military bases. And so if you come to Guam, you drive around, if you go in the northern part,
00:08:50.940most of the northern part of the island, there's military fences that go for miles because there's
00:08:56.580a large air force base, Anderson Air Force Base up there. When you come to the middle of the
00:09:02.100island, you'll find an army base. You'll find missile defense sort of positions there. When
00:09:08.200you go to the south, you'll find Navy-based Guam. You'll find a huge naval magazine where they store
00:09:13.840weapons. And so when we're talking about sort of U.S. militarization and Guam sort of telling you
00:09:22.360something about the United States, this is something that I always find is interesting.
00:09:26.740Whenever you have an empire, whenever you have sort of something like this, if there's something
00:09:34.360that they don't want to think about or don't want to deal with, it gets pushed out to the
00:09:40.080furthest reaches. This is something we've seen empires do since time immemorial. Whether it's
00:09:45.680a discussion about government corruption, well, government corruption, it exists in the fringes,
00:09:50.060it doesn't exist in the center. But for Guam, we see it with military. Guam becomes a hyper
00:09:57.220militarized place, a place in which sort of all of the things about American power, American
00:10:03.640dominance, American strategic military needs, we see it all manifest in just a small island on the
00:10:10.600edge of Asia. And so if you want to understand the United States, you want to understand sort of
00:10:19.020its story and you want to learn some of its secrets, some of the things that the United
00:10:23.040States doesn't really talk about and doesn't want people to know about, you can definitely look to
00:10:28.960Guam. And you'll find a lot of stories which may seem familiar because you've heard them in the
00:10:34.500context of treatment of Native Americans. They may sound familiar because you've heard them in the
00:10:39.340context of the way that the United States treats other countries. But that's one of the important
00:10:45.460things about why people in the United States should know about the island, should know about
00:10:49.660Guahan, because it can reflect back. It can reflect back and tell you really important things
00:10:58.280Because even just this past year, with all the conversation, or the previous year, with so many conversations around racial justice, it's so important.
00:11:09.640But one thing that needs to be part of that, though, is what does the United States do with its territories?
00:11:17.860Because it still has a number of territories.
00:11:21.040And so I wait for that conversation to happen because the Chamorro voice, the indigenous people's voice in the island, has long not been heard within the United States.
00:11:34.420and that as we push and as we protest sometimes we really wait for the united states to live up
00:11:42.040to some of their professed values uh their ideals and really give the people of guam and especially
00:11:49.360the chmur people a chance to to sort of govern themselves to determine their destiny and so um
00:11:56.840that was that was quite a bit i'm so sorry no it was so important to hear and i
00:12:03.980i'm really just sitting with yeah just sitting with the fact that guahan in so many ways doesn't
00:12:12.900get to be in so many of the conversations happening um in the lower 48 and this place
00:12:21.840that so many people forget exists but really explains the united states as empire and as a
00:12:30.340violent empire. And so I really appreciate you taking us there. And I'd like to jump into
00:12:36.440conversation on the efforts to decolonize Guahan, not metaphorically, but truly working to dismantle
00:12:43.980American colonialism and instill strong self-governance. And I think for quite some
00:12:49.920time, the term decolonization became a popular slogan and then was really abstracted outward
00:12:58.060word to a point where it lost meaning for many. But from what I understand, the people of Guahan
00:13:04.100are actively looking at what a decolonized future might look like. However, you know, I also imagine
00:13:10.700that there's a lot of complexity there because of the island's liminal nature and allegiance to the
00:13:17.600United States. So is there resistance to decolonization on the island? And how are you
00:13:24.480all working to make decolonization a rational pursuit for the majority?
00:13:30.680So decolonization used to be a dirty word in Guam. And part of this was because of the feelings of
00:13:39.720sort of loyalty and sort of a debt, like a debt of loyalty that many Chamorros felt
00:13:45.680because of World War II in the island. For 32 months, the Japanese occupied Guam.
00:13:53.020And this was a violent occupation. Towards the end, the Japanese massacred many Chamorros as the United States was bombing the island and preparing to reinvade it.
00:14:02.780And so this experience fundamentally changed the way Chamorro saw the United States. Prior to the war, they saw the U.S. as offering great opportunities, but they also saw the United States as a racist country because the U.S. brought segregation into the island.
00:14:19.480segregated schools, segregated bars. And so Chamorros lived on one side of the fence and
00:14:25.720white Americans lived on the other. And then, but, and the United States proposed itself as0.75
00:14:34.460the greatest country in the world. Its democracy was the most fantastic, but it didn't allow that
00:14:40.600democracy to exist in Guam. But what happens in the war is that there's a contrasting of
00:14:46.820colonialisms, a contrasting of colonizers. And so when confronted with the brutality of the
00:14:52.740Japanese, Chamorros choose sort of the more lazier, sort of less in your face colonization0.96
00:14:59.740of the Americans. And they start to feel a debt to the United States for kicking out the Japanese,1.00
00:15:06.000for expelling them and bringing a sense of peace to the island. And so because of that,0.98
00:15:12.060for the longest time, while much of the world was decolonizing, Guam was not. And people in Guam
00:15:18.940were resistant to that. But what happens in the 1970s is that the islands around Guam, many of
00:15:27.800which in Micronesia were under the Japanese in World War II, they get the chance to negotiate
00:16:05.100in plebiscites. But Guam, because it's deemed too strategically valuable to the United States,
00:16:11.440is denied the chance. And this then leads to especially the political leaders in Guam feeling
00:16:19.140like it was being left out. That while the rest of the Pacific and the world was moving on,
00:16:26.220Guam was stuck. And that while even our neighbors in the Pacific and Micronesia
00:16:31.580are able to make deals with Taiwan, with mainland China, with Japan, while they're able to negotiate
00:16:38.780and work with them as partners. Guam has denied that. And so there has also been a very strong
00:16:48.120movement for justice around this issue. And for some people, it is an issue of land.
00:16:54.120When I mentioned that Chamorros were patriotic, called patriotism to the United States after World
00:16:59.760War II, the United States immediately took advantage of that patriotism. In the wake of
00:17:06.200sort of the Japanese occupation, the United States started to condemn thousands of acres of land
00:17:12.940around the island, pushing out families, bulldozing farms, literally showing up in a farm and forcing
00:17:20.460people to sign papers saying that they were willing to give it up to the United States.
00:17:24.420And that Guam went from being a self-sustaining sort of agricultural island where the people lived closely connected to the land, where within, by 1949, you had thousands of Chamorro families who had no land because the United States had bulldozed their farms, pushed them off them, and basically created the military bases that the island has now.
00:17:49.600And so for some people, this is an issue of justice.
00:17:52.960We remember those things that the United States has done, and we remember sort of how for decades they banned our language in schools, similar to the experience of Native Americans in boarding schools.
00:18:07.640When the United States came in, they banned the language so that you could be punished for speaking your own language in schools and in public places.
00:18:17.480And so we remember these things. And we remember, most of all, we remember that the United States is not the beginning and it should not be the end of the Chamorro people or of Guam and Guam's existence.
00:18:32.420The Chamorro people, they are the sort of, the Chamorro people, we inherit the legacy of the first navigation into the Pacific.
00:18:42.480The Marianas Islands that Guam is the southernmost part of, we were the first islands documented, settled in the Pacific, close to 4,000 years ago.
00:18:53.800And so our history in this place goes far beyond the red, white, and blue flag that was planted on the island in 1898.
00:19:00.680And so what we've seen more and more in recent years, as Chamorros have undergone a cultural renaissance, trying to contend with colonialism, with the way it has suppressed parts of our culture, the way that it has tried to suppress our language, the way that it has displaced the people from their lands.
00:19:20.100part of that is not it doesn't remain a cultural conversation part of it then becomes a political
00:19:26.260conversation about the rights of the Chamorro people about how the Chamorro people have been
00:19:31.940treated and what is the best path moving forward for them for me this is something that I've
00:19:38.260experienced in teaching students is that if you teach them the language if you teach them
00:19:46.480their history, if you share the stories of their village with them, if you connect them to places
00:19:54.120that they feel that have been long lost to sort of this history and this continuing story of
00:20:00.420colonization, you increase the chances that they will see it as something of value and you increase
00:20:07.280the chances that they will then feel that they are obligated to protect it. Because it's one thing
00:20:13.880if you deprive people of their language and their lands and their culture, it's easy for them to
00:20:19.000feel apathetic about the world because they don't feel tied to anything. But in terms of
00:20:24.520decolonization, we've seen that as we have worked to try to preserve and revitalize the language,
00:20:31.300as more people protest about the military bases and their uses, we see more and more,
00:20:37.360especially young people, feeling like they need to take a stand, asking the question of
00:22:22.120I appreciate what you're bringing up for us to sit with and chew on
00:22:36.060And yeah, I'm also thinking about the importance of decolonization and self-governance in context
00:22:44.700to climate change, especially in terms of islands throughout Oceania.
00:22:49.540You know, I don't want to sound apocalyptic, but the reality is that typhoons are set to
00:22:56.160increase and sea level is expected to rise by three feet in the next century.
00:23:01.440And so I understand that perhaps many people feel that the process of decolonization is one of great risk where individuals are willingly abandoning a system in order to fend for themselves without the benefits of the so-called United States.
00:23:17.280but you know the united states and really the whole world is not what it once was and in terms
00:23:24.940of the united states it doesn't even care for its own states when they suffer climate emergencies
00:23:31.020so who is to say that it will care for territories can you speak to self-governance amidst changing
00:23:38.160systems worlds and whether or not you think that pursuing greater autonomy should be motivated by
00:23:45.120climate collapse. I strongly believe that the issue of climate change, environmental sort of
00:23:51.620preservation, all of those sorts of issues, they really are tied to your level of sovereignty.
00:23:59.740I mean, during the Trump administration, we saw this as being a territory of the United States.
00:24:06.000We don't get to speak for ourselves in the world. And so this is one thing that has been frustrating
00:24:14.020in recent years. When I talk to people about this, I always say that you can see this in terms of
00:24:20.000Leonardo DiCaprio. Leonardo DiCaprio, he went to Palau, an island to the south of us, which has
00:24:27.920become sort of an environmental champion in the Pacific and around the world. They've banned
00:24:33.840commercial fishing. They've created a shark sanctuary. Every tourist that comes to the
00:24:42.240island has to pay a green fee that they use to then protect sort of their their their net and so
00:24:49.940on so a few years ago leonardo dicaprio he went to he went to palau he took selfies with the
00:24:57.500president he hung out and he barbecued on the beach with the president and he came to guam too
00:25:03.240but he just went visited the airport and changed planes in guam and part of that is because
00:25:11.020Palau and other islands in the Pacific get to go to these meetings, international meetings here
00:25:18.040in Europe. Pacific Island nations have been some of the strongest voices about the need to do more
00:25:24.460because as you mentioned, it's life or death. Some islands in the Pacific have already started to
00:25:32.160create their emergency escape plans, working with partner nations to purchase or to set aside land
00:25:40.760so that when their islands begin to disappear or become uninhabitable,
00:25:44.840they can move to those higher islands to keep sustaining themselves.
00:25:53.220And Guam is completely absent in those conversations
00:25:56.280because at those meetings where the president of Palau
00:26:00.620gets to hang out with Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo,
00:26:05.060or Emmanuel Macron, or anybody else, Guam doesn't get to go to those.
00:26:10.760Instead, the State Department of the United States speaks, and we don't get a voice in that.
00:26:19.280And so under the Trump administration, it was really frustrating because climate change
00:26:23.420is becoming more and more sort of obvious, its impacts more and more sort of more and more
00:26:31.600undeniable. But the United States was moving backwards on the issue. And other countries
00:26:38.220were decrying that, but in Guam, we are stuck. We go along with the ride. We are not a canoe
00:26:46.440that sails beside the United States. We are not a people who ride on the ship of the United
00:26:52.540States. We are a boat which is tied to the United States and dragged along. And so whichever
00:27:00.600way America goes, we have to go with it. And so this has, yeah, this is one of those frustrating
00:27:07.320things, is that we want to work and we want to organize with other countries. We want to be able
00:27:14.380to, we want to help make that case for more to be done around climate change. But we can't even
00:27:22.180get into the door. There's different bodies for Pacific Island nations, and Guam can't even join
00:27:30.580those because Guam is not an independent country. Guam is sometimes allowed observer status where
00:27:37.460we get to sit and watch while other countries in the Pacific meet and talk about their fates,
00:27:43.520but Guam doesn't get to participate. So this is the problem, is that that lack of self-governance
00:27:53.460on a daily basis, many people may not be able to feel it or may not realize it because kind of you
00:27:59.120just move from one day to the next and sort of the American flag flies over the island and
00:28:04.560everything must be okay, right? But when you really think about the issues that matter,
00:28:12.340the lack of sovereignty is perilous. The lack of sovereignty means that while other island nations
00:28:21.140are making important decisions about what's going to happen to them and how they need to take a
00:28:26.720stand. We don't get to. While other islands, I mean, this was something that we felt prominently
00:28:33.580during the COVID pandemic, was that around us, the Pacific and Micronesia became like a model
00:28:41.460for COVID-free sort of existence, because all these islands in Micronesia remained COVID-free
00:28:48.940for months and months and months. And even when there was a case, it was quickly isolated
00:28:56.320and the island wasn't impacted directly.
00:29:01.300But on Guam, because we are a transit hub,
00:35:23.740You cannot, you cannot, historic sites are protected in this way or that way, because
00:35:29.100the federal government would say, no, that's, you can't do that, because that would infringe
00:35:32.600on our ability to build firing ranges or build bases.
00:35:35.720You can't do anything like that, because if you're a territory, the Constitution is not about you expressing what you want or what you're afraid of or what you hope for to protect what's valuable to you.
00:35:50.480If you're a territory and you do a Constitution, it's all about just mirroring and copying the colonizer.
00:35:58.700And it's all about just creating something for their comfort, creating something so they can argue that you are no longer a colony, because that was the original push for constitutions for the territories, was that the United States wanted to remove Guam from the list of United Nations recognized colonies in the world.
00:36:24.080So they thought that if the people of Guam created the constitution, then they could get support to have Guam removed as an official colony. But people on Guam saw through that and voted against the constitution.
00:36:37.480But in a wider discussion about this, I think that one thing that's unfortunate is that for people in the United States and Guam to some extent, as you said, our sense of a constitution is very limited by the U.S. Constitution, which is a fine document in some ways.
00:36:59.300But when we look across the world, you can see constitutions in which the environment is protected. You can see constitutions in which people have rights as workers. In other constitutions, you see traditional leadership enshrined, right?
00:37:19.620you see all sorts of things, all sorts of ways in which different people take this document and
00:37:25.900then they make it reflect who they are, not reflect who the colonizer is or was, but that you put what
00:37:33.920you want from the world, what you want for the future, what you want to protect, you put that
00:37:39.080in that document. And so that's why, you know, for me, undergoing a process of writing a constitution
00:37:47.620will be so important for Guam, but not as a territory.
00:37:51.740But when we have that freedom to gather as a community
00:37:54.600and then talk about how we can protect what matters to us,
00:38:05.840that the Chamorro connection to the island is protected,
00:38:11.140that it's not erased and it's not lost.
00:38:17.620A crazy flame burning through the night
00:38:34.000A desert rider falling down from thirst
00:38:40.980What passion must be keeping him alive
00:38:48.540The sand is humming hymns in the great white wind
00:38:56.320The sand is humming hymns in the great white wind0.99
00:39:03.960Something that I've been thinking about with the colonization and militarization of Guahan
00:39:19.060is the cost of militarization. And I'm wondering if, you know, broadly we can talk about the
00:39:26.820economic cost in terms of something like the war on terror, which has costed the United States
00:39:33.440over $5 trillion since 2001. But I also wonder about the cost of militarization in terms of
00:39:42.480livelihoods and just ways of being in this world, not through war alone, but in terms of global
00:39:50.120defense plans and the creation of military bases across the Pacific. As Guahan is considered one
00:39:56.940of the most important bases in the world by both U.S. defense and military experts. I'm wondering
00:40:03.920if you could speak to what militarizing Guam costs. Militarizing Guam definitely, it brings
00:40:12.240money into the island. It's one of the reasons why their community often feels that increasing
00:40:18.900the US military presence is important because there's construction jobs. There's some taxes
00:40:27.180that are paid as part of that. More military stationed on the island means potentially more
00:40:32.260people spending money on the island. And so the economic benefit to Guam is something that a lot
00:40:39.820of people will always champion when they're talking about why the military, it's good to
00:40:44.540have them here and why we should have more of them here. But to your larger point, one of the
00:40:50.140reasons why it's tricky, though, to think of the military as sort of an economic partner,
00:40:57.040an economic boost on WOM, is because the military is ultimately something which its course,
00:41:04.000its direction, its priorities are not something that are negotiated with WOM or talked about
00:41:09.100with Guam or its government. These are things that are decided in Washington, D.C. These are
00:41:15.580things that are decided without really Guam being a part of that. And so that's why over the past
00:41:24.22015 years, for example, there's been key moments where the military said that they were going to
00:41:30.160bring in, let's say, thousands of Marines from Okinawa. And then, so this happened about the
00:41:36.340time that Barack Obama was elected president. They said the military buildup is going to bring
00:41:41.360all this money into the island, all these new bodies, all these new bodies into the island.
00:41:48.580And so sort of the richer class on Guam started to invest. They started to buy up properties,
00:41:54.980create condo units. They started to try to get more franchises from the U.S. to bring to the
00:42:01.320Island. Even Walmart was talking about moving into Guam at that point because of all this
00:42:06.580speculation about the booming economy once the military buildup is going. But then what happened
00:42:13.160is that in the US Congress, two senators, one of them was the late John McCain, basically looked
00:42:20.760at this and said, no, this is a waste of money. Come up with a plan for what you're doing in Guam
00:42:26.540in the Pacific and then maybe we'll give you funding. And so then for several years, the
00:42:31.080buildup didn't happen because the military didn't have a plan. They were just sort of
00:42:35.100proposing all these projects. And so all of these people that were banking on that then sort of lost
00:42:42.580money, invested in things that didn't happen. More recently, one of the strangest and most
00:42:49.440bewildering things, because if an empire is large enough, then eventually you can see the empire
00:42:55.260sort of eat itself in a certain way was that while people in the United States were protesting
00:43:02.340the building of the border wall, Trump's border wall, in Guam, one of the things that happened
00:43:09.980is that in order to get the money to build his border wall, Donald Trump proposed taking the
00:43:17.060money away for the military construction on Guam. And he actually did that. He delayed
00:43:25.020construction by a year because he took the money that was meant for the construction of barracks,
00:43:31.360Marine Corps barracks and Marine Corps facilities on Guam. He stole it and decided to use it for
00:43:37.380building his, and so it was one of those interesting moments where in the short term,
00:43:44.640you know, so I think, so me personally, of course, I was against any border wall,
00:43:49.980Trump's border wall. But on the other hand, if sort of if the empire extends long enough,
00:43:55.980then the lines of progressive, liberal, colonial, decolonial, they start to shift
00:44:01.800a great deal. And so in Guam, being in support of Trump's border wall and Trump's border wall
00:44:09.500happening would mean that the military buildup might not happen. And so that's one of the ways
00:44:17.000which you can see sort of the complexity of these sorts of things. But one thing that's unfortunate
00:44:24.120though is that this militarized prioritization of money, it causes so many problems across the
00:44:33.880United States. And it also causes problems in Guam, where there's always money for sort of
00:44:41.000military projects in Guam. There's not necessarily money for other types of projects in Guam.
00:44:47.000but across the United States, it's the same thing. Military budgets always go up. There's always
00:44:53.180fancier weapons, bombs to make. There's always more things to spend military money on while the
00:45:01.460infrastructure of the United States, you know, sort of declines, while education has so many
00:45:07.320problems, while, you know, the economy has so many problems. And so I think this is one of those
00:45:13.820things where the United States may not think of itself as a militaristic country, a country that
00:45:20.780is sort of determined by military values that prioritizes the military over everything else.
00:45:27.740Your average person in the United States may not see itself in that way, but Guam provides a
00:45:33.780reflection that absolutely, if your country spends more of its budget on the military than on
00:45:41.940everything else. It means you are a militarized country. You may not feel it if you live in
00:45:49.800Washington State or in South Carolina or in Texas, because for you there, like a military base,
00:45:58.960there may be sort of one around you somewhere. But in Guam, you definitely feel it.
00:46:05.380Because in Guam, every time there's news about a new Chinese missile, you feel it.
00:46:11.940because you are America and Asia. Every time there's North Korean threats in the Pacific,
00:46:18.260you feel it because you are the tip of America's sphere. We feel it because we live sort of that0.71
00:46:24.980reality, that militarized reality, where Guam has one of the highest rates of military enlistment
00:46:31.380and also one of the highest rates of military sort of usage, where just one third of the land
00:46:38.900for military facilities. And so I definitely think that in order to, if you want to sort of
00:46:46.100understand one of the big contradictions and problems within the United States, look to a
00:46:51.200territory like Guam, and you'll get sort of just an inkling, an inkling of that poor prioritization.
00:47:00.100Yeah, I think it's so important for us who want to understand this empire of the United States to look to Guahan and study the history.
00:47:17.940And, yeah, I mean, we've covered some really expansive topics, and, you know, they're all threading the importance of identity, affirmation, and I'm really thinking about community beyond colonial structures.
00:47:36.540And as we close, I'd like to ask you what you see as the next steps for Guahan in the pursuit of becoming sovereign once again, and how will resistance and political projects continue forward?
00:47:51.760Thank you for that. And so one of the organizations that I'm part of, Independent Wahan,
00:47:58.820we've been doing community education for about four years now, and about sort of decolonization,
00:48:06.560the need to change our status. And as part of our efforts, we've reignited and revived a number of
00:48:13.900things. We've pushed into different territories, into sort of outreach territories. One of the
00:48:20.880things that we've done recently, but we need to really build upon is that we started to go back
00:48:28.220to the United Nations to tell Guam's story. Is that every October, even though Guam is not
00:48:34.240represented at the United Nations, every October, people from Guam can go and give a speech about,
00:48:42.080a short speech about the state of the territory, what is happening there. And so we sort of
00:48:48.740revived that practice, which hadn't been actively done for a while. But we did that because we felt
00:48:54.780the need, especially after threats from North Korea, possible threats from China, that we felt
00:49:01.820that we needed to get our voice out there because the feelings and the needs and the fears of the
00:49:08.280people in Guam were being lost in sort of American militaristic narratives. And so one thing that we
00:49:16.080need to do, and we've started, and this year will be sort of the year that hopefully we can
00:49:23.180make it happen, is that we need a comprehensive educational campaign for the island.
00:49:30.420And so next month, two studies are going to be released. One of them is a governance study,
00:49:38.520and it will show all of the ways in which Guam is deficient as a self-governing entity.
00:49:45.120So all the ways in which Guam, as a self-governing entity, you have these types of controls, you can do these types of things.
00:49:52.140The study will show all the ways that we don't have that.
00:49:55.460And we'll also have another study which will identify the possibilities for three different political status options.
00:50:03.540Statehood, seeking to become integrated into the United States.
00:50:07.920Free association, becoming an independent but freely associated country with the United States.
00:50:13.200And finally, independence. And so from those studies, there'll be social media campaigns breaking down pieces of it for the public.
00:50:24.340But I think more than anything, as sort of the pandemic in these times of crisis, we have to remind ourselves that being a territory, you know, means that you don't have the basic control over your community that you need in order to navigate what life will throw at you.
00:50:46.500And sometimes it's easy to ignore this, but in the pandemic, this was so obvious as the island sort of became a COVID hotspot because we could not close it off.
00:50:58.360At one point, there was a military, U.S. military aircraft carrier that was ported on the island.
00:51:04.600And some people felt that we should have the ability to say no, that you shouldn't port here because you will bring the coronavirus into the island.
00:51:12.160We found that other countries around us, even in Asia, we couldn't ask them for help because we are a territory. The United States gives us. But we couldn't connect directly with any of them to seek their assistance or their help.
00:51:29.160And so I think what remains to be done here is to really make that case for people to understand that this issue of status affects everything in your lives.
00:51:41.160It affects the cost of things on the shelves. It affects your ability to connect with the culture and the history of the island.
00:51:48.160It affects the fear that we have every day of whether bombers or missiles from North Korea or China are going to hit us.
00:51:57.420And beyond that, beyond that, though, within the United States, because one of the biggest problems we face is one of ignorance and apathy.
00:52:07.460The federal government likes Guam the way it is.
00:52:12.260Guam is not a problem that they look to solve because the military likes Guam the way it is.
00:52:19.180The military sometimes calls Guam their playground.
00:52:23.900WOM and the Marianas Islands are their playground because they can do types of training and testing
00:52:30.200there, and they don't got to ask anybody's permission, whereas in other countries,
00:52:35.420they have to ask for permission. And so fighting against that, and one of the ways that we can do
00:52:42.900it is if the United States, because of all the activism and community sort of uproar last year
00:52:49.020around racial injustice and the need to deal with it if somehow the United States can also find a
00:52:54.720way to deal with its territories. And I don't mean that the United States should just give people in
00:53:02.140the territories the right to vote, but what justice would look like for me is that after
00:53:07.840a hundred years of the United States not listening to Guam and not caring what the Chamorro people
00:53:14.260had to say, after hundreds of years of the Spanish not caring and not listening. The real0.90
00:53:20.860answer to how to fix this is that the United States needs to listen. That the United States
00:53:27.240needs to listen to what the people of Puerto Rico want. It needs to listen to what the people
00:53:32.040of Guam want. It needs to listen to what the people in the Virgin Islands want. And that's
00:53:37.740how you can get some justice in terms of the people the for the people in the territories
00:53:43.620is don't tell them what to do don't give them extend your constitution to them just be quiet
00:53:53.040and listen and ask them what they want because part of the problem is that you've never asked
00:53:59.660them what they want thank you so much michael this has been yeah oh no problem it's yeah it's