Transcript: Dr. MICHAEL LUJAN BEVACQUA on Guåhan’s Sovereignty Amidst Climate Change /243
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Hello and welcome to For The Wild Podcast, I’m Ayana Young. Today I’m speaking with Dr. Michael Lujan Bevacqua.
Dr. Michael Lujan Bevacqua Whenever you have an empire, whenever you have something like this, if there's something that they don't want to think about or don't want to deal with, it gets pushed out to the furthest reaches. This is something we've seen empires do since time immemorial.
Ayana Young Dr. Michael Lujan Bevacqua taught Guam History and Chamoru language at the University of Guam for 10 years and helped found its Chamorro Studies Program, the only one of its kind in the world. With his brother Jack, they run a creative collective called The Guam Bus which publishes Chamoru language books, comics and learning materials. He is the co-chair for the community group Independent Guåhan, which is dedicated to educating the island of Guam on the possibilities should it decolonize and become a sovereign, independent country. He is a member of the Kabesa and Bittot clans on Guam.
Thank you so much for joining us today from Guam. I'm really looking forward to having this conversation together.
Dr. Michael Lujan Bevacqua And you too. Thank you so much for having me Ayana.
Ayana Young Yes, well, I’d like to start our conversation by recognizing Guåhan’s incredibly layered history, as well as Chamoru history that predates this colonial narrative by thousands of years...And there really are so many different ways to ask this question, and to some extent, it feels like framing Guåhan in one way or another really does a disservice to its complexity, but I’d like to share a passage from “Militarization and Resistance from Guåhan: Protecting and Defending Pågat” written by you and Tiara Na‘puti, “While [the Pacific Ocean is] a huge swath covering almost half of the globe, it is perceived as populated with “small” islands and small island peoples, and thus imagined as a place meant to be traversed by imperial and world powers, rather than a site from which we can understand the structure of colonial power. The smallness of the islands and peoples of the Pacific makes them ideal as anthropological laboratories, but not as sites for understanding the structure of American sovereignty. In the Pacific we find stolen lands a plenty, stolen kingdoms, islands transformed into fortresses, bodies and lands poisoned through military testing and an array of colonial bodies shipped off to war. In the Pacific, we see that militarism and colonialism are not exceptional facets of American existence but structures that are constitutive and essential to the historical and contemporary production of American power.” And so, I wonder if you can ground listeners in the history of Guåhan and how it really challenges conventional definitions? Or, why is it vital to center Guåhan’s story and current developments both in terms of Indigenous culture and scholarship, as well as a manifestation of U.S. empire?
Dr. Michael Lujan Bevacqua No, thank you for that question. I think when looking at the story of Guåhan, Guam has the distinction of being the first place colonized in the Pacific by Europeans, we are 500 years from the anniversary of Magellan sailing across the Pacific and finding Guam, as he crosses. That leads to what later becomes hundreds of years of Spanish colonization. At the start of the 20th century, there's a change in powers and the United States takes Guam for its sort of strategic military needs. And what we see now is that Guam in the 21st century, Guam is one of the last formal colonies left in the world, where much of the world has decolonized, were many former colonies have sort of moved through a process where they now sit beside those who once colonized them, in international forums, in negotiation at the United Nations. Guam remains one of those places, that is still a colony, sort of a remnant of the old way of doing things, the way of doing things that everyone is supposed to agree that shouldn't exist in the world anymore.
And so you can see that in a number of different ways, but Chamorros on Guam feel it the strongest because we have the longest history of that colonization. If you live in Guam, today, you're a resident of Guam, you cannot vote for the President of the United States, you don't have Electoral College votes, you elect a single non-voting delegate to the US Congress. But despite this, all federal laws apply to Guam and the federal government can dictate and mandate whatever they want for Guam, despite Guam and other territories being left out of the Democratic discussion about the course of the United States in general, but also what will happen to the island itself.
So the US took Guam because of its strategic value. In 1898 it was because U.S. ships, you know, they were coaling ships and so you needed all these points across the Pacific to fill ships, but eventually, that strategic value has changed to not just a link in a chain. But now it's also a point in I guess, as one former military officer called it a cloud of islands so that Guam and other islands and Micronesia around it are the points from which the U.S. can project force into Asia, but they're also a buffer so that they become something that can sort of muffle, or deter any force projection back across to the United States. This puts Guam in a strange position because on a daily basis, the American flag flies over the island, people are U.S. citizens on the island, and the educational system is very Americanized. We are an extension of U.S. Netflix so we see what's trending and what's number one in the United States, and we watch alongside people in the United States. But on a daily basis, we don't know whether we are included in the United States. So that when Joe Biden or Donald Trump talks about America, is he including Guam in that? Or is Guam just what many military commanders refer to it as; the tip of America's spear. Is Guam a strategic asset? Is Guam something that is not a part of America, that exists apart from America, and its purposes to be wielded, to be sharpened, and so on.
That's why when talking about militarization, Guam is an island that is just over 200 square miles, but it is almost 1/3 U.S. military basis. And so if you come to Guam, you drive around, you go in the northern part, most of the northern part of the island, there are military fences that go for miles because there's a large Air Force Base, Andersen Air Force Base, up there. When you come to the middle of the island, you'll find an army base, you will find missile defense sort of positions there. When you go to the south, you'll find Navy Base Guam, you'll find a huge naval magazine where they store weapons. And so when we're talking about sort of us militarization and Guam sort of telling you something about the United States, this is something that I always find is interesting. Whenever you have an empire whenever you have sort of something like this, if there's something that they don't want to think about or don't want to deal with, it gets pushed out to the furthest reaches. This is something we've seen empires do since time immemorial. Whether it's a discussion about government corruption, while government corruption exists in the fringes, it doesn't exist in the center. But for Guam, we see it with the military; Guam becomes a hyper militarized place, a place in which sort of all of the things that about American power, American dominance, American strategic military needs, we see it all manifests in just a small island on the edge of Asia.
So if you want to understand the United States, you want to understand sort of its story and you want to learn some of its secrets, some of the things that the United States doesn't really talk about and, and doesn't want people to know about, you can definitely look to Guam and you'll find a lot of stories which may seem familiar because you've heard them in the context of treatment of Native Americans. They may sound familiar because you've heard them in the context of the way that the United States treats other countries, but that's one of the important things about why people in the United States should know about the island - should know about Guåhan, because it can reflect back, it can reflect back and tell you really important things. Because even just this past year, with so many conversations around racial justice, it's so important, but one thing that needs to be part of that, though, is what does the United States do with its territories? Because it still has a number of territories. And 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. And as we push, and as we protest, we really wait for the United States to live up to some of their professed values, their ideals, and really give the people of Guam and especially the Chamorro people a chance to sort of govern themselves to determine their destiny. And so that was quite a bit, I'm so sorry.
Ayana Young No, it was so important to hear and I really just sitting with the fact that Guåhan in so many ways doesn't get to be in so many of the conversations happening in the lower 48 and this place that so many people forget exists, but really explains the United States as an empire and as a violent empire. And so I really appreciate you taking us there. And I'd like to jump into a conversation on the efforts to decolonize Guåhan, not metaphorically, but truly working to dismantle American colonialism and instill strong self-governance. And I think, for quite some time the term decolonization became a popular slogan, and then was really abstracted outward to a point where it lost meaning for many. But, from what I understand, the people of Guåhan are actively looking at what a decolonized future might look like. However, I also imagine that there is a lot of complexity there because of the island’s liminal nature and allegiance to the United States...Is there resistance to decolonization on the island and how are you all working to make decolonization a rational pursuit for the majority?
Dr. Michael Lujan Bevacqua So, decolonization used to be a dirty word in Guam and part of this was because of the feelings of sort of loyalty, and sort of a debt, like a debt of loyalty that many Chamorros felt, because of World War II in the island. For 32 months, the Japanese occupied Guam and 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, and so this experience fundamentally changed the way Chamorros 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, segregated schools, and segregated bars and so Chamorros lived on one side of the fence and white Americans lived on the other. But the United States proposed itself as the greatest country in the world. Its democracy was the most fantastic, but it would didn't allow that democracy to exist in Guam. But what happens in the war is that there's a contrasting of colonialism, a contrasting of colonizers and so when confronted with the brutality of the Japanese Chamorro’s choose, sort of the lazier, sort of less in your face colonization of the Americans, and they start to feel a debt to the United States for kicking out the Japanese, for expelling them and bringing a sense of peace to the island.
So because of that, for the longest time, while much of the world was decolonizing, Guam was not and people in Guam were resistant to that. But what happens in the 1970s is that the islands around Guam, many of which, in Micronesia, were under the Japanese in World War II, they get the chance to negotiate a new political status, they get the chance to decolonize from the United States. But Guam as an unincorporated territory, a strategic possession, is denied that right. So you have people from Palau, the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, they get to sit with the State Department and talk about what they want for their political future, and they get to vote in plebiscites, but Guam, because it's deemed too strategically valuable to the United States is denied the chance and this then leads to, especially the political leaders in Guam, feeling like it was being left out, that while the rest of the Pacific and the world was moving on, Guam was stuck. And that while even our neighbors in the Pacific, in Micronesia, are able to make deals with Taiwan, with Mainland China, with Japan while they're able to negotiate and work with them as partners. Guam is denied that.
So there has also been a very strong movement for justice around this issue and for some people, it is an issue of land. When I mentioned that Chamorros were patriotic, felt patriotism to the United States after World War II, the United States immediately took advantage of that patriotism. In the wake of sort of the Japanese occupation, the United States started to condemn 1000s of acres of land around the island, pushing out families, bulldozing farms, literally showing up at a farm, and forcing people to sign papers saying that they were willing to give it up to the United States. And 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 1000s of Chamorros families who had no land because the United States had bulldozed their farms, pushed them off them, and basically created the military basis that the island has now. And so for some people, this is an issue of justice. We 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 when the United States came in, they banned the language so that you can be punished for speaking your own language, in schools and in public places and 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.
The Chamorro people, we inherit the legacy of the first navigation into the Pacific. The Marianas Islands, which Guam is the southernmost part of, we were the first islands documented, settled in the Pacific, close to 4000 years ago. So our history in this place goes far beyond the red, white, and blue flag that was planted on the island in 1898. And 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 parts of our language, the way that it has displaced the people from their lands. Part of that is not, it doesn't remain a cultural conversation, part of it then becomes a political conversation about the rights of the Chamorro people about how the Chamorro people have been treated, and what is the best path moving forward for them.
For me, this is something that I've experienced in teaching students is that if you teach them the language, if you teach them their history, if you share the stories have their village with them, if you connect them to places that they feel that have been long lost, to sort of this history, and it's continuing story of colonisation, you increase the chances that they will see it as something of value, and you increase the chances that they will then feel that they are obligated to protect it. Because it's one thing if you deprive people of their language and their lands and their culture, it's easy for them to feel apathetic about the world because they don't feel tied to anything. But in terms of decolonization, we've seen that as we have worked to try to preserve and revitalize the language. As more people protest about the military bases and their uses. We see more and more especially young people feeling like they need to take a stand asking the question of why wasn't I taught my language? You know, why is it that my family doesn't have land anymore? You know, why is it that so much of our history has been lost? And so it's been beautiful to see. It's been beautiful to see so many people connect that to decolonization, connect it to the idea that Guam needs to leave the status of being a territory that we need to move to something where we join the rest of the world.
Ayana Young I appreciate what you're bringing up for us to sit with and chew on. And, yeah, I'm also thinking about the importance of decolonization and self-governance in context to climate change, especially in terms of islands throughout Oceania...And I don’t want to sound apocalyptic, but the reality is that typhoons are set to increase and sea level is expected to rise by 3 feet in the next century...and 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, but the United States, and really the whole world is not what it once was, and in terms of the United States, it doesn’t even care for its own state’s when they suffer climate emergencies, so who is to say it will care for territories? Can you speak to self-governance amidst changing systems/worlds and whether or not you think that pursuing greater autonomy should be motivated by climate collapse?
Dr. Michael Lujan Bevacqua I strongly believe that the issue of climate change, environmental sort of preservation, all of those sorts of issues, they really are tied to your level of sovereignty. I mean, during the Trump administration, we saw this as being a territory of the United States. We don't get to speak for ourselves in the world. And so this is one thing that has been frustrating in recent years, because - and it's always when I talked to people about this, I always say that you can see this in terms of Leonardo DiCaprio. Leonardo DiCaprio, went to Palau, an island to the south of us, which has become sort of an environmental champion in the Pacific and around the world. They've banned commercial fishing, they've created a shark sanctuary. You know, they're they have every tourist that comes to the island, they have to pay a green fee that they use to then protect their net and so on. So a few years ago, Leonardo DiCaprio, he went to Palau. He took selfies with the president, he hung out and he barbecued on the beach with the press. And he came to Guam too, but he just went to visit the airport and changed planes in Guam.
Part of that is because Palau and other islands in the Pacific get to go to these meetings, international meetings here in Europe, Pacific island nations have been some of the strongest voices about the need to do more. Because as you mentioned, it's life or death. Some islands in the Pacific have already started to create their emergency escape plans, working with partner nations to purchase or to set aside land, so that when their islands begin to disappear or become uninhabitable, they can move to those higher islands to keep sustaining themselves. Guam is completely absent in those conversations because at those meetings, where the President of Palau gets to hang out with Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, or, or Emmanuel Macron, or anybody else, Guam doesn't get to go to those. Instead, the State Department of the United States speaks and we don't get a voice in that, and whatever, so under the Trump administration, it was really frustrating because climate change is getting is becoming more and more sort of obvious, its impacts more and more, sort of, more and more undeniable. But the United States was moving backward on the issue. And other countries were decrying that, but in Guam, we are stuck, we go along with the ride. We are not a canoe that sails beside the United States. We are not a people who ride on the ship of the United States. We are a boat, which is tied to the United States and dragged along. So whichever way America goes, we have to go with it.
This is one of those frustrating things is that we want to work and we want to organize with other countries, we want to be able to, we want to help make that case, for more to be done around climate change, but we can't even get into the door. There's different bodies for Pacific island nations, and Guam can't even join those. Because Guam is not an independent country. Guam is sometimes allowed observer status where we get to sit and watch, while other countries in the Pacific meet and talk about their fates. But one doesn't get to participate. So this is the problem is that that lack of self-governance, on a daily basis, many people may not be able to feel it or may not realize it because kind of you just move from one day to the next and sort of the American flag flies over the island and everything must be okay. Right? But when you really think about the issues that matter, the lack of sovereignty is perilous. The lack of sovereignty means that while other island nations are making important decisions about what's going to happen to them and how they need to take a stand. We don't get to.
This was something that we felt prominently during the COVID pandemic was that around us, the Pacific and Micronesia became like a model for COVID free sort of existence, because all these islands in Micronesia remained COVID free for for months and months and months. And even when there was a case, it was quickly isolated. And the island wasn't impacted directly. But on Guam, because we are a transit hub, because we are a US destination, and because we don't have the ability to close off our island, the US federal government gets to decide that even when we were worried, and we saw our island, brothers, and sisters closing themselves off to protect themselves, Guam couldn't. And so this lack of the ability to self-govern, you can feel it in so many ways. And it's unfortunate because as these issues such as climate change become more and more real, that ability not to even be part of the conversation. It just becomes so much more problematic. It just for me, it becomes much more harrowing, that that we cannot stand beside other Pacific island nations and speak with a louder voice about the need for the large countries to do more to stop this issue.
Ayana Young Yeah, I’d now like to ask you about the potential creation of a new constitution for Guåhan, and I welcome you to share some more general information on this because I don’t want to misrepresent anything, but in an article titled “Guam can learn from U.S. Virgin Island’s constitution attempts” you write; “The creation of a constitution is a powerful exercise of a community trying to create a document that enshrines not only their hopes, but their worries and fears. It's a blueprint meant to also provide tools for how they can potentially protect and defend themselves from threats internal, external and colonial.” And I know, for many just the term “constitution” evokes a very colonial understanding, suggesting that we move within colonizer courts or allow our relationships to be defined by colonial understanding; but part of me wants to think about constitutions as a sort of necessary passageway into agreement and relationship as it provides a clear articulation of boundaries, so I’d really love to hear you talk about this process a bit more in terms of the shortcomings, opportunities, and importances?
Dr. Michael Lujan Bevacqua No, it's a very good question, because, since the 1970s, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands have been empowered by the U.S. government to create constitutions, but this is a very misleading sort of thing because they have been empowered to create constitutions, but the rules and the limitations on the constitutions are that your government has to follow the format of the United States, it cannot conflict with any part of the United States federal law. And it, it cannot acknowledge your own sovereignty, or constitution has to acknowledge the sovereignty of the United States over to you. And so even if you just think about what the Constitution of the United States was supposed to represent, for the framers and for the United States, the constitution that the U.S. Congress wants Guam and the Virgin Islands to make this nothing like that. This would just be like cutting and pasting, like the US Constitution, and then just changing out one or two words here or there. And so, for the Virgin Islands, it's been a frustrating experience for them, because they've tried to do this at least five times and part of the issue, though, is that when they create a document, then they the last time that they did it, they created something, for example, they wanted to put stronger time restrictions on who could serve in public office in the Virgin Islands because the Virgin Islands has an issue where people move down there, and then they get residency and then they like run for office, even though they had don't have strong connections to the community there yet and so they wanted to put in something where you had to have lived on the island for like, seven years, or 10 years and they put longer residency periods like that longer than any other place in the United States and the Department of Justice said that that's unconstitutional. But for the people of the Virgin Islands, it was an issue where, but we want to make sure that the people who represent us are actually connected to the community, they're not just people who have a summer home in the islands or a winter home in the islands. So we want to make it so that they have to actually live here for a long enough period to be connected to the community before they're eligible to represent it and the Department of Justice said, “No, unconstitutional.” And there were other things, too, that they took out and they said, “If you want to pass this constitution, take out all these things.” And so that's part of the problem with doing a constitution while you are still a territory.
For Guam, there are a couple of issues that I always talk about in relation to this, you know, and one of them is the military buildup. The United States has been destroying jungle areas, it has been desecrating areas with historic human remains, cultural artifacts, there's a lot of stuff happening on the island, the people of Guam, who are against this feel powerless, that we can do anything about it because we are a territory. And so if somebody says, “Well, we should have a constitution.” One of the things that you couldn't put into this constitution is that you couldn't put anything to affect the military. So you couldn't put anything that says that the people of Guam have sovereign control over their resources, because then the United States would say, “Well, wait a second that you know, you don't actually have that. We have sovereign control over your resources.” You couldn't say anything like historic sites are protected in this way or that way. Because the federal government would say, “No, that's you can't do that because that would infringe on our ability to build firing ranges or build bases.” You 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. If you're a territory, and you do a constitution, it's all about just mirroring and copying the colonizer. And 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. So 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 one side, you know, saw through that and voted against the Constitution, but in a wider discussion about this. I think that um, 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 US Constitution, which is a fine document in some ways, but 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, you see traditional leadership enshrined. Right, you see all sorts of things, all sorts of ways in which different people take this document and then they make it reflect who they are, not reflect who the colonizer is, or was, but that you put what you want from the world, what you want for the future, what you want to protect, you put that in that document. And so that's why, you know, for me, undergoing a process of writing a constitution will be so important for Guam, but not as a territory. But when we have that freedom to gather as a community and then talk about how we can protect what matters to us what makes this island special, and it can be a place where of course all ethnicities are respected. But how could we also ensure that the Chamorro connection to the island is protected, that it's not you erased and it's not lost?
Ayana Young Something that I've been thinking about with the colonization and militarization of Guåhan, and I’m wondering if you know, broadly we can talk about the economic cost in terms of something like the war on terror, which has costed the United States over $5 trillion since 2001, but I also wonder about the cost of militarization in terms of livelihoods and just ways of being in this world not through war alone, but in terms of global defense plans and the creation of military bases across the Pacific. As Guåhan is considered one of the most important bases in the world by both US defense and military experts, can you speak to what militarizing Guåhan costs?
Dr. Michael Lujan Bevacqua Oh definitely, militarizing Guam - it brings money into the island. It's one of the reasons why their community often feels that increasing the US military presence is important, because, there are construction jobs, there are some taxes that are paid as part of that. More military stations on the island mean potentially more people spending money on the island, and so the sort of economic benefit to Guam is something that a lot of people will always sort of champion when they're talking about why the military, it's good to have them here and why we should have more of them here, but to your larger point, one of the reasons why it's tricky, though, to think of the military as a, as sort of an economic partner and economic boost on Guam is because the military is also is ultimately something which its course its direction, its priorities are not something that are negotiated with Guam or talked about with Guam’s government. These are things that are decided in Washington, DC, these are things that are decided, without really Guam being a part of that.
So that's why, over the past 15 years, for example, there's been key moments where the military said that they were going to bring in, let's say, 1000s of Marines from Okinawa. So this happened about the time that Barack Obama was elected president, they said, the military buildup is going to bring all this money into the island, all these new bodies, all these new bodies into the island and so sort of the richer class on Guam started to invest, they started to buy up properties, create condo units, they started to try to get more franchises from the US to bring to the island. You know, even Walmart was talking about moving into Guam at that point, because of all this speculation about the booming economy once the military buildup is going. But then what happened is that in the U.S. Congress, two senators, one of them was the late John McCain basically looked at this and said, “No, this is a waste of money. Come up with a plan for what you're doing in Guam in the Pacific, and then maybe we'll give you funding.” And so then for several years to build up didn't happen, because the military didn't have a plan. They were just sort of proposing all these projects. And so all of these people that were banking on that, then sort of lost money invested in things that didn't happen.
More recently, one of the strangest and most bewildering things, because if you, if an empire is large enough, then eventually you can see the Empire sort of eat itself in a certain way, was that well, people in the United States were protesting the building of the border wall, Trump's border wall, in Guam, one of the things that happened is that in order to get the money to build his border wall, Donald Trump proposed taking the money away for the military construction on Guam and he actually did that, he delayed construction by a year because he took the money that was meant for the construction of barracks, Marine Corps barracks and Marine Corps facilities on Guam, he stole it, and decided to use it for building his wall, and so it was one of those interesting moments where in the short term, you know, so I think so me personally, of course, I was against any border wall, Trump's border wall, but on the other hand, if sort of if the Empire extends long enough, then the lines of progressive liberal colonial decolonial they start to shift, a great deal. And so in Guam, being in support of Trump's border wall and Trump's border wall happening would mean that the military buildup might not happen and so that's, that's one of the ways in which you can see sort of the complexity of these sorts of things.
But one thing that's unfortunate, though, is that this militarized prioritization of money, it causes so many problems across the United States. And it also causes problems in Guam, where there's always money for sort of military projects in Guam, there's not necessarily money for other types of projects in Guam, but across the United States it's the same thing. Military budgets always go up. There are always fancier weapons, bombs to make, there are always more things to spend military money on, while the infrastructure of the United States, you know, sort of declines, while education has so many problems, well, you know, the economy has so many problems and so I think this is one of those things where the United States may not think of itself as a militaristic country, a country that is sort of determined by military values, that prioritizes the military over everything else, your average person in the United States may not see itself in that way, but Guam provides a reflection, that, absolutely, if your country spends more of its budget on the military, than everything else, it means you are a militarized country. You may not feel it if you live in Washington State, or in South Carolina, or in Texas because for you there maybe a military base like somewhere around you, but in Guam you definitely feel it because everytime there's news about a new Chinese missile, you feel it. Because you are America and Asia. Every time there are North Korean threats in the Pacific, you feel it, because you are the tip of America's spear. We feel it because we live sort of that reality, that militarized reality, where Guam has one of the highest rates of military enlistment. And also one of the highest rates of military sort of usage. Where just 1/3 of the land is for military facilities. And so I definitely think that in order to if you want to sort of understand one of the big contradictions and problems within the United States, look to a territory like Guam, and you'll get sort of just an inkling, an inkling of that poor prioritization.
Ayana Young Yeah, I think it's so important for us who want to understand this empire of the United States to look Guåhan and study the history. And, yeah, I mean, we've covered some really expansive topics. And, you know, they're threading the importance of identity affirmation and really thinking about community beyond colonial structures, as we close, I’d like to ask you what you see as the next steps for Guåhan in the pursuit of becoming sovereign once again? How will resistance and political projects continue forward?
Dr. Michael Lujan Bevacqua Thank you for that and so one of the organizations that I'm part of Independent Guåhan, we've been doing community education for about four years now and about sort of decolonization, the need to change our status. And, as part of our efforts, we've reignited and revived a number of things we've pushed into different territory into sort of outreach territories. One of the things that's that we've done recently, but we need to really build upon is that we started to go back to the United Nations to tell Guam’s story, is that every October, even though Guam is not represented at the United Nations, every October, people from Guam can go and give a speech about, a short speech, about the state of the territory, what is happening there. And so we sort of revived that practice, which hadn't been actively done for a while. But we did that because we felt the need, especially after threats from North Korea, possible threats from China, we felt that we needed to get our voice out there, because the feelings, the needs, and the fears of the people in Guam were being lost in sort of American militaristic narratives.
And so, one thing that we need to do, and we've started, and this year will be sort of the year that it that hopefully, we can make it happen is that we need a comprehensive educational campaign for the island. And so, next month, two studies are going to be released. One of them is a governance study. And it will show all of the ways in which Guam is deficient as a self-governing entity. So all the ways in which Guam as a government as a self-governing entity, you have these types of controls, you can do these types of things. The study will show all the ways that we don't have that and we'll also have another study that will identify the possibilities for three different political status options, statehood; seeking to become integrated into the United States, free association; becoming an independent but freely associated country with the United States, and finally, independence.
And so from those studies, there'll be social media campaigns breaking down pieces of it for the public. But 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 to basic control over your community that you need, in order to navigate what life will throw at you. And 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. At one point, there was a military, U.S. military aircraft carrier that was ported on the island and 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, we found that other countries around us, even in Asia, you know, 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.
And 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. It affects the cost of things on the shelves, it affects your ability to connect with the culture and the history of the island, it affects the fear that we have every day of whether bombers from or missiles from North Korea or China are going to hit us. And beyond that, beyond that, though, within the United States, because one of the biggest problems we face is one of ignorance and apathy. The federal government likes Guam, the way it is. Guam is not a problem that they look to solve, because the military likes Guam the way it is. The military, sometimes calls Guam, their playground, Guam and the Marianas Islands are their playgrounds because they can do types of training and testing there and they don't have to ask anybody's permission. Whereas in other countries, they have to ask for permission and so fighting against that, and one of the ways that we can do it is if the United States because of all the activism and community sort of uproar last year around racial injustice, and the need to deal with it if somehow the United States can also find a way to deal with its territories. And I don't, and I don't mean that the United States should just give people in the territories the right to vote, but what justice would look like for me is that after 100 years of the United States, not listening to Guam, and not caring what the Chamorro people have to say, after hundreds of years of the Spanish, not caring and not listening, the real answer to how to fix this is that the United States needs to listen, that the United States needs to listen to what the people of Puerto Rico want, it needs to listen to what the people of Guam want, it needs to listen to what the people in the Virgin Islands want and that's how you can get some justice in terms of for the people in the territories, is don't tell them what to do. Don't extend your constitution to them. Just be quiet and listen, and ask them what they want. Because part of the problem is that you've never asked them what they want.
Ayana Young Thank you so much, Michael, this has been, it's really transported me and yeah, I'm just there are so many thoughts swirling around empire and how much there is to know and just for me personally like these lapses in my own understanding, and this conversation really filled in a lot of blanks and was really helpful to think about colonization and decolonization in general. And to look at Guåhan as a space to learn from in these wider conversations. I really appreciate your time today.
Dr. Michael Lujan Bevacqua No problem, no problem. I look forward to hearing it too and sharing it. Thank you.
Francesca Glaspell Thank you for listening to another episode of For The Wild Podcast. The music you heard today was by Fabian Almazan Trio, Dumpster Full of Dragons, and I Goodfriend. For The Wild is created by Ayana Young, Erica Ekrem, and Francesca Glaspell.