I dedicate this part of the story to lessons from grieving love lost. A set of poems that discuss grief hauntings. Taking inspiration from Billy Ray Belcourt's work on Queer Indigenous Ghosts and Poltergeists; María Elena García, Stephanie Nohelani Teves, and Belcourt's ideas on Indigenous hauntings; and FAFSWAG's performances of Indigenous hauntings through their collaboration with Neil and Liam Finn in their music video for "Where's My Room". The following poems I offer are ghost stories in the form of Poems. I ask "How do hauntings from our grief around love lost generate the possibilities for Queer CHamoru futurities?".
Focusing on hauntings not only feeds my love for creepy and spooky things (like the jack-o-lantern I carved above), but it subverts colonialisms' vilification about our ancestors through shifts in cultural memory of them as ghosts and demons. During Spanish Catholic colonialism in the Marianas, taotaomo'na, our ancestral spirits were deemed demonic, vengeful spirits by Catholic missionaries. They sought to conduct colonial exorcisms, to erase our ancestors from our collective cultural and spiritual memory. This did not come without resistance from our ancestors. These exorcisms most likely resulted in a collective "forgetting" of the many intimacies and gender roles that existed among CHamorus prior to colonization. These exorcisms act as form of epistemicide - the systematic killing of knowledge systems - attempts to wipe our memory through assimilation.
Some may understand this feeling I often have. That straight and cisgender CHamorus often see us as ghosts when we refuse to code switch. Spectres that haunt Church pews, fiestas, funerals, familial gatherings, and cultural spaces. Poltergeists posessing the hotel halls of Tumon bay wearing masks of smiling, complicit Natives. Phantoms whose names cannot be uttered from the lips of some CHamorus because they could rupture the balloon of CHamoru Indigeneity they ground themselves in. They see us as distant from CHamoru Indigeneity because our queer ancestors were able to escape missionaries with little archival documentation, routing to metaphoric islands where they could find refuge. The fact alone that we have 5 different terms that exist to describe Queer and Transgender CHamorus in fino' CHamoru is evidence enough that we may have been solid, fleshy humans at one point of time. These words serve as skeletons uncovered through archaeological digs in our language. Just because you cannot see something, does not necessarily mean it does not exist. Just because you cannot hear something does not mean it is not screeching at night. Just because you cannot feel something does not mean it does not have its hand on your shoulder. Just because it smells dead, does not necessarily mean it is not alive.
When I started learning Fino' CHamoru, I remember asking Randizia's Grandma tan Josephine "Fefin" Crisostomo about old terms for LGBT CHamorus. She gifted us with the word "tinalao'an". She said it was used to describe boys who were "you know *gestures with eyebrows raised*". This common sentiment among manamko', their inability to say gay, is a reflection of Queer Indigenous hauntings. My fino' CHamoru teacher Dr. Michael Bevacqua (aka Siñot Miguet) explained to us in class that "ti", meaning not, and "lao'an" the derivative of "palao'an", meaning woman, composed the word. He explained that tinalao'an was an old term used by Manamko' to describe effeminate men. Randizia and I took this at the time to mean not a woman, but also not necessarily a man. A CHamoru word that embodied the in- between spaces that Queer and Transgender CHamorus often haunt.
It is in these stories of ghosts and hauntings that we generate a Queer CHamoru futurity where we all belong. This is the space where we (re)member and reweave Queer CHamoru people into CHamoru Indigeneity. To try and make sense of this, I wrote ghost stories in the form of poems. This set of ghost stories are about the intimate relations I have held with kin (human and non-human), with lovers, land, ocean, and sky.
Grindr Hauntings
“I hate Grindr so much!”
A sentiment we all hold and know too well.
I signed back on for the first time in 4 years.
I was flush with excitement…
To find love, to find pleasure, to find sexual liberation, to be seen,
I enter my name, my age, my height, my weight, my ethnicity…
I was dreading this moment…
*Scroll… scroll…*.
Still no Pacific Islander…
I don’t want to pick Asian because it doesn’t reflect who I am…
Maybe its better this way…
I look at the palm of my hand and I can start to see my flesh…
I pick mixed, because it is a space where we gather.
A graveyard of indigenous bodies we are assigned to haunt.
I add in my bio flags to honor the places I hold relation to hoping others will find me.
Gender…
*Scroll… scroll…*.
Wow there are so many options now! Even one for Two-spirit.
I leave it blank because that is my refusal, my refusal to be placed into another box to contain me.
Tribe…
It’s weird someone would choose to let this app define their limits to skin, hair, shape, kinks, age, behavior, blood. Masks I choose to refuse…
I can see my veins…
Relationship status… I am single now… and maybe invisible…
I can see the bones in my hands.
HIV Status, vaccine status… Now its time for pictures!
I scroll only to see you next to me and I tear up a little.
Our love was magical, but it was fleeting
Burried in grief was my happiness (and I think yours was too)
It was severed from our hearts
I needed to let you go
For me , because I was becoming invisible.
Most days I was alone…
Most days were like today…
I can no longer see my hands…
Most days I was a ghost.
But today I am starting to mend my connection to joy.
This final piece was part of trying to ponder where our ancestors go when they pass I imagined a great nunu tree in the sky. Leaves composed of stars showering down from its aerial roots. Nunu trees (banyan trees), also known as taotao mo'na trees are said to be the final resting place of our ancestors. It is said when you do not ask for permission lest you be punished by your ancestors. That we should fear them. Well I say to hell with that. I think that this type of thinking binds our ancestors spirits to these trees. Only to leave them to haunt us. It doesn't allow them to protect us, to guide us, to eminate love for us. Instead I like to think of Nunu trees as a place of gathering for our ancestors. A place where they can communicate with us. Perhaps nunu trees were a sacred place that allowed our ancestors to us communicate with ancestors in the other realm where they rest. Perhaps they were once sacred sites rather than places of indigenous hauntings. Pondering their purpose allows those who have passed to travel with us. It allows us to feel them deep in our hearts, to visit us in our dreams, to visit us as animals or the elements. It allows us to grieve them as they travel to the stars. It allows our queer and transgender CHamoru ancestors to reconnect with us.
Title: Celestial Journeys: Hauntings from the Great Nunu Tree
Medium: Digital, Pointillism, Mixed Style