Diana Campbell ​

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Belittled and bullied. These are words that I would use to describe Bangladeshi people at the hands of their Pakistani colonizers who tried to annihilate their language in the 1947–⁠1971 period of colonization; words I would use to describe Indigenous people from Bangladesh since the lands they long inhabited were renamed to be “the land of Bangla speakers” in 1971—when these original inhabitants of the land do not speak Bangla; words I would use to describe how CHamorus were made to feel on their/our own lands across centuries of Spanish, American, Japanese, and again American occupation; and words I would use to describe how some people refer to mixed race Indigenous people from Guam—claiming they are “too Americanized” to be part of “pure” discourse on indigeneity in the Pacific.

Anne Perez Hattori’s 1995 poem “Thieves” becomes a metaphorical canoe to sail past name-calling, visualizing the violence that a dominant point of view, no matter how well meaning, can impose on a place it is far from understanding. CHamorus hold American passports, and are impacted by American policies and military occupation, but also are rarely included in institutional “Native American” discourse happening in the continental United States.

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I often turn to Craig Santos Perez’s poem “Ars Pasifika” which points out that the words Canoe and Ocean are comprised of the same letters as inspiration to rethink labels and words that we take at face value. There are other possibilities mixed-in (a nod to Hattori’s poem) and like a canoe navigating the great ocean—how one perceives something depends on where one floats across space and time. A Canoe can be an Ocean, an Ocean can be a Canoe. My brother pointed out that his CHamoru mentor in his legal battle against the colonial policies bestowed on American territories is a practicing and believing Catholic, yet behind her desk she has a mural of Chief Matå'pang killing Father Diego de San Vitores in 1672 (after the priest baptized the Chief’s child without his permission) painted by CHamoru artist David Sablan. I think it is important to allow contradictory points of view to simultaneously co-exist—rather than colonize minds into choices that are too complex to come to simply. It is important to open up worlds of possibility, not close them down through the belittling act of judgment.

Bangladesh and Islands in the Great Ocean are linked in many ways, not only from the fight for language, but also by the very fight for land itself as rising sea levels eat away at their coasts. Postcolonial discourse is strong in South Asia—but as Hattori’s poem points out through the use of ‘UN’ as a prefix in the second stanza of the poem—Guam is one of the 17 territories that can still be defined as a colony today. The audience of Dhaka Art Summit is larger than the population of the entire island of Guam—and Bangladesh can be an example as to how art and culture can put a place that was previously misunderstood and brushed-aside as a “basket case” firmly on the world map by presenting alternative definitions of its past, present, and future. Mixing allows one to be many things at once —so perhaps this is a tool to celebrate as a portal to the future—rather than mourn in anthropological quests for purity. 
 

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