UPDATE - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date:
April 1, 2015
Contacts:
Kimberlee Kihleng, Executive Director
Monaeka Flores, Coordinator of Marketing and Programs
Phone:
472-4462
Guam Humanities Council launches new project Guam Women Warriors
The Guam Humanities Council is developing an oral history and online exhibit project entitled Guam Women
Warriors, which focuses on women who currently serve in the military and those who have returned to civilian life.
By sharing their stories, perspectives and realities, and through hearing their voices, the goal of the project is to
deepen the communityʼs understanding of womenʼs military and wartime experiences, as well as what it is like to
come home.
From June 2014 through March 2015, the Guam Humanities Council presented the interpretive exhibit, Sindålu –
Chamorro Journeys in the U.S. Military, to explore the many significant and oftentimes unrecognized journeys of
Chamorro men and women who currently serve or have served in the U. S. military. The Council recognized the
unique challenges in highlighting the experiences and perspectives of women veterans and service members, and
thus will expand and build on this groundbreaking exhibit and programming to more fully address not only the
significant roles Guam women have played in the U.S. military, but also facets of their military life and actual
deployment.
The Guam Women Warriors project will be peer-to-peer based in which the Council, in partnership with an oral
history scholar, will train servicewomen and women veterans in the collection and transcription of their own oral
history narratives. These narratives and selected photographs and video will be presented in an online exhibit to
preserve and provide access to the invaluable personal journeys of service and sacrifice documented with the
project. To complement the online exhibit or archive, the Council will host a variety of public programs with
participating women to further highlight their experiences and connect them to the wider community. These
programs will include film and discussion events and facilitated reading and discussion programs.
The Council will work with humanities scholar Laurel Monnig, PhD, who has conducted ethnographic fieldwork and
research on Guam, investigating how Chamorros negotiate with US colonialism, militarization, racial ideologies, and
activism. Her doctoral dissertation completed in 2007 is entitled, “ʼProving Chamorro:ʼ Indigenous Narratives of
Race, Identity, and Decolonization in Guam”. Dr. Monnig also co-authored a piece with Dr. Keith Camacho entitled
“Uncomfortable Fatigues: Chamorro Soldiers, Gendered Identities, and the Question of Decolonization in Guam,” in
Militarized Currents: Toward a Decolonized Future in Asia and the Pacific (2010), edited by Setsu Shigematsu and
Keith L. Camacho. She graduated with a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Illinois in 2008, and is
a full-time instructor at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.
Guam Women Warriors is presented as part of Standing Together, an initiative of the National Endowment of the
Humanities to encourage humanities programs that focus on the history, experience, or meaning of war and military
service. Standing Together recognizes the importance of the humanities in helping citizens to understand the
experiences of service members as they return to civilian life.
The Guam Humanities Council is a non-profit organization that provides foundational support and educational
programs for the people of Guam. The mission of the Guam Humanities Council is to foster community
engagement and dialogue, inspire critical thinking, celebrate diversity and enrich the quality of life of island
residents through the power of the humanities.