'A powerful, beautiful book. Its fierce love - of the land, the ocean, the elders and the ancestors - warms the heart and moves the spirit.' - Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple Part memoir, part manifesto, Chamorro climate activist Julian Aguon's No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies is a coming-of-age story and a call for justice-for everyone, but in particular, for Indigenous peoples. Aguon beautifully weaves together stories from his childhood in the villages of Guam with searing political commentary about matters ranging from nuclear weapons to global warming. Bearing witness and reckoning with the challenges of truth-telling in an era of rampant obfuscation, he culls from his own life experiences to illuminate a collective path out of the darkness. A powerful and bold new voice writing at the intersection of Indigenous rights and environmental justice, Aguon is entrenched in the struggles of the people of the Pacific who are fighting to liberate themselves from colonial rule, defend their sacred sites and obtain justice for generations of harm. In No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies, Aguon shares his wisdom and reflections on love, grief, joy and triumph, and extends an offer to join him in a hard-earned hope for a better world.

'A powerful, beautiful book. Its fierce love - of the land, the ocean, the elders and the ancestors - warms the heart and moves the spirit.' - Alice Walker Part memoir, part manifesto, Chamorro climate activist Julian Aguon's No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies is a coming-of-age story and a call for justice-for everyone, but in particular, for Indigenous peoples. Aguon beautifully weaves together stories from his childhood in the villages of Guam with searing political commentary about matters ranging from nuclear weapons to global warming. Bearing witness and reckoning with the challenges of truth-telling in an era of rampant obfuscation, he culls from his own life experiences to illuminate a collective path out of the darkness. A powerful and bold new voice writing at the intersection of Indigenous rights and environmental justice, Aguon is entrenched in the struggles of the people of the Pacific who are fighting to liberate themselves from colonial rule, defend their sacred sites and obtain justice for generations of harm. In No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies, Aguon shares his wisdom and reflections on love, grief, joy and triumph, and extends an offer to join him in a hard-earned hope for a better world.

The fate of Micronesia is the fate of Sustainable Humanity. Micronesia is last domino in the quest to globalize the Earth into a singular monoculture. It is the region least affected by the increasingly global culture of conspicuous consumption and individualistic materialism. Micronesia is at a crossroads, as is the human race. If the last region on earth in which, among the majority of the population, communal living based on interconnectedness, extended families, shared resources, non-linear thinking, and a sustainable relationship with the natural environment is the norm is allowed to be destroyed, the future of humanity is truly in jeopardy. When imagination of indigenous youth and the viability of sustainable living are allowed to die, so does hope for the entire human race. Micronesia is one of the last corners on earth where people, on the whole, still pattern life in humane and interdependent arrangements built on sustaining, life-supporting values, in short, where people still mostly function as people. This resilience, perhaps, is an offering of beauty - its contribution to the world. This book is a series of essays describing the present day realities of the U.S.-Micronesia relationship through the eyes of the folk on the ground, being disappeared. Both elders and youth tell of the continuing harm of the U.S. colonial project in Micronesia, revealing how that project continues to starve the imaginations of entire peoples. Made up of more than 2,000 islands and atolls in three major archipelagos, the Carolines, the Marshalls, and the Marianas, Micronesia was known from the last World War until the 1970s as the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. All of it, the Republic ofthe Marshall Islands (RMI), the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), the Republic of Palau (Belau), and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), less Guam, which was cut from the rest after the Spanish-American war and lumped with the other 1898 Unfortunates: the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. While the world looks away, this region of the planet is facing down death. Mostly losing. Current U.S. militarist and corporate plans for the region now threaten to destroy the life-affirming values that bind and sustain these ancient civilizations by deepening dispossession of the people.

his book is compilation of a number of essays by the Chamorro writer, Julian Aguon, the author of Just Left of the Setting Sun. These essays are written to inform the world of the plight of the Chamorro people on the US Territory of Guam. Guam is considered "the place where America's Day begins" because of its location in the Western Pacific. It endures the status of an unincorporated territory, a netherzone in which the Organic Act instead the US Constitution applies, and where a non-voting Congressperson represents the island's interests in principle, but in actuality the island is administered by the Office of Insular Affairs in the US Department of Interior. The island has endured 500 years of colonization first by the Spanish; then by the Americans, followed by the Japanese; and after its "liberation" after WWII, now back under US control. Presently the island is gripped by the forces of globalization threatening to further take advantage of its status as a US free port; a campaign by the local Chamber of Commerce (consisting primarily of US Statesiders) to privatize every one of Guam's public resources, i.e. the island's only water provider, only power provider; only local telephone provider; public schools; and its only port, on an island that imports 85-90% of its food and where private monopolies of public goods would truly make the island captive to the "forces of the market"; a massive build-up of US Marines to complement the impressive Air Force and Navy show of force on 1/3 of the island that now threatens to make Guam a first-strike target in any altercation with China and/or with North Korea; and the exploitation of the island's deep patriotism and loyalty to the US tothe point of cultural genocide and economic ruin. These essays provide the reader with a picture of how, even in America's own backyard, globalization, privatization, the application of non-representative democracy, the militarization of society, and the spread of a culture of conspicuous consumption threaten to both destroy the viability of communities, as well as the sustainable values and cultures that bind them together.

Just Left of the Setting Sun is a collection of non-fiction essays by a young Chamoru scholar-activist from the island of Guam. These essays reflect the present-day reality of the indigenous people of the island of Guam. This book is framed in the context of an island that exists amidst the many conflicts and contradictions of being "freed from colonialism" by another colonial power in 1898 and "liberated from wartime aggression" by a country that put in under a Naval Administration until the 1960s and who worked to eliminate the culture of the local people through forced assimilation and nominal citizenship. It is written to articulate the reality of the Chamoru people of Guam as an indigenous Pacific Island culture, an American minority group, and an island people threatened by the encroachment of globalization into their lives. These essays will cause the reader to think critically on the subjects of globalization, sustainable development, sustainable governance, cultural reclamation, and self-determination on Guam, amongst the indigenous and colonized peoples in the world, question the value of democracy if it is involuntarily imposed on a people. This book is especially relevant for the present state of the world. Just Left is included in an academic series that we publish, 'The 1898 Consciousness Studies Series'. This series is a varied collection of essays on consciousness today in areas affected by the Spanish-American War and consequent possession by the U.S. These include The Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. Praise for Just Left of the Setting Sun "Fierce and compassionate, bold and resolute, Just Left of the Setting Sun is at once a coming into consciousness as it isa conch-shell blare for action by and for a new generation of Chamorros, the indigenous people of an island and archipelago long colonized by Spain, Japan and the United States of America. As critical towards fellow Chamorros who aid and abet the colonizer as he is of the colonizers themselves, Aguon also importantly situates the need for Native Struggles for Political and Cultural Self-Determination and Sovereignty within Feminist/Womanist critiques and global struggles for economic, social, and environmental justice, thereby providing a glimpse into the possibilities for local struggle informed and articulated to global movements beyond pan-indigenous movements per se, and for keeping global movements and political theory grounded in Indigenous traditions." Vicente M. Diaz Associate Professor of American Culture University of Michigan, Ann Arbor "Aguon re-introduces us to the principles of international law as a guiding framework to the resolution of the dilemma brought about by the present non self-governing arrangements which provide the trappings of democratic governance, but in reality are rather democratically deficient by any objective examination. Indeed, an important component of new millennium colonialism is the existence, but not the recognition, of this democratic deficit... ..."Just Left of the Setting Sun" should be required reading for the people in the remaining territories, young and old, who need to discover/re-discover the fire within, that they might further move the process forward, if only by a few steps further along the continuum. In a very real sense, as Aguon observes, "inside the heart of the Chamoru is still an ocean of latent potentialities waiting tosurge." Dr. Carlyle Corbin Advisor on Governance and Political Development St. Croix, Virgin Islands