Indigenous people in the Marianas have suffered immeasurable trauma through hundreds of years of (neo)colonialism, the last century of which has been perpetrated by the United States. In his diverse collection of writings, The Properties of Perpetual Light, writer and activist Julian Aguon locates much of this trauma in the soul of his people, Chamorros. Though the trauma takes many forms, of particular interest is the ineffable way it often manifests. Aguon seeks to effect healing for this soul trauma in the collection, relying on Indigenous onto-epistemologies as part of a frank and open conversation. In this article I argue that the author harnesses various modes of the ineffable to construct this conversation and help foster spiritual restoration for his people. I compare Aguon to Chamorro traditional healers, who dwell in the liminal, indefinite space between what the West sees as the real world and the spirit world, but what Chamorros and many other Indigenous people simply see as the world. Much like the work of Chamorro yo’åmte (deep healers), Aguon’s work requires that we look beyond the effable to ascertain both the scope of the trauma he documents and the healing he seeks to effect in response. To accomplish this, the article explores via close reading the unwritten characteristics of tone, voice, and form, as well as the spiritual dynamics of traditional Chamorro healing, to articulate the mechanism by which the ineffable soul healing manifests.
Ajani Burrell (Thu,) studied this question.