Confronting ignorance about militarism and settler colonialism in communication pedagogy

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Importantly, Chamorus are among the highest enlisted population within the US military (Guampedia, 2021) and also among the least represented Native and Indigenous Pacific Islander populations in higher education (undergraduate matriculation rates and degree completions; postbaccalaureate programs). These outcomes are influenced by the legacies of the US military in the Pacific (Teranishi et al., 2019). While the military has provided access to tertiary schooling, the history and relationship of the US military in the Pacific is also a primary influence on peoples’ movements to new locales due to military incursion, tourism, and ongoing imperialism and settler colonialism (Lujan Bennett, 2022; Bonus, 2020). As Chamorus with Ph.D.s and positions in universities, we ourselves are anomalous. It is from these experiences that addressing the violence, ideology, and material conditions of militarism and settler colonialism in our lives, histories, and knowledge systems is paramount.

2 As a manager of two nuclear weapons laboratories—Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory (i.e., Manhattan Project)—the University of California system has direct ties to the creation and testing of all nuclear weapons in the US’s arsenal.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Mellon/ACLS Scholar and Society Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies; Center for Liberation, Anti-Racism, and Belonging (C-LAB) at University of California Irvine.