And So, I just want to welcome my good friend Julian to this show. Julian is an

indigenous human rights lawyer and writer from Guam where he's calling me from

right now. He's also a founder of Blue Ocean Law, which is a boutique

international law firm that works across Oceania at the intersection of indigenous rights and

environmental justice.

He's also a lover of the sea and people with sea secrets in their eyes.

And he lives in Yona Guam.

But Julian is also more than all of those things. Today we're going to be talking a little bit about his most recent book, which is being republished. The news is coming out as the podcast is coming out so we don't have to like

backdate anything or update anything but his book the properties of

perpetual light has an amazing kind of testimony to a variety of things. It's not just a book of poetry, it's not just a book of memoir.

It's kind of a collection of historical documents of speeches that he's given over the years at law schools that he's graduated from and also speaking to his own people on the island of Guam, young people,

graduating from high school, it's quite a, it's quite an interesting read to be honest it's kind of it seems like

incoherent when you talk about it that way but in fact there's very much a through line

through the entire thing and actually reads reads from cover to cover like a complete work and so I just really enjoyed

rereading it again today but welcome to the podcast Julian and I don't know if I gave a proper introduction if there's something I missed

No, that sounds great. You know the book in some ways is like a hot mess, but I mean worked you know I it's definitely more than anything else I say in the

introduction that I think what connects the various pieces in the book is not the subject matter but the

spirit and I call it a spirit of insistence you know just

insisting on life no matter the hour even at the hour of death so I think those

are the pieces I mean you know that's sort of the through line I would say throughout the pieces.

Yeah, and you even talk about how, I think in one of the pieces you talk about, you know, for you returning back home to Guam is almost like going to a funeral in many ways and you know you talk about dying a lot in this book but also it's like you said it's about it's a book about life and the

continuation of life despite all of the you know circumstances of colonization and

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