One of the high points of my life was the
conference Famoksaiyan: Decolonizing Chamorro Histories, Identities and
Futures. It was a gathering, the first of its kind, which I helped organize
in San Diego in 2006. Chamorros living in the United States have for long held
gatherings and formed organizations to keep their cultural and family ties.
These organizations would focus around shared village ties or the Chamorro
calendar, and so each year there are village patron saint fiestas and Liberation
Day events from California to Nebraska to Florida.
While these gatherings would be fun and help
families keep their ties even across great distances, they were hardly
political affairs. They were meant to celebrate Chamorros as a social, cultural
and religious group, and so more serious topics affecting Chamorros weren’t
usually discussed. Myself and several other Chamorros attending college in the
states decided that we wanted to create a space where Chamorros, especially i
manhoben, could tal…
