Chamorro Public Service Post: Sakman
Last year the group TASI or Traditions About Seafaring Islands organized a Sakman Summit, or an event where experts on Chamorro culture, language, history and Micronesian traditional navigation gathered together to discuss various aspects about the recreation of the Chamorro sakman, or open-ocean large canoe. Central to the gathering was developing a standardized vocabulary for all of the terms which you would need for navigation in Chamorro, such as parts of the canoe, tools, sea-birds, names for the different parts of the day, etc. I've written before about how critical in today's Guam the work of TASI is. They are decolonizing. They are not returning to a previous era, but rather showing us how it is entirely possible that things which were lost or prohibited long ago, such as the seafaring skills and technology of Chamorros can find a place in today's world. Decolonization is not about preserving, because preserving assumes that something is dead or on the verge of de