The Chamorro Creation Story, Guam Land Struggles, and Contemporary Poetry

Abstract

This essay focuses on the creation story of the Indigenous Chamorro people from the western Pacific Island of Guam. The essay presents and analyzes the deeper meaning of the story of Puntan and Fu’una as they birth the island of Guam and the Chamorro people. Moreover, it maps the history of Catholic missionization that displaced and replaced the Chamorro creation story. The essay covers the related issue of how colonization removed Chamorros from their ancestral lands and appropriated these lands for imperial, military, tourism, and urban development. Then it highlights the decades-long struggle of Chamorro activists to reclaim the land. Lastly, it turns to contemporary Chamorro poetry to illustrate how authors have revitalized and retold the story of Puntan and Fu’una to critique and protest the degradation of Chamorro lands and to advocate for the protection and return of the land.

The foundation of island identity: Chamorro maritime practices and resistance in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands

“…According to the Chamorro origin story, a man named Puntan and his sister Fu'una sacrificed their lives to create the world and its people (Santos Perez, 2020). When Puntan died, Fu'una fulfilled her brother's dying wish and used his body to create the natural world.…”

Coconut Oil Reflects: A Comparative Commodity Ethnography In Two Sites

“…voyaging ancestors (Santos Perez, 2020a). If so, this interpretation establishes an indigenous worldview that centralizes trongkon niyok (Cocos nucifera) as both a constructive and expansive force of the universe.…”

“…In Chamorro, the etymology of Pontan's name translates to "ripe coconut" (Flores, 2019;Santos Perez, 2020a). While historically the Chamorro origin story has narrated that all of humanity emerged from Guam (not just Chamorros), 24 it's been suggested that Pontan's name, which may poetically convey the voyaging characteristics of a coconut, could symbolically maintain a 3500 year old memory of our people's Austronesian 24 Contemporary interpretations claim this myth as the origin story of Chamorros exclusively.…”

“…Generally, it is pre-Christian myths that are valued as authentic spiritual narratives worthy of salvage ethnographic work (Vaioleti, 2006), even though myths developed in the postmissionization period undoubtedly impact our lives as well (Binney, 1988;Lindstrom, 1993;Nishihara, 2003). Paradoxically, pre-Christian myths, so sought after by researchers as structural representations of indigenous worldviews, were (and often still are) deemed as a threat to Christianity and violently repressed (Santos Perez, 2020a). This moral stigma has been effective at changing the value systems of Islanders, who often frame their own pre-Christian histories as "the era of darkness" before their peoples were 'saved' and, more often than not, politically incorporated into Euro-American empires following their 'salvation' (Hau'ofa, 1994, p. 149; see also Carroll, 2004;Hereniko, 1999;Wendt, 1982).…”

“…Additionally, several of these participants discussed how reviving pre-Christian spiritual practices is, for them, a conscious act of decolonization. This rejection of Christianity in favor of reclaiming a 'decolonized' indigenous Pacific spirituality is championed elsewhere (Santos Perez, 2020a;Ho, 2018). Though I don't agree that decolonization, including spiritual decolonization, is dependent on the rejection of Christianity, I do explore these sentiments more in this chapter.…”