As I mentioned before in my previous article, I'm from Guam. For those of you who don't know who, what, and where that is, let me give you a brief history. Guam is a United States territory located in the Pacific Ocean. We're about a five to six-hour flight, more or less, from Hawaii, the P.I. (Philippines), and Japan. Our official languages are English and Chamorro, the language of the indigenous people, also called Chamorro. We were discovered by Ferdinand Magellan and from 1668 until 1898, Guam was in the Spanish Era.
We were introduced to metals, light-skinned foreigners, and, as usual, disease, war and Catholicism. In 1898, we were ceded to America as part of the Treaty of Paris, where we were put under a naval government. This became known as the US Naval Era, which as you may have guessed, has something to do with the Navy. From 1898 to December 8, 1941, we were under a naval government. Some people may be familiar with December 7, 1941 as the day Pearl Harbor was attacked. For Chamorros and Guamanians, December 8 is the feast day of our patron saint, Santa Marian Kamalen. On this day, we were celebrating our faith in our saint when Guam was attacked, just mere hours after Pearl Harbor was bombed.
From that moment on and for nearly three years, we were under Japanese control. This time, is known as the Japanese Era/Occupation or the World War II Era. This time was a brutal time in which our women were raped, villages raided, people beheaded and various other atrocities. Many of the current generation have grandparents and great grandparents that experienced this time. For example, I recall my grandma telling me a story about how her family was forced to walk from their home to a type of concentration camp miles away. She informed me that her aunt was near tears because of how skinny my grandma got during this time. The Occupation continued until the United States liberated us on July 21, 1944 (what we now call and celebrate as Liberation Day).
Guam has come a long way from the small island inhabited by indigenous people. We've been exposed to many things like technology, advanced medicine, and the world. But what if we could have done that ourselves without having been "discovered" by Magellan? What if the medicine practiced by our suruhånu and suruhåna, our version of healers, could combat illnesses just as well as antibiotics? With everything that we've gained, we've lost just as much if not more.
The younger Chamorro people are, the more likely it is that they have a small amount of knowledge of the Chamorro language. Things like being a suruhåna, a blacksmith, a weaver, etc. are rarely done. Guam is fighting a battle to keep our culture alive and it is mostly due to colonization. People losing a sense of who we are as Chamorros and it's become sad. In recent years, calls for decolonization have been picking up and support and awareness have begun to catch fire. More and more people are getting in touch with their roots, but if we really want to be the people we were before, we'd have to examine the possibility of decolonizing Guam. This means Guam could potentially become freely associated, a U.S. State, or independent altogether.
But, I'll stop here for the moment. When it comes to talks about decolonization, it's a long, arduous process.
