Guahu Kie Susuico. I’m here to express my concern about the military’s plan to place a live-fire range along the Northeastern coast of Guahan, in and around Pagat, on lands the Chamorro Land Trust Commission holds. Why weren’t we, the Chamorro people, asked whether or not we want to lease or license these lands to the military? Maybe the CLTC and the military were afraid we would say “NO!”, or maybe our voices were bound and gagged by the organic act and our so-called political status. On an island named WE HAVE, many of us do not have land. Many of us do not have a place we can truly call home. How long have our people been waiting for land? Shouldn’t we get priority? The CLTC, as our representatives, should answer to the Chamorro people and not the united states military.

As a native Chamorro without land, my family has been displaced from our ancestral lands in Sumai to make room for big navy, I cannot believe we are entertaining the military’s proposals or demands for more land. Don’t they already occupy an obscene amount of our land? It’s bad enough they condemn and take our land from us but now we’re going to give it to them, to let them use it at a good price. It seems as though we are going from being witnesses to our dispossession and genocide to actually being accomplices in it, helping the u.s. make sure there are no Chamorros left on Tano Y Chamorro. Shame on us. We cannot allow the u.s. or it’s military to take any more land from us. The u.s. is not US, they are not HITA. These are Chamorro lands and we cannot trust the u.s. with it, we cannot trust the military with it. Now I wonder if we can even trust the Chamorro Land Trust Commission with these lands. It saddens and angers me to know that the leaders we have entrusted with our lands, and our way of life, place such little value on things that Hurao, Mata’pang, and Anghet have paid for with their lives. So, I ask you, what is our land, our home worth? What is our identity worth? What is our survival worth?

I’m here because of Pagat, the caves and the ancient village site, which dates back to the pre-latte period, hidden in the cliffside along the northeastern coastline. The Chamorro Land Trust Commission has been entrusted with more than just our land, we have also entrusted them with our history and heritage, as well. Our histories are written on the land, in the landscapes, like history books written in brail, it’s history you can touch and feel the weight of its truth. In ancient village sites that have existed long before the spanish ever discovered our inhabited islands, long before europeans ever colonized, killed and stole land from First Nation Tribes then called it america. Our history is written in lattes that still stand to this day, claiming this land as our home, standing taller than any u.s. flag pole ever could. It’s in sites like Pagat that our histories encompass all the things the spanish and american historians could not fit into the margins of their history books. Sites like Pagat are essential to our cultural education.

For the past 3 years i have gone hiking almost every weekend to cultural sites around the island to pay my respects to our ancestors, I Taotaomona, and to see our history for myself. Since then i have volunteered my time to take kids from Hurao Camp, and Mt Carmel school hiking to see lattes at ancient village sites, to see freshwater caves where our ancestors drew water from and where they sought shelter during typhoons and wars. These are places where we can touch the past and re-establish a connection to our ancestors, to our past. These are places where we can re-establish our connection with the land like fallen trees growing new roots. This is why we cannot allow Pagat to become another name on the list of places where the u.s. has uprooted our people and severed our connection to the land, wiping all traces of our history off the face of the island like they’ve done in Sumai, Fena, Me’po, Ypao, Ulunao, Litekyan, Jinapsan, Talage and Machananao, just to name a few.

So, I ask you, what is our culture worth? What is our history worth? What is our future worth? What are our children worth?

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