{"title":"The Chamorro Creation Story, Guam Land Struggles, and Contemporary Poetry","authors":"Craig Santos Perez","doi":"10.1215/00138282-8237377","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":43905,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH LANGUAGE NOTES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2020-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"ENGLISH LANGUAGE NOTES","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00138282-8237377","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
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.
期刊介绍:
A respected forum since 1962 for peer-reviewed work in English literary studies, English Language Notes - ELN - has undergone an extensive makeover as a semiannual journal devoted exclusively to special topics in all fields of literary and cultural studies. ELN is dedicated to interdisciplinary and collaborative work among literary scholarship and fields as disparate as theology, fine arts, history, geography, philosophy, and science. The new journal provides a unique forum for cutting-edge debate and exchange among university-affiliated and independent scholars, artists of all kinds, and academic as well as cultural institutions. As our diverse group of contributors demonstrates, ELN reaches across national and international boundaries.