CHamorro Roots: Celebrating CHamorro Month

_POSTEDBY admin on Sunday, March 21, 2010

 (This interpretive essay was presented on 20 March 2010 at the Discovery Day dinner celebration, sponsored by the "Man Gachong Club," of Washington State. The dinner celebration was held at the Tacoma Sportsman Club, Washington. I have published it as a result of receiving numerous requests for a copy.)

Biba Taotao Tano!

Back home in the Mariana Islands, the month of March is celebrated as Chamorro Month. Tonight and as the Chamorro Community of Washington State, we acknowledge and come together to join in on this celebration. Discovery Day can sometimes bring out a heated debate. Initially, the holiday was labeled as Magellan Day. I’m not here to debate the holiday title, but I would like to share and reflect upon some of our historical time capsules as a refresher and acknowledgement of celebrating this day no matter what we label it. So tonight, I hope not to bore you, but inspire you with a brief history of events of the Chamorro people also known as Taotao Tano (People of the Land).

Many believe that our culture is dying, but I respectfully disagree. I believe our culture is evolving with the everyday changes in life, as with other cultures. Some of our practices are changing just to keep up with today’s world and environment.  I realize many of you have come to join us for a good time tonight, but I think it’s very important that we also reflect back on who we are, where we come from and although we may be distant from home, we must continue to preserve, practice and teach our children our history, customs and heritage as much as we can.

For those of you who do not know me, I am Bernard Punzalan.  If you are not aware, I also run the Chamorro Roots Genealogy Project website: www.chamorroroots.com. It’s a free website to access and currently contains over 168,000 names. This project is part of my chenchu’le (offering) to our people in doing what I can and am able to do as part of preserving and documenting our heritage. So if you are ever researching your family roots, you can visit that website and if the information is not there you can surely contact me and I will you try to trace it.

So with that, I will start at the point with four primary theories of our peoples’ origin.



CHamorro Roots: GuamPedia.com Publishes Transcribed 1823 Vital Statistics of Guam

_POSTEDBY admin on Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Today the GuamPedia.com has published a transcribed Vital Statistics of Guam from 1823. Click on the link below to access the link and text:

http://guampedia.com/1823-guam-vital-statistics-report/

Guampedia, Guam’s Online Encyclopedia, is a community project to create a comprehensive online encyclopedic resource about the history, culture and contemporary issues of Guam.

Guampedia Foundation, Inc. is an independent non-profit organization. The creation of Guampedia was funded through grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Guam Preservation Trust, the Bank of Guam, the U.S. Department of the Interior, and other sources. The project was founded by the Guam Humanities Council in 2002. In 2009 a new non-profit organization, Guampedia Foundation, Inc. was incorporated and Guampedia became independent of the Council.

Please support Guampedia with your donations to keep it publicly on line!

CHamorro Roots: Rediscovering Chamorro Culture - Chamorro Chant

_POSTEDBY admin on Wednesday, December 16, 2009

An interview with Leonard Iriarte.