This article is part of a series aimed at under -represented traditional histories, investigated and written by the Craft Archive Fellows of 2024 and organized in collaboration with the Center for Craft.
From sea shells and turtle body decorations to cutting, making sea sailing and tools, the unique beauty and history of Chamorro Craft are rooted in concepts of reciprocity and deep respect for our ancestors, the country, water and the ocean. These practices also serve as a vehicle to carry out the culture and creativity of indigenous peoples who live on the archipelago of Mariana Islands.
Early Chamorros began to involve native technologies to make items such as baskets, hats, bags and decorative pieces woven from palm -like pandanus leaves and coconut palm leaves. They weaved fish nets called Talaya And made tools made of sea shells, bone, stone and wood to support their lifestyle of agriculture and fish, as well as to build homes. Long after someone died, Chamorros would use their bones to make tools such as knives (called sly) and spearheads. Stone was used to cut sharpening stones (lusong) During the preparation of herbal medicines and food, wood was manufactured in various tools such as handles, and shells would be converted into weaving tool (si’i).
In an interview, Michael Lujan Bevacqua, a Chamorro educator, scholar, activist, author and curator of the Guam Museum of the Kabesa and Bittot Clans of Guam and grandson of Master -Zwartsmid Joaquin Flores Lujan, shared his experience in one Family known for the craft and aids of culture. The relationship of the Chamorros with the ocean, he says, is both fascinating and tragic. Centuries ago they developed advanced seafarers and an impressive navigation system that was dependent on the heavenly world. In pre-colonial society, canoes were the most important way of transport between islands over the archipelago and for fishing in deeper waters.
“You used to have a strong connection and deep knowledge of the elements,” he said, and noticed that knowledge is not always passed in the same way as before before colonization. “And so that is part of the tragedy.” But a nice part of the vessel is that it helps people “make a reconnection with the ocean, so that we give value to ourselves and Chamorro things.” Although tinkering and wearing a shell chain does not necessarily mean that someone has a deep relationship with the ocean, he suggests, it has the potential to bring you closer.
The islands of the Mariana archipelago, which mentions Chamorros at home, have a complicated political history. They were colonized by Spain, Japan, Germany and the United States on various points in history, which led to the introduction of different materials over time, as well as limitations on cultural practices, including the indigenous language.
In 1668, missionaries from Spain started their colonization of the Marianas Islands, which encouraged major social changes. Spaniards set fire to the traditional canoes of the Chamorro as a punishment for resisting colonization. Chamorros were not allowed to sail in the deep ocean or pass on this knowledge, and the practice of canotal gain has almost disappeared.
In the 1600s, colonial technologies began to be integrated into Chamorro Craft. Objects originally made of scale or stone, for example, were made with metal, including the KamyuA tool with cut teeth that are used to grate coconut. Colonizators also limited the types of jewelry and body decorations that were worn by the indigenous population. Spondylus beads, which were expensive for Chamorro women prior to colonization,, for example, became less common. Towards the end of the 1700s and early 1800, the only non -detected form of expression, religious dedication and body extraction was the crucifix.
Colonization also led to new types of Chamorro -Ambacht. An important moment in this history was the introduction of metal and other “junk” materials by the Spaniards. During this era, traditional tools were largely made of rescue materials. “You couldn’t harvest on the island,” said Bevacqua, “so you actually took pieces of shot things and then you would reform them to make aids.”
In the 20th century the Navy came from the United States to Guam and the input circuits and access to markets that have been completely changed for residents. New materials were introduced by importing cars and military hardware, and Chamorros started recycling such materials to express themselves. When tourists started visiting, the practice of Ambacht also expanded and evolved into souvenirs. “All these people who used to be farming and exchanging and exchanging for their lives and making things themselves, suddenly all about buying things,” says Bevacqua, pointing that it was a way to survive. “Money is now mediating everything.”
The Second World War was a turning point in the history of Chamorro: many were displaced from the country because of the construction of American military bases. “Many people were shocked by the war,” said Bevacqua, “and looking at a new future.” At that time, the Chamorro culture shifted to more Americanized. The vessel suffered because there was no more observed value for it.
In the seventies and eighties, however, there was a Renaissance: Craft got a completely new feeling of life and identity, which led to a feeling, Bevacqua says: “That Chamorrhos does not have to disappear.” It was at this time that Chamorros started watching the symbols differently. Bevacqua suggested the example of a latteOr a stone pillar: that was a symbol that would not be worn as a chain in the late 60s and 70s except perhaps by someone with a radical taste. By the 1980s, however, it has become a form of expression and a powerful symbol.
Such symbols remain powerful forces in the Chamorro culture today, in which contemporary members are connected to an incoherent past, even if some of them nowadays have very different meaning. Indeed, making Chamorro, wearing and supplies visibly claim the conviction that the ways of our ancestors have a place in our modern world. It is a movement that reverses the value in the which colonization was considered unimportant. Today we continue to reduce the same ideas that our ancestors negotiated throughout the centuries.
