This text is a part of a collection specializing in underrepresented craft histories, researched and written by the 2024 Craft Archive Fellows, and arranged in collaboration with the Middle for Craft.
From seashell and tortoiseshell physique adornments to carving, seafaring, and tool-making, the distinctive magnificence and historical past of Chamorro craft are rooted in ideas of reciprocity and deep respect for our ancestors, the land, water, and the ocean. These practices additionally function a automobile to hold forth the tradition and creativity of Indigenous peoples dwelling throughout the Mariana Islands archipelago.
Early Chamorros started to interact Indigenous applied sciences to create objects akin to baskets, hats, luggage, and ornamental items woven from palm-like pandanus leaves and coconut palm fronds. They wove fish nets referred to as talaya and made instruments from seashells, bone, stone, and wooden to assist their life of farming and fishing in addition to to assemble housing. Lengthy after somebody handed away, Chamorros would use their bones to craft instruments akin to knives (referred to as se’se) and spear ideas. Stone was used to carve grinding stones (lusong) within the preparation of natural medicines and meals, wooden was crafted into a wide range of instruments akin to handles, and shells could be reworked into weaving instruments (si’i).
In an interview, Michael Lujan Bevacqua, a Chamorro educator, scholar, activist, creator, and curator of the Guam Museum from the Kabesa and Bittot clans of Guam and grandson of grasp blacksmith Joaquin Flores Lujan, shared his expertise rising up in a household identified for the tradition’s craft and instruments. The Chamorros’ relationship to the ocean, he says, is each fascinating and tragic. Centuries in the past, they developed subtle seafaring vessels and a powerful navigational system that relied on the celestial world. In pre-colonial society, canoes had been the primary mode of transportation between islands throughout the archipelago and for fishing in deeper waters.
Michael Bevacqua and his grandfather (photograph courtesy Michael Bevacqua)
“Back in the day, you had to have a strong connection and deep knowledge of the elements,” he mentioned, noting that information isn’t all the time handed down in the identical methods it was earlier than colonization. “And so that’s a part of the tragedy.” However an exquisite half about craft is that it helps folks “make a reconnection to the ocean, giving value to ourselves and Chamorro things again.” Whereas crafting and carrying a shell necklace doesn’t essentially imply one has a deep relationship with the ocean, he suggests, it has the potential to carry you nearer.
The islands of the Mariana archipelago, which Chamorros name house, have a sophisticated political historical past. They had been colonized by Spain, Japan, Germany, and the USA at varied factors in historical past, resulting in the introduction of various supplies throughout time, in addition to restrictions on cultural practices together with the Indigenous language.
In 1668, missionaries from Spain started their colonization of the Marianas islands, instigating main social adjustments. Spaniards set fireplace to the Chamorro’s conventional canoes as punishment for resisting colonization. Chamorros weren’t allowed to sail within the deep ocean or move on this information, and the observe of canoe-building nearly disappeared.
A younger Chamorro boy carries a stack of tuhong (hats) woven from coconut fibers (picture courtesy the Guam Museum)
Throughout the 1600s, colonial applied sciences started to be built-in into Chamorro craft. Objects initially created from shell or stone, as an illustration, began being made with steel, together with the kamyu, a device with carved tooth used to grate coconut. Colonizers additionally restricted the varieties of jewellery and physique adornments worn by the Indigenous inhabitants. Spondylus beads, which had been treasured to Chamorro girls previous to colonization, as an illustration, grew to become much less prevalent. By the late 1700s and early 1800s, the one unprohibited type of expression, non secular devotion, and physique adornment was the crucifix.
Colonization additionally led to new varieties of Chamorro craft. An essential second on this historical past was the introduction of steel and different “junk” supplies by the Spanish. Throughout this period, craft instruments had been made largely from salvage supplies. “You couldn’t harvest iron on the island,” Bevacqua mentioned, “so you basically took pieces of discarded things and then you would reform them to make tools.”
Within the twentieth century, the USA Navy got here to Guam, and circuits of importation and entry to markets fully modified for residents. New supplies had been launched by means of the importing of automobiles and navy {hardware}, and Chamorros started recycling such supplies to specific themselves. When vacationers started to go to, the observe of craft additionally expanded and developed into memento objects. “All these people who used to farm and trade and barter for their lives and create things themselves suddenly are all about buying things,” Bevacqua says, mentioning that it was a approach to survive. “Money is now mediating everything.”
Poster for Micronesian Training and Solidarity Convention in 1982 (photograph by Olivia Quintanilla; courtesy Micronesian Space Analysis Middle Archives)
World Battle II was a tipping level in Chamorro historical past: Many had been displaced from the land because of the building of American navy bases. “A lot of people were shocked from the war,” Bevacqua mentioned, “and looking to a new future.” At that time, Chamorro tradition shifted towards turning into extra Americanized. The craft suffered, as a result of there was not a perceived worth to it.
Throughout the Nineteen Seventies and Nineteen Eighties, nonetheless, there was a renaissance: Craft gained a complete new sense of life and identification, resulting in a sense, Bevacqua says, “that Chamorros do not need to disappear.” It was throughout this time that Chamorros began to have a look at symbols otherwise. Bevacqua urged the instance of a latte, or a stone pillar: That was an emblem that might not be worn as a necklace within the late ‘60s and ‘70s except perhaps by someone with radical taste. By the ‘80s, however, it’s change into a type of expression and a strong image.
Such symbols stay highly effective forces in Chamorro tradition in the present day, connecting modern members to a disjointed previous, even when a few of them have very completely different significations in the present day. Certainly, Chamorro craft-making, -wearing, and -using visibly assert the idea that our ancestors’ methods have a spot in our trendy world. It’s a motion that re-infuses worth into that which colonization deemed unimportant. At the moment, we proceed to push again in opposition to those self same concepts our ancestors negotiated over centuries.
A Chamorro household weaves akaleha or snail shell purses in postwar Guam (photograph courtesy Guam Museum)
A comparability of a Sinahi artifact to a recent model (photograph courtesy Michael Bevacqua)
Hima carvings of shells (picture courtesy Guam Museum)
Pre-latte pottery sherd (picture courtesy Guam Museum)
Pre-latte pottery sherd (picture courtesy Guam Museum)
