CHamorus living in the states had two weeks of immersion in the language through the Prugråman Sinipok or adult CHamoru Language and Culture Immersion Program held in California. The program, held at the California State University San Marcos, offered participants a chance to be fully immersed in the CHamoru language and culture. Michael Mendiola Garcia grew up in San Diego, but now lives in Orange County.
It was his first time doing the immersion program. The program ran from July 8 to July 20. He was engaged with learning a lot about CHamoru history and culture around 2016.
He started to practice the culture through food and eventually he dove into language. He took a few online classes with Michael Lujan Bevacqua during the COVID-19 lockdown and continued to take classes when he could. The immersion program allowed Garcia to have the university experience he never had because he got to stay at the dormitory.
It wasn’t just language class it was learning about themselves and the culture through language, he said. Garcia said you’re not going to come out of a two-week program fluent, but they were able to get a strong foundation of the language. “That sets you up to kind of prepare yourself forward and continue it,” he said.
It’s motivated him to attend more classes online instead of before where he would let his busy life make him skip classes. Erin Gums is grateful for the program and the experience. She said it was always a dream to learn the language.
Her mom speaks it fluently, but growing up in an interracial household her mom didn’t want her dad to be left out. She’s a big language person and knows other languages. “How come I don’t know my own?” she said.
She has tried for years to teach herself CHamoru, but she would often get overwhelmed and frustrated with the process. So when she found out about the immersion program, she wanted to try it. On the first day she saw that the program was going to be deeper that learning the language.
It was the first time in her life besides family gatherings that she was completely in a CHamoru space. “It’s something that I’ve pretty much never experienced before and to be sharing in this desire to carry our culture and our language forward together,” she said. It was a beautiful time together and she misses hearing the language and the feeling of being together.
Alex White, who participated in the first immersion program in Guam in 2022 and is now one of the organizers for this year’s program, said it was great to open it up to more people. While holding the program back home in Guam is an amazing experience, many CHamorus in the diaspora aren’t able to afford to travel. Keeping it in the states allowed more people who wouldn’t have been to participate to join, he said.
In 2022, he was able to go to Guam with his dad who is a World War II survivor and spent most of his life in the states. His dad barely spoke CHamoru after he left Guam, but to hear him speak again was an amazing experience for him. White said the organizers are all volunteers who are passionate and feel a deep sense of responsibility of revitalizing and preserving the language and the culture in the diaspora.
“It’s both an honor and privilege and a responsibility to make that opportunity available to others,” he said. Organizers met Olivia Quintanilla, a professor at Mira Costa and a CHamoru, who got them in touch with Teresa Suarez, a professor at Cal State University, San Marcos. The university had grant money available to support hosting the program and made the facilities and the dorms and cafeteria available for the participants.
About half of the participants were under 25 and some grew up in rural places without many CHamorus so it was their first time to be in a room full of CHamorus, White said. “They’re at the beginning of their journey and really trying to find their way in the world. For them to have that sense of knowing who they are and who their community is and who their ancestors are,” White said.
One of the challenges doing the program in the states was not having the access to CHamoru elders. They were able to have some via Zoom and by meeting up with some elders. Bevacqua, who led the language classes, said there are tens of thousands of CHamorus in the diaspora and many of them no longer have CHamoru speakers in their family.
It was important to bring the immersion program to people in diaspora who don’t have the same connections as those who live in the Marianas. “The roots for some in the diaspora feel very sparse,” he said. It’s hard to build community in the states because CHamorus are spread out everywhere and besides a few days a year they don’t often get together, he added.
He said creating more opportunities for CHamorus to get together is a good thing. The two weeks together were filled with language and learning about their identity, which builds a foundation and plants the seeds, Bevacqua said. One of the things they did was a create a clock so that every day they added five minutes of only speaking in CHamoru.
By the end of the program they had one hour to only speak in CHamoru. “For three generations, our people were told that you can’t speak your language when you go to school. You’re not supposed to speak your language.
And our people bear the burden of this. It took life from our people,” he said. It made it so there wasn’t life in their language and so they don’t feel like they should pass it on to their kids and grandkids, he said.
“We’re taking the life back. We’re putting life back in our language. Five minutes at a time.
We can do that,” Bevacqua said. Gums said one of the highlights was on the third day when they had an elder speak to them from Guam. It was an hour of the elder speaking only in CHamoru and everyone was at different levels and Gums struggled to understand the talk.
She is used to being smart and able to understand things and she only was able to get about 10% or 15%. She was overwhelmed and the next day everyone was bringing up how exhausted they were and emotionally spent. “We’re all feeling how hard this is and how much grief is coming up that we can’t understand, like we should all be able to understand, but our language was stripped from us and some of our ancestors,” she said.
Gums also shared she was frustrated there wasn’t more translation so they could understand. Bevacqua brought up something that was really powerful for everyone, she said. He said the hour wasn’t about the participants being able to understand every word or even to learn the language at that moment.
It was about allowing the language to be heard, allowing the language to have a space and to be spoken unapologetically. She said that made a shift in a lot of people and she relaxed after hearing that. She said one day she’ll listen back to the recording and be able to understand more of what the elder was saying.
For Garcia the experience was the same. A lot of emotions from happy and joyous to sad. The beauty of language is there, but you can’t separate the trauma of the language being lost in the between generations, he said.
His mom spoke CHamoru growing up but when she moved to San Diego it kind of disappeared. But as he started to learn more of the language more CHamoru has come out of her that she thought she had forgotten. “It brings them joy for us to be doing this,” Garcia said.
One of the highlights for him was when they went to the San Diego Zoo and saw the Guam kingfisher or sihek in CHamoru. The group sang the Johnny Sablan songs “An Gumupu si Paluma” and “Adios Esta Ki” to the bird. Bevacqua said the sihek was on exhibit and visible, but there are other birds from the Marianas at the San Diego Zoo.
Bevacqua shared that like the sihek in the zoo, CHamorus in the diaspora are living in the states, but wouldn’t it be nice if they could live in the Marianas. But there’s a lot of snakes in Guam so they’re glad it’s there, but only if it could go home, he said. “If only all the CHamorus could go home, but oh man, it’s so expensive,” Bevacqua said.
He often tells his students “Anggin ti hita, pues håyi?” which means “If not us, then who?” The sihek in the zoo may not have anyone to look at it and no one to treasure and honor it, so they have to do it. The language won’t disappear because CHamorus are going to keep it alive. The people in the program don’t want the language to die and are doing something about it, he added.
For White, seeing the community forming even before the program started with people inviting each other to eat breakfast in the dormitories was a highlight. Hearing people laugh and joke in CHamoru was really special too. Sometimes people get in their heads about the seriousness of keeping the culture alive, but when people are kicking back and laughing and joking that’s when the language really feels alive, he said.
Another highlight was when a piece of CHamoru pottery was being passed around, a baby kicked in her mom’s womb when she held it. She had never been to Guam. She was learning the language and held pottery from her ancestors, which got a reaction from the child in the womb, White said.
All three of the people living in diaspora said more programs are needed for CHamorus living in the states. Garcia said the diaspora is hungry for programs like this. “We have a lot of challenges in diaspora with identity,” he said.
He said they want more than just wearing a CHamoru shirt or putting Guam stickers on their cars..
