Margins are central: identity and indigenous resistance to colonial globalization in Guam

ABSTRACT

Early modern colonial globalization was the first producer of marginality and cultural erasure on a world scale. The CHamorus of Guam and Marianas know this well since they were the first Pacific islanders to be turned into indigenous ‘others’ by European colonial powers. In a certain sense, investigating Guam is like investigating a huge terrain vague, or an interstice or in-between space that exists outside the cultural, social, and economic dynamics acknowledged by the Global North. However, it is within these margins where vibrant resistance to global cultural standardization settles and happens, as CHamorus also know. In this article, we will focus on CHamoru cultural resilience at lånchos (rural properties outside cities and villages), at reducciones (villages or towns where CHamorus were forcibly nucleated in the seventeenth century), and at the current use of colonial ‘ruins’ to promote indigenous cultural enhancement and community wellbeing.

KEYWORDS:

• Marginal places
• colonialism
• cultural resilience
• Guam

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Joe Quinata and Omaira Brunal-Perry for their answers to our questions while writing this manuscript. Conversations with David Tuggle and Jim Bayman were also very instructive.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. ‘Instrucciones dadas por Mariano Ricafort, Gobernador de las Filipinas, para ser llevadas a cabo en las islas Marianas. Manila 17 de diciembre de 1828’. Archivo Histórico Nacional (Madrid), AHN, Ultramar, Legajo 5853 pages 992–995.

2. ARSI, Antica Compagnia, Philipp.14, f. 82 r

Additional information

Funding

This article was partly supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under [Grant PID2019-105431GB-I00].

Notes on contributors

Sandra Montón-Subías

Sandra Montón-Subías is an ICREA Research Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, where she coordinates CGyM (Research Group on Colonialism, Gender and Materialities) and RAS (Research Unit in Gender and Social Archaeology). She is an archaeologist with broad interests in social and theoretical archaeology, and her current fields of research include the Archaeology of Colonialism, the Archeology of Globalization, and the Archaeology of Gender. She is investigating the consequences that Jesuit missions had on native CHamoru (Guam, western Pacific). This research challenges conceptual dichotomies among disciplines and within disciplines (i.e. prehistoric and historic archaeology), and addresses issues of high scientific and social relevance such as the construction of gender and the value of dynamics related to cultural continuity, cooperation, and interdependence to human societies. Sandra is PI in GenderGlobal, ABERIGUA, and MAR, and has recently published ‘Gender, Missions, and Maintenance Activities in the Early Modern Globalization: Guam 1668–98’ (Int J Histor Archaeol 2019) and co-authored ‘A Body is Worth a Thousand Words: Early Colonial Dresscapes in Guam’ (Hist Arch 2021).

Boyd Dixon

Boyd Dixon is a Senior Archaeologist for the Cardno GS and SEARCH offices in Guam and lives in Chalan Pago with two boonie dogs. With over 50 years of archaeological experience in the Mariana Islands and Hawai`i, the Asian-Pacific rim, the Americas, and Western Europe his research interests embrace the many people, places, and stories shared with him, both old and new. His publications of field and laboratory data include prehistoric and historic patterns of settlement, subsistence, interaction, power, conflict, resistance, and accommodation. His books with co-authors include ‘Afetna Point, Saipan: Archaeological Investigations of a Latte Period Village and Historic Context in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands’ and ‘Yellow Beach 2 after 75 Years: The Archaeology of a WWII Invasion Beach on Saipan and its Historic Context in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands’ (Archaeopress Access Archaeology 2019). Boyd has also been a research associate in the Micronesian Area Research Center at the University of Guam, and in 2019 he received the Northern Marianas Humanities Council Governor’s Humanities Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Humanities.