3rd Workshop: CHamoru Seafaring Lexicon Summary Workshop Report July 27, 2014 July 26, 2014 The Latte of Freedom The Guam Community College Governor’s Complex Mangilao, Guam Adelup, Guam Written and presented by Guampedia.com Sponsored by: Guampedia.com ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Summary Workshop! Report Connect Me | Create Me | Promote Me 3rd Workshop: CHamoru Seafaring Lexicon ! ! ! ! ! ! ! July 26, 2014 The Guam Community College Mangilao,! Guam July 27, 2014 Latte of Freedom Hall of Governors Ricardo J. Bordallo Governors Complex ! Adelup, Guam ! ! ! Table of Contents ! Introduction 1 Day One Welcome 3 Discussion of Terms 5 Facilitators: Ignacio Camacho and Fermina Sablan Presentation One 7 Chamorro Seafaring Historical Overview Lawrence Cunningham, PhD Presentation Two 13 Our Sakman Story: One Sentence in History Mario Borja Closing 17 Day Two Opening 19 Discussion of Terms 19 Presentation Three 21 The 500 Sails Project Pete Perez Presentation Four 25 International Sustainable Sea Transport in the Pacific Talanoa (Conference) Sandra Iseke Okada Frank Cruz Discussion of Terms 27 Presentation Five 29 Puntan Layak: Points of Sail Mario Borja Discussion of Terms 33 Closing 35 ! !Introduction A two-day workshop in preparation for the 12th Festival of Pacific Arts (FestPac) was held 26-27 July 2014 at the Guam Community College (GCC) and the Governor’s Complex at Adelup. The “Seafaring Lexicon Workshop” is the third in the series, Connect Me | Create Me | Promote Me, organized by the Guam Council on the Arts and Humanities Agency (CAHA) to help artists, cultural producers and members of the island community prepare for FestPac, which Guam is hosting in 2016. FestPac is the largest arts and culture festival in the region with hundreds of delegates representing 27 different Pacific islands and !nations and thousands of visitors who participate in the two-week long event. This particular workshop follows an initial gathering in 2009 of traditional Chamorro canoe builders and navigators to develop a Chamorro lexicon of terms used in seafaring and navigation. The lexicon would fill a need for a standard set of terms for all practitioners of traditional Chamorro navigation to communicate essential aspects of canoe-building, including the parts of the canoe, and for understanding sailing and navigation, such as directional points, natural phenomena, and seabirds. The lexicon would also be a way to reconnect with the past by using terms that existed before Spanish colonization but had been documented in historical accounts, and fino’ haya, Chamorro language that pre-dates the introduction of Spanish or does not incorporate Spanish loan words, to create something new for words that are lost to !history. Because of the amount of discussion necessary to reach a consensus over the lexicon, the workshop was spread over the course of two days. Day One included morning and afternoon sessions held at the GCC Multipurpose Room in Mangilao, and Day Two was an afternoon session at the Latte of Freedom, Hall of Governors, Adelup. Speakers for the workshop included Guam historian Dr. Larry Cunningham, Mario Borja from San Diego-based Che’lu, Inc., Peter Perez from Tanapag, Saipan and the 500 Sails project, and Frank Cruz and Sandra Okada from Guam-based Traditions About Seafaring Islands (TASI) and Traditions Affirming our Seafaring Ancestry (TASA), respectively. The discussions were facilitated by Ignacio Camacho from TASA and Fermina Sablan, GCC Program Specialist. Guampedia Managing Director Rita Nauta also !helped facilitate the workshop agenda. Dr. Cunningham presented a brief history of Chamorro-Micronesian seafaring traditions and revitalization efforts over the last two decades; Borja presented the story of the sakman project in San Diego and his experiences of trying to understand the mechanics and physics involved in sailing traditional Chamorro canoes. Perez discussed a project to increase production and access to Chamorro canoes to promote Chamorro cultural identity and pride; and Okada and Cruz presented a slideshow of their recent participation in a Secretariat of the Pacific-sponsored event in Fiji regarding seafaring and ocean !sustainability. About 50 people registered for the free workshop and included mostly members of the seafaring and canoe-building organizations. Individuals interested in Chamorro language and culture, notably Rosa Palomo from the Micronesian Language Institute (MLI) at the University of Guam, and Jeremy Cepeda and Leonard Iriarte from I Fanlalaian Oral History Project, also participated and were able to share their expertise with the other attendees. Discussions were animated and informative. Participants began by looking at the working list that had been generated in the initial 2009 meeting (this list had been emailed along with other materials to the registrants prior to the workshop). One by one, words were discussed openly among the entire group. Those words that were problematic or required lengthier discussions were tabled until Day Two. New words or phrasings were proposed, as well as corrections for grammar and usage. Allowances were made for different groups using variations of some terms, depending on context or what was normally practiced by their members. Participants aimed to reach a general consensus regarding each term by the end of the workshop. However, because there were still some terms (especially regarding the naming of directional stars) that were not addressed, it was agreed that a third session would be held ≾!1≿ CHamoru Seafaring Lexicon, 2014 the following evening with a contingent from the different seafaring organizations present to discuss and !finalize these terms. This summary report covers the individual workshop presentations and the entire list or lexicon that was approved by the workshop participants. Readers should be mindful that this report by Guampedia does not include the specific comments and points of discussion for each word. However, the lexicon includes the original word from the 2009 meeting, the newly approved 2014 words, English translations, and a !pronunciation guide or key. ! Participants: About 50 members of the seafaring arts community and other educators and language ! experts. Facilitators: Rita P. Nauta, guampedia.com Managing Director Ignacio Camacho, Member, Traditions About Seafaring Islands (TASI) Fermina Sablan, Program Specialist, Go’ti Yan Adahi I Fino’ta Chamorro, Guam Community College, acting vice-president of TASI, and co-chair, FestPac 2016 Language ! Committee Hosted by: Guam Council on the Arts and Humanities Agency (CAHA), a division of the Department of Chamorro Affairs, the Guam Visitors Bureau (GVB), the Guam ! Preservation Trust and the Guampedia Foundation, Inc. Special thanks: Guam Community College for the use of the Multipurpose Room for Day One of the workshop, and the Guam Museum Foundation for the use of the Latte of Freedom, Hall ! of Governors, Ricardo J. Bordallo Governor’s Complex, Adelup. Presenters: Lawrence Cunningham, PhD, Historian and Founder of TASI Mario Reyes Borja, Master Carver/Advisor, Chamorro Hands in Education Links Unity (Che’lu, Inc.) Sakman Project Sandra Iseke Okada, Board Treasurer, Traditions Affirming our Seafaring Ancestry (TASA), Ta'tasi Guam Frank Cruz, President, TASI ! Peter Perez, Che’lu, Inc., 500 Sails Project ≾!2≿ CHamoru Seafaring Lexicon, 2014 !Day One CHamoru Seafaring Lexicon Workshop 26 July 2014 Guam Community College !Multipurpose Room, Mangilao !Welcome Monica Okada, Chairperson, Guam Council on the Arts and Humanities Agency (CAHA) board, gave a brief welcome and introduction to all the workshop participants. Leonard Iriarte from I Fanlalaian performed an opening chant, I Tinituhon, a chant, he believed, could be used two ways – to give praise to “the Creator,” and to acknowledge the ancestor spirits. For monotheists, the chant is appropriate because the words are translated as, “In the beginning, the very beginning, in the mind of the Most High, all things were one…” Iriarte further explained that this chant came before a much longer chant that was a version of the creation story. It was based on the view that this human colony in the Marianas could only begin, !following the initial discovery of the islands by ocean navigators. He says, “…A navigator of the canoe would have possessed esoteric seafaring knowledge to help him find the islands in the first place. Such a school of knowledge would have had a patron spirit of navigation – a real person, someone at the head, the start of that particular school of thought. We don’t know what his name would be but we’re talking about an old school of navigation that must have existed, knowledge of which has passed on through oral tradition. [According to Dr. Cunningham] the name of that school of thought was the ‘School of the Highest Spirit.’ We [then] took the Chamorro words which can be used for a creator spirit. [So] in this room of people interested in seafaring and navigation, we will include respect for our Creator and for that ancient teacher that led that navigator that guided that canoe and crew to discover !this land in the first place, so many thousands of years ago.” Okada began the workshop with an update for the 12th Festival of Pacific Arts (FestPac), announcing that a week after this meeting the organizing committee would hold their next programming meeting. She explained, as the lead agency, the Guam Council of the Arts and Humanities (CAHA) has tried to put together these cultural arts workshops to prepare for FestPac. They started with a workshop on history, then the visual arts workshop, and a grant writing workshop. [The summary reports for each of these workshops can be found at http://www.guampedia.com.] For those that submitted grant applications, she added, CAHA will be reviewing the proposals in August and will contact awardees in December for the 2015 !grants. Okada explained that this workshop on the seafaring lexicon is a follow-up to a workshop held in 2009 and the third in the Connect Me | Create Me | Promote Me series. She also announced that a literary arts workshop will be held on September 6th, and a cultural values workshop on October 4th.