puntan and fu'una

Every culture has a story of creation. This is ours:

The world was created by Puntan and Fu'una, gods who were brother and sister. Puntan told his sister to take different parts of his bodies to create different parts of our universe. His eyes would become the sun and moon; his eyebrows would be rainbows and his back would be the land. Using her own supernatural powers, Fu'una breathed life into the parts of her brother's body that now made up the world. She made the sun and moon shine and the earth, fertile. When she was done, she flung her body into the earth and from that came Fouha Rock, the rock from which mankind had sprung.

It seems to be a short and simple story, and at the core, most creations stories are. But simple creation stories speak volumes for the ruling forces of many of its religions and cultures.

The fact that the earth was created equally by a male and female deity lay the foundation for Guam's matrilineal society, one that honors the man and woman equally. This goes deeper when analyzing the specific roles of our two creation Gods and their relationship with each other. These gods were not husband and wife but siblings. This enforces the strength and permanence of family with the siblings acting as the caretakers of the unit, whereas a married couple were not believed to be indebted to each other for life the way siblings would be.

The following is a short video of our Creation Story:




Information taken from Guampedia.

Anne Perez Hattori, Ph.D., 'Puntan and Fu'una: Gods of Creation', referenced July 8, 2009, © 2007 Guampedia™, URL: http://www.guampedia.com/category/53-interpretive-essays/entry/26