teach a man to fish

I am multi-racial. I am of mixed ancestry. Among many other ethnicities, I am Chamoru, Irish, German and Hawaiian. My father had fair skin and gray eyes. My mother has dark skin and dark features. I came out as almost a perfect combination of both of my parents. If you look at other people in my family, whose physical characteristics are different from my parents', you'd see I also have inherited traits that were not passed down to my parents but through. My father's angular face is not that of mine. Instead, my face is a collection of curves and flesh, with no angles, no prominent bone structure, whether that comes from either of my round featured grandmothers. I did not get either of my parents' straight, boyish figures of their youth. As puberty hit, my back broadened, my hips expanded, my breasts grew and I was given a frame that was made up of as many curves as my face was. I don't know where I get my freakishly small feet from. I have square hands that cannot be considered graceful. I have length in my legs where my father's length came from his torso.

And then there's my skin. Though many would argue that the darker skin color always wins out, that's clearly not the case for me. It's not the case for three of my closest friends in high school, all of whom had one parent who looked mostly white and one parent who was brown. All four of us are light-skinned, even though two of us had "white parents" who were also multi-racial, whose parents were also part brown.

My light complexion was a concern of my parents when I was a child. They feared that the island had not changed enough since they were in school and that I would be discriminated against by my darker, more indigenous looking classmates because of my white skin. I can honestly say I never felt that discrimination. I've never felt like "the haole". I was once surprised when a classmate asked me if I was full Chamoru; me with my white skin and my very white last name. But I knew that mindset still existed. I had heard stories by people who were around my age. I've witnessed it from afar. I've heard people screaming about, "Fucking haoles". I've seen it and never lived it. In fact, I've felt a lot more like the brown person standing out in a room of white people than I have as a white person standing out in a room of brown people.

Because of my generally good experiences with race on this island, despite my observations of racism perpetuated by other people and the treatment of other people at the hands of such prejudice, I still tend to believe in the good of others. I like to think that, for the most part, my fellow Guamanians are above such ignorant beliefs. With several occupations that have changed the face of our island and our culture, I am aware of the cultural phenomena that were brought to this island. Those of us who can consider ourselves indigenous also live lives that were shaped by other races, whether it's about people like me, who are multi-racial, or those who aren't. Religion, diet, environment, language. Everything has changed. Some choose to cling to what they believe is a better life, a better culture without certain changes, even as they blindly follow or practice things that were the inspiration of other races and people from other parts of the world. Some of us choose to accept change and the natural evolution of culture. Most of us pick and choose what we would like to change and what we would like to keep.

Throughout the history of my island, my home, the only physical place in this vast world I feel I am connected to, many issues have surfaced questioning the rights of this island's residents. As we struggle for self-determination, weighing the benefits of continued US occupation or the slim chance at independence or any situation that straddles the thin line between the two, we are constantly considering smaller but still important issues that deal with determination and the rights of all people who call this island home, whether they can be considered indigenous or not. From the land of original owners being taken away by the federal government, to the language that is not used as much as it was when my parents were children, we are faced with questions and situations that can anger and insult even the most cool-headed residents. Despite the thousands of years that people have lived on this island, we are still miles and miles away from any kind of consensus that all of us can live with.

One of the most recent issues facing the island is the bill proposed by Senator Judy Guthertz and other authors. Bill-190 hopes to amend another act that had granted special fishing rights to indigenous peoples on the island. This new bill aims to change the language from "indigenous" to "aboriginal" as the previous act did not consider racial and/or ethnic bloodlines. According to this amendment, under the previous act, an indigenous person is one who was made an American citizen as of the 1950 Organic Act and their descendants. With the language changing to "aboriginal", this would only grant special fishing privileges to those who have been proven to have Chamoru blood, passed down throughout many generations originating from those who existed before any other country's occupation on Guam.

There are many things that concern me about Bill-190. The first being that these rights would grant people special privilege within much of Guam's waters, some of them being marine preserves. I am not comfortable with anyone harvesting the marine life from these preserves. Those preserves are there for a reason. While I witness local people and their rage over not being able to feed their families by fishing in these preserves, using a past-time that is one of the most significant of our people, I wonder what kind of lives they want their children to live. If they continue to deplete our marine life for the sake of livelihood, what of that livelihood do they plan to pass on to their descendants? They will be sharing the love of fishing with their children so that those children grow to find that they can no longer practice that love as the waters no longer house the wildlife their ancestors once fished for.

Another concern is a more personal one. Why should aboriginal people have the only special access to our waters? Under Bill-190, not only will aboriginal people be granted permission to use these waters, but it will also put together a board of people to determine how to restrict other waters to people who are deemed not aboriginal. This means that our local fishermen, no matter how long they've lived on this island and how much a part of our history they are, will suffer a great loss as their livelihood and businesses are restricted so much that the one thing they enjoy the most, the one thing they've fed and housed and clothed their children with, is going to be taken away from them.

As with most places, this island is the home of many people who cannot claim an aboriginal link with. We locals, aboriginal or not, love nothing more than someone coming to the island and falling in love with this place. We are a people known for our warmth and welcoming nature. It's something that has been passed down through many, many years throughout some of those mentioned occupations, even when those occupations ended in a loss of culture and identity. I have friends and family who call this place home, friends and family who are of many different races and ethnicities, friends and family who cannot claim to be Chamoru. Some of those people speak the language more or better than some of us who are Chamoru. Some of those people care more about the island than those who were here before them. Some of those people are the first to speak up about the beauty that is found on Guam while some of those who have been here longer relocate to other parts of the world and have forgotten what they've learned and gained by having been born of this land.

One of those people is the father of a classmate of mine. Being a private school brat not restricted to going to schools based on village residence, I tend to see different faces as I transfer or graduate from one school to another. Only a couple of the girls I graduated from high school with were my classmates from the very first day we walked into our school clad in pink and white checkered jumpers and black and white oxford shoes. One of those girls has light skin, light hair, light eyes just like her father. They are not Chamoru. But they were raised on this island. Her father, in fact, spent more time calling this island home than my own mother did being raised by my grandfather who was in the Air Force, moving his children around the globe from one station to another. If asked to recall people from my childhood, memories of those who were always around no matter where I went, Mr. Atherton, my classmate's father, would easily be one of those people. It's been 24 years since I first saw him. A year in all the time has not gone by without my seeing him around the island. His is one face I will never forget or mistake for someone else. While I see other classmates' parents and cannot place them, Mr. Atherton is one of a few who is stuck in my memory forever, from visions of his ever-present smile and seeing him in his pickup truck on the roads, probably on his way to go fishing. And this is not a friend who I have been close to all my life. I've never been to her house. I've probably never even spoken to her father. There is no other reason for my remembering him other than the fact that he's lived here as long as my memory takes me back. In reality, he's lived here much longer than that, still.

Mr. Atherton is a fisherman. His livelihood fed and housed his children, through our expensive private school upbringing to college. He's raised beautiful daughters proud of the island they come from. Guam is their home. Guam is the island that shaped a big part of who they are as it did with their father.

Under Bill-190, this man will be restricted from the very thing that fostered his attachment with the island all because of the color of his skin; all because of the origin of his first language; all because he wasn't born of the island but still chose to call it home. He, and others like him, will no longer have access to their own home.

One of those others is Dan Narcis, a man I had the privilege of observing while I was a mentor with 4H during a fisheries clinic. He was teaching my kids how to use a talaya, a net used for fishing. Narcis, an incredible fisherman, has been recognized by the island as a Master weaver. He speaks the language. He even looks like what would be considered an aboriginal person of Guam. Narcis, however, is Hawaiian. This man, noted by any person within the fishing community as one of the best fishermen on Guam, would have restricted access to the very thing that nurtured his craft and had him regarded as a Master.

Both of these men, known by many long before this bill was drafted, have been outspoken about their opposition to a bill that insults the very foundation of who they are and betrays their love of and loyalty to Guam, an island that is much their home as it is any of ours.

I care deeply of the rights of indigenous people. I consider myself one of them. I am not in favor of anything that will push our people further back in the hopes of a strong economic or military presence by those who care nothing about the island or her people. I am also not in favor of anything that will rob those who call this island home, who love Guam and her people, who've been here forever, just because they don't have the right DNA.

Racism should not be met with racism. Discrimination takes many forms and affects all people. One does not have to be a certain color in order to be attached to any given area. Those who love Guam, who nurture and protect her, who would be the first to lay down to defend her, are the people who need most protection by the laws that govern this land. It doesn't matter who they are or where their parents come from. Isn't this the very thing that drives us back home when we feel very little consideration in the land of other people who treat us as outsiders?

We are supposed to be above this. We are supposed to be more sensitive about these issues. We are not a people that shuts others out. We are a culture of warmth and appreciation and steadfast cooperation. Those are the things we need most to cultivate and nurture. Those are the things that make us all most proud to call this island "home", no matter what our skin color or language is.