New Brunswick—The recent Pacific Island Times article (August 2024) by Ron Rocky Coloma, “Piled in Shoe Boxes, Shoved into a Storage Closet: The Long Road to the Reburial of Guam’s Ancient CHamoru Remains,” paints an infuriatingly dismal picture about decades of disrespectful treatment and lack of professional care of the skeletal remains of CHamoru ancestors while in the charge of the State Historic Preservation Office and Guam Museum. How can this be?
The short and simple answer is decades of insufficient funding and lack of political will to do the right thing. One of Coloma’s news sources implies this, adding that the public institutions in charge lack the “capability to manage” the proper care and preservation of these remains. This translates as inadequate physical infrastructure and insufficient equipment and supplies needed for the proper curation of ancestral CHamoru remains, coupled with a lack of qualified personnel to care for and manage the collections.
Such neglect and disrespect of ancestral remains is difficult to understand, given that the “new” Guam Museum proper (opened in 2017) seems to be an exemplar of what a well-designed, well-appointed, professionally-staffed, community-minded and creatively-managed regional museum should be.
In a splendid facility in Skinner Plaza, Guam’s populace and visitors are educated and inspired to learn more about Guam’s history, culture and archaeological past by way of taking in permanent and rotating galleries that primarily feature artifacts (the material representations of culture) and their interpretive stories.
Meanwhile, according to Mr. Coloma’s article, the physical remains of the agents responsible for the archaeological and historical records of Guam’s past are hidden away in the Guam Museum’s DNA annex. These are the remains of individuals who created, adaptively modified and maintained CHamoru cultural traditions through time, and they are relegated ignominiously to an ill-equipped and ill-attended storage facility. Again, how can this be?
Well, it should not be (and I should not be writing this), for this reason: Nearly two decades ago, contemporary CHamoru cultural warriors and leaders took action to rectify the maltreatment of their ancestors and do them proud. I bear witness to these initial steps from 2006 to 2009, a time when CHamoru cultural preservation professionals and activists, together with government officials, moved as one in advocating and seeking funding for infrastructure and resources needed for the proper treatment and care of ancestral CHamoru human remains then, as now, housed in the DNA Building annex of the Guam Museum.
This initiative was spearheaded by the late Tony Ramirez, then Guam Museum curator, beginning in 2006, and involved people then and later situated in the Guam Museum (Tony Palomo, the late former senator and Guam Museum director), Historic Resources Division of the Department of Parks and Recreation/State Historic Preservation Office (Joseph W. Duenas, Lynda Aguon, Joe Garrido and Patrick Lujan), Guam Preservation Trust (Joe Quinata and Rosanna Barcinas) and the Department of CHamoru Affairs (Sylvia Flores).
By 2007, clearances and approvals had been successfully obtained, and Tony Ramirez submitted an amended request for funding to cover storage unit fabrication, storage containers for photos, archival documents and artifacts, a security system, and equipment, tables and materials needed in support of cataloging and conducting a thorough inventory of a subset of the human remains from the so-called Guam Hornbostel and Thompson Collection, comprising over 300 mostly Latte Period (A.D. 900-1700) individuals.
Importantly, among the needed materials requested, this initiative sought funding for 200 units (for starters) of acid-free, lignin-free and sulfur-free polypropylene boxes and acid-free wraps. These materials are specifically designed for the temporary storage of human remains in an environment that preserves their integrity.
While there were (sometimes passionate) differences of opinion in this alliance regarding the pros and cons of continued study of the remains and the particulars of eventual reburial, there were no disagreements about the long overdue need to rescue and remove CHamoru ancestral remains from cardboard boxes and paper bags.
Since many of these boxes and bags contained dental and skeletal elements representing more than one person, the inventory process would involve identifying and conjoining the bones and teeth of single individuals and, as well, ensuring that no nonhuman remains were mixed in with human remains.
Beyond such basic sorting and assignment of skeletal and dental elements to individuals, approval was granted for conducting a proper “rich inventory” of the Hornbostel and Thompson Collection. During the fall term of 2008, this project was initiated by me and John Mercado, then a University of Guam anthropology student enrolled in my Advanced Human Osteology practicum course. We were to have been joined by five other graduates of my basic Human Osteology course, eager to participate in a project that would both expand the knowledge base about ancient CHamoru life and pay due respect to their ancestors. However, scheduling conflicts dashed our best-laid plans.
Mr. Mercado and I worked on-site at the Guam Museum’s DNA Building annex, assisted by Tony Ramirez and Guam Museum staff, and made a good start on the project, conducting approved non-destructive studies needed to produce both bio-demographic profiles of individuals (age at death, sex, stature and ancestry) and osteobiographical profiles (handedness, activity markers, strength indicators, health and disease indicators, rare traits, and culturally mediated changes to their skeleton and dentition) as well. Such work was complemented with detailed photo documentation.
Tony Palomo expressed his hope to me then that a UOG-Guam Museum partnership should continue over time, until completion of the “rich inventory” project involving the Hornbostel and Thompson Collection. He envisioned that, eventually, other collections of human remains in the care of the Guam Museum would be similarly inventoried. While a passionate advocate of reburying ancestral remains, Mr. Palomo believed that conducting such thorough inventories was necessary precedents to reburial.
This intended partnership was suspended in 2009, when I needed to take early retirement. As the UOG administration decided against replacing me, all Biological Anthropology and Biology course offerings that focused on the study and interpretation of human skeletal remains were discontinued. This dashed any prospect for on-island education and training of students qualified to continue any such UOG-Guam Museum partnership project.
This project would have provided the Guam Museum with qualified advanced student-workers student workers and an on-site faculty expert and supervisor at zero cost to the museum, provided that the UOG continued to provide support for the faculty and students needed to continue the project.
Since my 2009 retirement and relocation off-island, no doubt much has transpired that I am not privy to regarding the remains of ancestral CHamoru. The Coloma article, however, suggests that “same as it ever was” describes a very sorry state of these CHamoru ancestral remains, 15 years since my departure.
What actions or inactions negated Mr. Ramirez’s initiative and Mr. Palomo’s vision? I can attest to the fact that lab supplies, for proper equipping of the Guam Museum’s DNA Annex facility, had already arrived toward the end of our collaborative work there in 2008. This indicates that at least some of Tony Ramirez’s budgetary requests had been granted, processed and received.
It would be good to know which items ̶ included in Mr. Ramirez’s 2007 funding request ̶ were eventually received by the Guam Museum, and which were not. Are there unused, more “respectful” (acid-free, lignin-free, sulphursulfur-free polypropylene) boxes and wraps in limbo there, awaiting the arrival of personnel qualified to resume the rich inventory project and, in so doing, remove ancestral CHamoru remains from cardboard boxes and paper bags at long last?
Now that Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero has signed into law Bill 264-37, appropriating $5 million for the construction of the Naftan Maflaina-ta Shrine for the reburial of collections of ancestral CHamoru remains, does her administration intend to provide funding for conducting thorough inventories of these collections by qualified specialists? Further, does her administration intend to provide funding to support the transferal of individual ancestral remains to culturally appropriate wraps or containers prior to reburial?
Allocating $5 million for the construction of a reburial shrine without planning for and providing additional funding for conducting a thorough inventory, as well as providing culturally appropriate resting containers for those to be buried there, should be unthinkable.
The remains of CHamoru ancestors have already suffered insult and injury by being placed “out of sight and out of mind” in an inadequate Guam Museum storage facility, while their created artifacts are showcased in the superb Skinner Plaza facility (formerly known as the Sen. Antonio M. Palomo Guam Museum & Chamorro Educational Facility). And now – at least it seems this way from afar – the wisdom and vision of the museum’s former namesake is being ignored.
Building a $5 million facility for “honoring” these ancestors without, first, committing resources to hire specialists who can identify each individual and assemble their bio-demographic biodemographic and osteobiographical
profiles would be a disservice to these remarkable women and men and their children.
Gary Heathcote is a former associate professor of Anthropology at the University of Guam (1989-2009), currently living in New Brunswick, Canada.
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I cannot imagine not having a Biological Anthropology professor at UOG. With such an available link to the Ancestors, this sort of research is basic to the spiritual and corporal works of mercy the CHamorro Christians should espouse. The American Indians would never let their ancestors rot in Limbo. God hel them.