Practicing my culture

Sometime in the last 20 years, locals in the CNMI came to understand conservation as a bunch of haoles telling indigenous people not to fish, not to feed their families, and not to practice their culture. They are mistaken. Conservation has always been an integral part of Micronesian culture.

I learned it from my father and I know these guys learned it from theirs.

Even so, times have changed. The definition of conservation has changed along with it.

Old habits and old technologies result in expected outcomes.

1000 years ago when a Chamorro went out to catch fish using the technology available to him at the time, he could safely assume that he wasn't destroying his resource. No new technology was going to be introduced to help him catch more fish and no huge influx of off-islanders would be coming to his home anytime soon (at least for another 500 years).

The only thing he needed to navigate his world were the stars, the waves, and the wind. He lived the way his grandparents lived and he could expect his grandchildren to live the same way.

Like I said, times have changed. We now have more people and new technologies.

When people use old habits combined with new technologies, unexpected outcomes occur.

Fish & Wildlife admits that SCUBA spearfishing nearly decimated our Napolean Wrasse population. I've also heard that gill nets in the 1990's wiped out the turtle population in the lagoon [unconfirmed, just hearsay, so don't jump down my throat, I was in Florida].

When these new technologies were introduced, they weren't introduced with the intent of destroying our resources. People just wanted to catch more fish, feed their families, and practice their culture.

In a previous post I told the story of my father eating one of the last mariana mallards.

I don't think he was purposely eating the last mallard. He was just practicing his culture, right? If you had asked him about the bird on the day he shot it, he would probably have told you that he knew where to find more.

I don't recount that story to try to paint my father in a bad light, I'm just using it to highlight my point. He had spent his whole life shooting and eating that bird and probably expected to spend the remainder of his whole life shooting and eating that bird.

Old habits (hunting every bird you see) combined with new technologies (better rifles than centuries past) led to extinction (the shelling of Saipan during World War II didn't help either).

Am I less Chamorro because I will never see a mariana mallard? Am I less Chamorro because I will never taste one? And is Saipan less Saipan because we no longer have bats and barely any coconut crabs? Do you see where I'm going with this?

If eating certain foods is part of our culture, then what does it say about our culture when we allow that food to go extinct?

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Speaking of forming new habits, I came across this news item as I was surfing the Internet:

The tiny Pacific islands nation of Kiribati declared the world's largest marine protected area Thursday - a California-sized ocean wilderness that includes pristine reefs and eight coral atolls teeming with fish and birds.

Kiribati isn't even one of the Micronesian nations to sign the Micronesia Challenge, yet look what they just did. I highly recommend reading the whole article, but this is part of the article that I found to be of the most importance:

The plan does not come without costs. Some commercial fishing in the area will be restricted, meaning the Kiribati government will forego some revenue from foreign commercial fishing licenses.

Kiribati earned $33 million in 2001 from fishing licenses - the latest available figure.

The government stands to lose about $3 million of this revenue with the creation of the reserve, but is hoping to recoup some of the losses by boosting tourism, which now accounts for 20 percent of the gross domestic product. It has already applied to have the marine reserve listed as a World Heritage Site. [emphasis added]

The CNMI should start thinking like our brothers in Kiribati.

Napoleonic Wars

One day when my parents were still married, my father shot a Mariana Mallard on our property. He ate it.

A few days later my mother was visiting with an American wildlife biologist working on Saipan. Inside his office was a picture of a similar mallard and my mother told the biologist that her husband had just shot and eaten a bird just like the one in the picture.

The biologist replied, "That was probably the last one."

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The first time I went to Anatahan I went coconut crab hunting with my father.

Coconut crabs are the largest land-living arthropod in the world. The biggest one I've ever seen was about the size of a big lobster, but according to some sources they can get as big as a small dog.

We eat them...and they taste really good.

On this particular night we found several crabs, all of which were inside our bellies a few short hours later. While hunting we took every crab we found, except for the female crab we found carrying eggs.

She was let go so she could go replenish her species.

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A few weeks ago when I was in Pohnpei I had the opportunity to talk to a local fisherman. I have to admit that I didn't really do much talking. Mostly I just listened. This is what he told me:

"I am tired of these haoles always talking about their right to fish. They do not have a right to fish. Nobody has a right to fish. In Micronesia the fish have always belonged to the chief. Fishing is a privilege."

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In the battles over how we can effectively use our natural resources things can quickly get ugly.

In today's Saipan Tribune, John Gourley, a man who goes around this island calling himself a bio-stitute (a combination of biologist and prostitute), accuses a local fisherman who works at one of the natural resource agencies of having "very little respect for local cultural fishing practices." Ironically enough, Mr. Gourley was defending another local fisherman who works at one of the other natural resource agencies.

In his latest blog post, Mike Tripp, a man from a nation known for politeness and calm demeanors, casts doubt on the truthiness of Mr. Gourley's accusations.

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There is much more to be said on the topic of conservation.

Expect future posts.