A comprehensive ethnohistory of the earliest people to settle the Mariana Islands. Maps, line drawings, glossary, bibliography, and index.

"The Authentication and Standardization Committee acknowledges the contributions of the Young Men's League of Guam (YMLG) and the Guam's Visitors Bureau (GVB) in the publication of this document."

"Can a man be content with a piece of bread and some change tossed his way from a passerby?" "Today's modern welfare state expects he can. Those who control the money in our society think that giving a dollar at the train station and then appropriating a billion dollars for federal housing can cure the ails of the homeless and the poor." "But the crisis of the modern welfare state is more than a crisis of government. Private charities that dispense aid indiscriminately while ignoring the moral and spiritual needs of the poor are also to blame. Like animals in the zoo at feeding time, the needy are given a plate of food but rarely receive the love and time that only a person can give." "Poverty fighters 100 years ago were more compassionate--in the literal meaning of "suffering with"--than many of us are now. They opened their own homes to deserted women and children. They offered employment to nomadic men who had abandoned hope and human contact. Most significantly, they made moral demands on recipients of aid. They saw family, work, freedom, and faith as central to our being, not as life-style options. No one was allowed to eat and run." "Some kind of honest labor was required of those who needed food or a place to sleep in return. Woodyards next to homeless shelters were as common in the 1890's as liquor stores are in the 1990's. When an able bodied woman sought relief, she was given a seat in the "sewing room" and asked to work on garments given to the helpless poor." "To begin where poverty fighters a century ago began, Marvin Olasky emphasizes seven ideas that recent welfare practice has put aside: affiliation, bonding, categorization, discernment, employment, freedom, and most importantly, belief in God. In the end, not much will be accomplished without a spiritual revival that transforms the everyday advice we give and receive, and the way we lead our lives." "It's time we realized that there is only so much that public policy can do. That only a richness of spirit can battle a poverty of soul. The century-old question--does any given scheme of help...make great demands on men to give themselves to their brethren?--is still the right one to ask. Most of our 20th-century schemes have failed. It's time to learn from the warm hearts and hard heads of the 19th-century." --Book Jacket.

CHamoru Legends retells twelve CHamoru legends and features personal reflections from author Teresita Lourdes Perez, unique illustrations of each legend by Guam artists, and versions of the legends in the CHamoru language by Maria Ana Tenorio Rivera. The book includes CHamoru classics like the story of the siblings who created the universe; the two lovers who were pushed to the edge of a cliff because their union was forbidden; and the tale of the son who leapt an island away to escape his jealous father. CHamoru Legends is the 2020 Independent Publisher Book Awards Bronze Medal recipient for Best Regional Fiction for Australia/New Zealand/Pacific Rim. It is a reversible book featuring the legends in English on one side and in CHamoru on the other. Through multiple layers of interpretation, the book weaves together strips of wisdom and cultural lessons like the leaves used to shape the CHamoru guåfak, or mat, upon which the earliest CHamoru storytellers sat sharing their versions of these timeless tales.

13 Months in Malesso' captures a distinctly CHamoru sense of time and place, and beautifully illustrates the many ways in which the island of Guam nourishes and sustains its people. The book tells the story of how CHamoru ancestors in the Mariana Islands marked time using the phases of the moon and the important seasons in their lives. Months were named to describe seasonal weather and the best times to fish, plant, and harvest food. The book also explores how just like their ancestors, the Barcinas girls - Lole', Lia, Rita, Arisa, and Ha'åne' - mark time using the seasons of their beautiful village of Malesso' in southern Guam.