A Black Pacific Memoir

I am the Black Atlantic and the Blue Pacific. In my family tree, diaspora and Indigenous worlds are not binary; they are interconnected through histories of love, war, racism, military occupation, betrayal, trauma, migration, planting, and the sanctity of family on and off the island of Guåhan. In this photographic article, I chronicle a memoir and choreographic practice inspired by tracing my Black Pacific heritage. Oral histories shared with me by my Chamoru aunt Rosa1 and my late Black/African American grandfather Albert are juxtaposed to descriptions of sensuous engagements with the landscape of Barigåda, my ancestral village located near the center of Guåhan (fig. 1). The island is located in the northwestern Pacific region and is a member of a fifteen-island archipelago called the Marianas—the land of the Indigenous Chamoru people. Guåhan is known to the world as Guam and often associated with its role as a US military outpost and one of the far-flung battlefields of World War II. This story offers a detour from the dominant ways in which the island is represented.Instead, I want to weave together family stories from my maga'håga/matrilineal line gifted to me by Aunt Rosa with the fragments of history I managed to gather before Grandpa Albert from Louisiana passed away. The US Navy stationed him in Guåhan in 1947. Grandpa never left, and now he is buried on the island. The narrative spotlights a story of family discovery implicated in Black Pacific conversations that interrupt Black invisibility in the Pacific and illuminate profound ancestral connections and decolonial coalitions across lineages.2 This nascent body of research maps out the sociopolitical connections between Black and Indigenous Pacific people and theorizes understandings of Blackness beyond the Middle Passage distinct to the Pacific Continent.3 This research contributes to the conversation by situating autobiography and dance making that is an important lens and praxis for articulating knowledge about the sacred and profane African diaspora and Indigenous Pacific relationships coalescing on Guåhan beyond racial logics. As the Samoan American poet Terisa Siagatonu states, "Sometimes your family is an ethnic studies lecture."4 Indeed, my family story immerses me in a master class in the complexities of human identity—one that deconstructs the separation of Indigenous and diaspora.Using photographs and somatic video archives, this article sets out to recount the genealogy and oral histories shared with me by Aunt Rosa and Grandpa Albert in 2010 when I visited the island for the first time. I also share how I was compelled to dance with urgency on the land. Instinctually, dance became a way to introduce myself to the ecology of my matrilineal homeland. Dancing enabled me to process the sojourn and to cultivate kinship with Barigåda. For instance, I danced barefoot in rays of perpetual sunlight beaming under a towering mango tree, and I poured libations by arching my spine and dipping my head to the forest floor. I felt such deep reverence for the surrounding ecosystem. This sensibility in the Indigenous language is called infa'måolek/to make harmony. The renowned Chamoru poet, lawyer, and environment activist Julian Aguon describes an "ethos of reciprocity" as a guiding principle of life for the Indigenous people of Guåhan.5 Dancing became a way to engage in a sensorial activism with ancestral stories of the land.I am the daughter of Nora Mary Blas Cruz and Isaac Wilson Banks II. I was born in San Diego, California, where my parents met. This is the land of the Native Kumeyaay people. My mother was born in Guåhan and migrated with her family to San Diego in the 1960s (figs. 2–4). My father was born in San Diego after his family followed the great African American westward migration. On the paternal side of the family, my folks come from Alabama and Kentucky. An interesting twist in my family tree is that my mother's biological father, Albert Bowman, was a Black man born in St. Francisville, Louisiana. He joined the navy in the 1940s and eventually was stationed in Guåhan. Hence my Pacific island genealogy includes a Black diaspora story tangled in US colonial-military occupation. The paradox was that Grandpa Albert found respite from American racism and family trauma on the island. Grandpa's life examples how Blackness is implicated in "the hearts of all sorts of human diasporas."6 His arrival to the island blurs the lines between voluntary and involuntary migration. His story also reveals how Indigenous and diaspora identities overlap, converge, and collide on Guåhan. There are only remnants of my grandfather's life I have been able to gather from talking to him along with recollections from relatives such as my mother, Aunt Rosa, and his great-niece Berrel. I see this memoir as an intervention to remedy the erasure of my grandfather in my Chamoru genealogy—which I believe is symptomatic of family secrets and Black racism on the island.Scholars such as Teaiwa, Enomoto, Pualani Warren, and I, who are both Indigenous Pacific and Black, help assess the nuances of Black Pacific tensions and solidarities. The renowned poet-scholar Teresia Teaiwa wrote "black / is a state of mind" in her poem "Black in the Blue Pacific."7 She was referring to the paradox of the pervasiveness of Black racism mixed with the fervor for Black/African diaspora culture such as reggae across the Pacific Continent. "Something's not right," she added. Pualani Warren notes that anti-Blackness has been thrust upon Pacific people as a consequence of settler colonialism and militarization.8 Collectively, this scholarship maps out shared destinies of Black liberation and Indigenous sovereignty. Additionally, it aims to articulate the origins of interethnic racism and disentangle from racial-colonial thought in the Pacific. Pualani Warren notes that there are "pluralities of blackness in the Pacific." She highlights that Po (meaning darkness and/or physical blackness) in Kanaka Maoli affords "discussions of cosmogony, genealogy, ontology, and epistemology."9 She points out that Blackness is conceptualized beyond racial logics in the Pacific.This study and other work I have done add to the Black Pacific conversation by examining my own family memoirs and theorizing my own choreographic practices informed by both Black and Indigenous Pacific worldviews and creative processes.10 I also look at the enormous influence of Black/African diaspora dance in contemporary Pacific dance practices.11 I continue to find dance a critical site of what Robbie Shilliam calls "deep relations" between Pacific and African diaspora folks.12The first section of this article briefly introduces the Chamoru worldview, our concept of the earth, and why Barigåda is a significant landscape of knowledge. The following section describes my first visit to the island and what I learned from spending time with Aunt Rosa and dancing next to the mango tree she planted. In the third section I discuss what Grandpa Albert shared with me, such as his observations of Guåhan beginning in the 1940s, and comment on my impressions of him. Included in this part is a dance on the trunk of the coconut tree. The final section summarizes what I learned from musing on the oral histories and dance memories, and how my personal family story is relevant to the discourse of the Black Pacific. I want to decolonize the narrative of Guåhan and decompartmentalize my Black Pacific heritage.The Chamoru genesis is a story of sibling love. Teresita Perez called the sister and brother duo—Pontan and Fo'na—"gods roaming the great vastness together."13 When the brother felt death in his body, he told his sister to use their combined power to create the earth (fig. 5). When Pontan's body became an empty shell, Fo'na mourned. When her tears flowed down her face and mingled with his body, she was galvanized by immense love to make the earth. Fo'na made the ocean with his blood, his scalp became the grass and trees, his eyes the sun, and so on. So every village is an essential part of the earth's body. Barigåda is landlocked and near the belly of the island limestone plateau. In the past it was a popular farming village (figs. 6–9).My family has lived for many generations in Barigåda. The village is located in the middle of the island, and our land sits in the valley off Ton Juan White street. In 2010, when I visited Barigåda for the first time, I traveled from Aotearoa/New Zealand, where I was living at the time. At the airport I was greeted by Aunt Rosa and her children Raymond, Donna, and Jonna Rose. I remember being instantly confronted with the humid tropical heat and a feeling that I had stepped into a different world. When I arrived at the family ranch, I was astonished by the lush vegetation—the blooming flowers, such as kalachucha/plumeria, and the dense jungle that surrounded the house. There were numerous chickens and towering breadfruit, avocado, mango, banana, papaya, guava, and coconut palm trees. Other vibrant flora, such as orchids, ylang ylang, gardenia, ixora, hibiscus, ginger buds, were blooming as well. My family, like many Chamoru families, spends a lot of time immersed in the natural environment, since we often hang out in our outdoor kitchens.I spent a lot of time with my aunt, following her around the ranch. During these botanical processions, my senses were saturated in color, aroma, and green space. She would rack the leaves, harvest the food, and often hand-feed me along the way. She also would casually share family stories while we walked. For example, she told me about the mango tree she planted with her father, my great-grandpa Adam, to replace the one a typhoon took down. Then she showed me autis/custard apple, the fruit my grandmother Julia liked to eat as a child. She brought out the mango seeds she was propagating, the offspring of a tree that died. There were libraries of oral history inscribed in the land. I began to see the land as an intergenerational repository of memories, knowledge, and nourishment.I also began to tune into the legacy of planting, and my aunt's guardianship of the land. Her commitment to caring for the land and planting food for the future generation felt deeply profound to me and moved me to dance. She is one of the last of her siblings living on the island (fig. 10).My sensorial connection to Barigåda was heightened by the walks with my aunt. She helped me cultivate an awareness of the love, labor, sunlight, and rain that went into the making of paradise. I remember that in 2010 I felt especially intimidated by the jungle, including the hilitai/monitor lizard that lived on the ranch. The walks helped build my confidence and familiarity with the plantation. Eventually, I became enchanted by locations on the ranch. I noticed how my growing bond anchored my feet and aligned my heart to the place. This inspired me to dance. Different corners of the ranch became sensorial prompts for using my body to channel the energy of the land.Perez wrote about eating a mango from his godfather's farm and the sensuousness of tasting the tropical flesh.14 His poem affirms the glory of sucking the sticky juice and being nourished by what grows on the family land. Mango is an ancient food for our people, and there are several varieties to eat.On the north side of the ranch, I danced next to a mango tree Aunt Rosa had planted. That day the chickens were tutting, and a friendly white cat who lived on the ranch was roaming in the vicinity. Before I danced, I laid out family photographs on the grass at the base of the tree above the roots. Taking in the faces of the family dead and alive was sobering.The dance begins with me walking carefully into an elevated patch of grass next to the mango tree (fig. 11). My gaze starts downward, and then I look up at the highest branches. Then I descend to the ground so my hips can make contact with the earth. My arms extend horizontally as I rotate my neck in a full circle; my head hangs low, and I grab my hair and pull it over the top of my head, and this naturally brings my gaze up. I spiral up to standing, and lunge toward the tree as my torso twists, and I look over my left shoulder, both arms stretched out like a lightning bolt as I lean toward my back leg. I press off the front foot into a parallel standing position, and then my right arm reaches to the ground below and my upper body follows. My head dips in the same direction. Then I lunge and undulate and shift off my left leg, and this propels me backward so I turn and look over my shoulder, twice. Then I walk over to a patch of banana trees and slowly do a backbend as my hips move forward and my upper body arches back. My eyes take in the sky above and eventually the land behind me. I walk over to a tree and begin to lie down. I pause to gaze at the scattered pebbles on the dirt and notice a red-ant colony close by. Finally, I rest my head on the grass. I ascend to standing and walk over to the mango tree, gently hug a thick branch, and rest my forehead on the tree's arm. I look up at its height and walk my fingertips upward toward the leaves. I walk in front of the tree and crouch in its direction; my right hand reaches out to pull the thick air toward me as a swerve in the direction toward my right shoulder in the opposite direction, and then my palms roll open and release. Afterward my right hand darts behind me and briefly turns back to the tree; my right elbow swivels in toward my belly, and momentum sends my left arm over my head. I lunge and undulate as my fingertips stretch behind my back. I rebound, freeze, as my arms round in toward my chest. I look left and quickly turn my gaze right. I walk over to the tree. I step onto the base and find a sturdy branch to hold on to while I dangle my entire body. I recover by making contact with another branch, and then I stand still while my hand rests on the tree for seven seconds. Then I slowly walk away.I met Grandpa Albert in 2010 after Aunt Rosa encouraged me to call and visit him. This triggered trepidation, since I didn't grow up with him and my mother had met him only once. She had no concrete knowledge of him until she was an adult. His presence added complexity to my concept of family on the island (figs. 12–13).I visited Albert on October 21, 2010, at his home in the village of Yigo. When I met him, he was eighty-nine years old. I asked him how he ended up in Guåhan. He shared that he signed up to work for the US Navy and in 1942 ended up in Hawai'i, where he repaired boats damaged in battle. After the war, in 1947, he was transferred to Guåhan. Years later he met my grandmother, and my mother was conceived. Grandpa Albert and my grandmother eventually lost contact, and my mother grew up not knowing him or that side of the family.He told me that on his arrival in the late 1940s he witnessed the traumatic impact of the war and US territorialism on the people of the island. He mentioned that Chamoru people were not allowed to speak our native language on military bases. "That hurt me," he said. He described Chamoru people as kindhearted. He went on to say that he witnessed how US militarization had abused them. He also commented on the racism he experienced from Chamoru people on the island, albeit not like the racism he endured in America. Grandpa Bowman did not blame the Chamoru people, because he sensed that it was a result of brainwashing. His comment revealed that my grandpa had a critical lens on the military presence on the island. He was referring to what Nitasha Tamar Sharma calls the importation of racial thinking from the United States through media, school, missionary work, and the legal system.15 Even though he had been employed by the system, and to a certain extent was complicit in US territorialism on the island, he did not simply work for the US government. He married into Indigenous culture and society when he wedded Remedios San Nicholas, a Chamoru woman, and helped care for the children she already had, and they conceived a daughter. He ended up working with the civil service for thirty-five years before he retired, and years later he was laid to rest in Guåhan. The island is now a burial ground for my Black grandfather from Louisiana. Grandpa Albert's life on Guåhan illuminates "the sacredness of Black lives in unexpected and unpredictable ways" in the Pacific.16 For example, his life is now part of the land and expands the notion of the Black Atlantic diaspora into Indigenous Pacific genealogy and geography. Grandpa Albert's story is a branch of my Chamoru family tree.Called the tree of life, the trongnok niyok/coconut tree yields food, drink, and oil; even the leaves can be used for weaving; even the blossoms produce sweet syrup, vinegar, and more (fig. 14). Perez notes that this legendary tree is associated with the legacy of elders—the wisdom, care, and generosity they can provide their clans.17 Many Chamoru people see the tree as a biha (elder) and appreciate the way the tree takes care of us; in turn, "we must always care for the tree."18On the south side of the ranch, I danced with an adolescent niyok tree with a bend at the base of the trunk. Adjacent to the tree was a nursery of six niyok that Aunt Rosa had planted. They were lined up at the edge of the ranch and had begun to take root. There were a few scattered coconut leaves on the ground, and there was an abandoned dog carrier used for catching wild pigs. The area was swarming with mosquitoes. The curvature of the tree made it possible to partly walk up the trunk. The hens were clucking, and the rooster was roosting. I could hear the sound of cars driving by as well.The dance begins with me balancing in a lunge, leaning in toward the tree with my forehead propped up on and my arms wrapped completely around the trunk. Then I peel away as my hips move backward. I adjust my arms and wrap my right leg around the trunk as I peek around the other side of the tree, look down at the dirt, and reach my right arm toward the ground. Then I unwind my leg from the trunk and bring it back to the base of the tree. Afterward I offer my cheek for a gentle embrace with the trunk. Then I turn away and leverage my balance as I move into a tall, statuesque posture as my left arm elevates and extends in line with my shoulder. Then my head gradually tilts back as my gaze and arm track the high point of the tree and dangling fruit. Then I squat as my arm grabs the lower extremity of the trunk, and I slowly start to balance on one leg and stack my hips as my left leg extends away from the tree and my foot flexes. From there I slowly look upward to the sky. Then I swiftly squat as my left hand clasps the trunk and I carefully slide down the base of the tree.Dancing offered me a way to fana'guaiya/strengthen a connection to the land and to process the oral stories I received in 2010 (fig. 15). In the duets with the mango and coconut trees, my body became a holding space for the energy of nature and the seasons of life that Aunt Rosa and Grandpa Albert shared with me. The experience of dancing and listening to the stories immersed me in the intergenerational web of family genealogy. I could feel how the dance rituals activated the land. Using my dancer antennae—my feet, hands, fingers, hips, arms, hair, and eyes—I bore witness to the contours and textures of the terrain. I noticed an alchemy of dance. I could feel the chemical change in my body in the thick humid air, or when my feet made contact with the grass, pebbles, tree trunks, and fallen leaves. I felt my sense of self integrating into the ecology. The coalescence of sun, rain, ocean air, and earth absorbed me. The properties of the land softened my skin. The land worked on me.As I danced with the trees, I felt an immense respect and love. I embodied my curiosity and prayers to the generational wisdom of the soil, trees, flora, fruit, and people. The poetry of the land galvanized my dancing. I also felt the resonance of the grief, pain, joy, peace, and dreams drifting in the air.In 2010 I learned about how Chamoru see the land itself as family. This has helped me cultivate a new understanding of the family tree. The land is an archive, a living library of the family story. Aunt Rosa taught me that a tree can reference particular chapters of life in Barigåda that reach back to when my grandma was a small child and beyond. The ranch is also where we endured war and replanted after typhoons. The village is where I was encouraged to call and visit Grandpa Albert. "He is the nice man," Aunt Rosa said. Barigåda is a matrix of ancestral stories.When I am there, I immerse myself in learning about my people, our cultural values, and the relationships we have with land and ocean water. Since 2010 I have returned to the village four times, and on three of these visits I have brought with me my daughter Awa, who was born in 2013. Barigåda will always be a memory bank of family history. Additionally, meeting Grandpa Albert offered me a deeper insight into my Pacific heritage, which includes Black American diaspora lineage. His story revealed that the island became a place to rebuild his life and provided an alternative home for him. Additionally, for me, his life signifies a Black-Chamoru relationship I have on Guåhan.This narrative contributes to the Black Pacific discourse by offering the reader an opportunity to zoom into a family story that could get easily overlooked in broader conceptualizations of the Black Pacific. My family story is laden with complexity and remnants of knowledge that I am gathering. I used dance to tap into an eco-spiritual dimension of landscape that I understand to hold a truth that is not communicable in words but instead is about what is felt and intuitively understood. In 2010 I began a journey of peeling back the layers of ancestral connection that ripple through and between the Black diaspora and the Pacific shores of Guåhan.