Local artisans prep for FestPac, Guam Museum

by Krystal Paco

Guam - With the opening of the Guam Museum, set for 2014, and the island preparing to host the 12th Festival of Pacific Islands in 2016, local artisans are gearing up to take center stage. The workshop was hosted by the Guam Council on the Arts and Humanities, Guampedia, and the Guam Preservation Trust.

"Carvers, weavers, we've got painters, we've even got some performing arts we've got some language people,' said Monica Guzman, chairperson for CAHA. "We've got even some farmers so it shows that our cultural community is hungry for this kind of information and we want to be able to provide it to them and not just locked away in some office somewhere but to share this information with everyone."

Guzman says today's workshop is the beginning of a series of workshops to bring resources and reference material from archeologists and historians to our cultural producers. "It'll give them the story behind the products and of the art that they produce. Questions like 'what is a sinahi?', 'what did our ancestors do with shell beads and fishing implements?' and how our artists can utilize those designs in producing the products that they do," she explained.

John F. Kennedy Chamorro teacher and Fafa'naguan Guma' Rasan Acho' Latte cultural instructor Brian Terlaje was one of 80 to participate in today's four-hour workshop held at the Latte of Freedom.  Terlaje says it's an exciting time to live on Guam, especially with a resurgence in excitement from the island's youth to learn the language and culture.

"There's more of an interest there's a sense of yearning and identity that our younger generation continue to thrive for and it is our obligation as leaders and teachers of our culture and our language to continue on and feed that yearning to feed that need for generations to come," he said.

All media presented at today's workshop can be viewed on Guampedia.com.