Put guåhu

I am Chamoru, the native people of the Mariana Islands in Micronesia, Oceania. My håle’ is deeply rooted in the southernmost islands, Luta yan Guåhan. I am a descendant of farmers, hunters, fisherfolk, and civic leaders. The knowledge and legacy of this heritage leads every facet of my life, especially now as I navigate my journey through higher education.

I am currently a 4th-year PhD student in the Linguistics Department at University of California, Berkeley. My research sits at the confluence of language reclamation, language revitalization, and linguistics. I critique the extractive practices inherited in linguistics training and argue for an epistemological overhaul that is grounded in reciprocity and accountability of power. My work is naturally interdisciplinary, drawing on language arts as method and centering transgender and gender-expansive language research as a site of reclamation in its own right.

As a Chamoru trans woman linguist, my positionality is constitutive of my research. The colonial projects that sought to suppress Fino’ Chamoru, as well as trans and gender-expansive identity, are the same ongoing and structural forces; therefore, their reclamation is inseparable.