Displacement of our people

Article XII of the NMI Constitution provides and limits landownership to NMI Descent. It also provides a troubling formula that displaces those with less than 25 percent indigenous blood from landownership. It is this very issue that our young folks have found very unsettling!

The latter provision (prohibition of landownership for those with less than 25 percent local blood) should have been deleted from the outset. It seems a discriminatory and ludicrous provision of local constitutional law. And it should have been reasonably foreseeable then and now that the dilution of ancestral blood is a natural phenomenon. Intermarriages have occurred here for more than four hundred years. Since 60 years ago mobility and educational opportunities have served as vehicles for more intermarriage.

It may be good to leave land in the hands of the indigenous people. But the blood quantum requirement shouldn’t be the basis of landownership. The right thing to do is grant private landowners 100 percent ownership of their properties, pure and simple. And let’s grant posterity with indigenous ancestry the same rights that we enjoy today. It should result in a win-win situation for one and all.

This provision depicts a protectionist mindset that denies our children (with indigenous ancestry) their rights. Yet, the same set of constitutional law grants foreigners adopted by local families the same rights. Shouldn’t this provision of constitutional law be repealed in an effort to make landownership here for posterity an inclusive policy that nurtures harmony among the indigenous people? What’s the basis of this provision other than its highly divisive nature? Doesn’t this also violate the sanctity of procreation and the institution of marriage?

It is even more troubling how this provision displaces our very own as to render them dangling in no man’s land. But weren’t they endowed with the same cultural and traditional heritage since birth? Though our indigenous blood quantum may have been diluted, the fact remains that you and I must have come from somewhere. We had our humble beginnings in these isles and for once in our lifetime let there be responsible disposition of the rights of our young people to be full members of the Northern Marianas community.

As a people, our anchor is founded on our cultural and traditional heritage handed to us by our ancestors. Land is conveyed to siblings not necessarily for the sake of ownership, but for survival of last resort in the event we crash into the sea of debt or other abject hardship. I am ready to honor the will of our ancestors of inclusiveness. Are you?