{"id":200686,"date":"2015-05-04T10:30:14","date_gmt":"2015-05-04T00:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=200686"},"modified":"2015-05-04T10:30:14","modified_gmt":"2015-05-04T00:30:14","slug":"tai-respetu-for-tinian-land-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/tai-respetu-for-tinian-land-people\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Tai respetu\u2019 for Tinian land, people"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"This<\/a>
This woman\u2019s bright orange poster makes word play on the draft environmental impact statement for live-fire training on Tinian. (Dennis B. Chan)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

TINIAN<\/strong>\u2014An island people are \u201cthreatened\u201d in the Northern Marianas.<\/p>\n

On Tinian\u2014where two-thirds of land is leased to the U.S. Department of Defense\u2014the U.S. military proposes live-fire ranges on land it has left idle for decades, after plans for a military base inclusive of shared schools, water, power, and even a movie theater have failed to materialize since the beginnings of the Commonwealth 40 years ago.<\/p>\n

The leased land, described by farmers as \u201cprime\u201d and by historians as cultural and historic \u201cplayground,\u201d is now a proposed stage for live-fire practice. Landing ramps built on coral beds, restricted access to land and air, and a high impact area for mortar, grenade, rocket and artillery-live fire, among others, is planned for the island.<\/p>\n

For the people who call Tinian their home, though, the answer to these military plans is an unequivocal \u201cNo!\u201d<\/p>\n

At the Marine Corps Forces Pacific\u2019s public hearing on Tinian last Thursday, about 300 Tinian residents gathered to support a \u201cno action\u201d alternative to the military\u2019s proposed training.<\/p>\n

A common plan for all training alternatives proposed in the draft environmental impact statement is the \u201chigh impact\u201d firing range.<\/p>\n

Kimberly King-Hinds says the plan for this range shows no respect to Tinian land and people.<\/p>\n

\u201c[The draft impact statement] is nothing more but a plan to destroy Tinian and destroy our culture. What you call restricted access to beaches, to coastal zones, alterations to the sea floor, to taking away coral, to eliminating certain fish species is what we call our customary right of way of feeding our families.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you call your cattle grazing mitigation plan is a threat to our food supply and our ability to be self-sustaining. What you call restricted access to cultural sites is really a denial of our ability to practice our traditional and customary rights of going to the forest to pick doni, going to pick our medicine, going to pay respect to our dead\u2026 And what you call not just 20\u2014but your 22 to 40 weeks of training\u2014is an economic chokehold on this community that has been struggling to be self-sustaining and to steer clear from being a welfare economy,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you call a high impact training zone is what I call tai respetu\u2014no respect! No respect for land and no respect for people in this community!\u201d she said to great applause.<\/p>\n

Another speaker, Eric San Nicolas, said the Department of Defense does not own two-thirds of Tinian\u2014\u201cthey leased it,\u201d he said. \u201cSo at the end of the day\u2026 we are the patrons of the land.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026Many of you who have gone out with our parents like I have to pick doni, to catch ayuyu\u2026 all of these things are connected to the land.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve walked through those forests\u2026 talking stories with my mom, dad, grandma, and grandpa from both sides\u2014that\u2019s how we learn our culture, because Chamorro is not a written culture. We inherit it by talking stories with our parents and our grandparents. You can never put a monetary value to that\u2026 you can never return that. Our land is connected to our souls. The moment we are given the land it already belongs to our children, even if they have never been born. So how can we sell something that is not ours?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Tinian Mayor Joey San Nicolas gave the island leadership\u2019s unequivocal position when he spoke. He noted the \u201cdevastating effects\u201d on Tinian\u2019s \u201creef, jungles, and soil\u201d from live-fire that would leave their own \u201csoils lost\u201d to them and \u201cmake land essentially unusable.\u201d<\/p>\n

San Nicolas noted that \u201ccleaning up has never been a priority\u201d for the U.S. who he said has left stored waste on Tinian. To note, it\u2019s unclear right now if the Chiget mortar range, beside a popular Tinian blowhole, can or ever will be cleaned up of its leftover munitions or contaminants.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the military builds and uses these ranges as proposed, we will never get those lands back\u2026 The millions of bullets, grenades, rockets, and bombs fired everywhere will make our lands essentially unusable. Will that waste have long lasting effects on our drinking water?\u201d he said, noting that they have \u201cresponsibility\u201d to the island\u2019s future generations.<\/p>\n

To applause from the crowd, he said, \u201cWe, the leadership of Tinian, oppose the plans outlines in the draft EIS.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe military should select the \u201cno action\u201d alternative,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n

History<\/p>\n

Sentiments that night also exposed the promised vision of a military economy decades ago with the perceived vision now of artillery shells, grenades, and noise and aquifer pollution.<\/p>\n

Serafina King-Nabors said, \u201cForty years ago, we were marching for the Covenant\u201d but the live-fire ranges and the lease of whole of island of Pagan were not on the CNMI\u2019s negotiating table.<\/p>\n

\u201cLeave us with our beaches,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

One man, who said he was a special bodyguard to U.S. ambassadors during the Covenant talks, said he \u201cbrought the Covenant to Saipan, Tinian, and Rota.\u201d<\/p>\n

But nevertheless, while he even has a daughter in the military, he could not support the military\u2019s current plans on Tinian.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got 11 miles on Tinian, OK? Two-thirds of that 11 miles belong to you guys, the military. We have only 3.6 miles of living space so I don\u2019t know what else you want from us\u2026\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Hinds also noted how \u201cAmericans came here and you promised my parents and our grandparents that you were going to build a school and you were going to build a military base, and you were going to provide for us jobs through a military economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

It appears Hinds was alluding to the \u201cTechnical agreement regarding use of land to be leased by the U.S. in the Northern Marianas\u201d that was executed decades ago.<\/p>\n

Signed by U.S. ambassador F. Hadyn Williams, the personal representative of the President of the United States and other CNMI officials in May 1975, the agreement paints the terms of a military and civilian society co-existing with each other.<\/p>\n

The agreement, copies of which were obtained by Saipan Tribune, details provisions that would govern future relations with U.S. and civilian authorities. These arrangements would be accomplished through a \u201cCivil-Military Advisory Council,\u201d the agreement notes.<\/p>\n

The agreement also details provisions of access to fishing sites and beaches that would \u201cremain open at all possible times\u201d or at the \u201csame access\u201d levels of military personnel and families unless military training risks prohibit it.<\/p>\n

The agreement also notes that utilities will be planned on an islandwide basis in coordination with the CNMI, and that excess capacity would be available to the civilian community on Tinian.<\/p>\n

Emergency care in military facilities would be provided by the military to all residents when available on Tinian, the agreement notes. It adds that where health facilities are not available on civilian level, the military would provide this also.<\/p>\n

The agreement also details provisions of fire emergency services, an \u201cintegrated local school system,\u201d seeking of local services by the U.S. government, and the \u201cuse of base movies by the civilian community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now it appears these assurances shouldn\u2019t have been made, indicated MARFORPAC executive director Craig Whelden in an interview after the hearing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what happened 30 or 40 years ago,\u201d he said. \u201cPerhaps there was some indication, there was a plan at one time to put a base here\u2026 [But] if you look at Guam and the base there either at the south or north end\u2014Andersen Air Force Base or Apra Harbor Naval base\u2014those are restricted spaces,\u201d the director said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody can go inside those unless you have an authorized ID card. So as I heard that comment from several people, I thought to myself\u2026 If we came in and put a base on the northern two-thirds of Tinian, there\u2019d be a gate from one ocean to the other side and the only people authorized up in there would be ID card holders. So it\u2019s kind of a mischaracterization that the people of Tinian would get access to the northern two thirds if we had a base\u2014because bases all over the world, in the continental United States and Okinawa and Guam\u2014they all have gates with access control.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCivilians have no access to commissaries. Those are for ID cardholders\u2026 So I don\u2019t know what was said 30 or 45 years ago, but I can tell you from 50 years of experience with the military, if they built a base here there\u2019d be a fence from one side to the other and a gate nobody can go into.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what was said back then, and perhaps, things were said that shouldn\u2019t have been said,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TINIAN\u2014An island people are \u201cthreatened\u201d in the Northern Marianas. On Tinian\u2014where two-thirds of land is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":200687,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900,4],"tags":[26,308,200,67],"class_list":["post-200686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-local-news","tag-cnmi","tag-id","tag-military","tag-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}