The Indigenous Affairs Office and the Department of Community and Cultural Affairs will band together to push for the construction of a long-overdue cultural center. <\/p>\n
In a press conference Wednesday at the Indigenous Affairs office, IAO resident director Roman Tudela and DCCA Secretary Robert Hunter discussed the amount needed to start construction. <\/p>\n
According to Tudela, the CNMI Constitution itself mandates that a cultural center be built, that the 19th Legislature approved a feasibility study for the Northern Marianas Cultural Center and appropriated $75,000 for that.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026I\u2019ve approached the House [of Representatives] and proposed that the $75,000 from the feasibility study be appropriated to the Indigenous Affairs Office,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, the budget for the feasibility study went through but the appropriation for the cultural center was not passed. The money was put aside and now, here we are in the 20th Legislature,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Without the funds needed, Tudela said his office can\u2019t move forward with the creation of the center. \u201cHopefully the appropriation is granted to us so we can start moving forward at least with the planning stages,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Hunter said the cultural center is not only long overdue, but is critical in terms of salvaging the tourism industry because it would set the CNMI apart as a unique destination<\/p>\n
\u201cIt it only makes sense since tourism is our industry\u2026 There are plenty of other places with beautiful beaches and great weather but if we really want to bring our visitors more than once, we need to highlight what is unique about this place and what is unique about this place is our Chamorro and Carolinian cultures,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Hunter used the Polynesian cultural center in Hawaii for example. According to Hunter, it not only garners loads of tourists, but it is also one of the state\u2019s highest paid attractions. <\/p>\n
\u201cHawaii, for example, there are all kinds of things to do in Hawaii\u2026but their No. 1 most visited paid attraction is the Polynesian cultural center,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Although there is still no source of funding to start the construction of the cultural center, Tudela said he has already taken a few of the necessary steps to speed up the process in case the funding is made available soon. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve approached DPL about finding land\u2026I\u2019ve gotten proposals from people,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Indigenous Affairs Office and the Department of Community and Cultural Affairs will band together…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[18803,36,1290,44],"class_list":["post-286020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-iao","tag-indigenous-affairs-office","tag-roman-tudela","tag-study"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286020","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\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286020\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}