Marshallese community celebrates independence

Lillian Chonggum of Springdale dances a traditional Marshallese dance during the "Welcoming NWA: Celebrating the Cultural Diversity of Northwest Arkansas" a 2015 event at Shiloh Square in downtown Springdale. Members of the Marshallese community will celebrate the writing of the constitution of that island nation with events this weekend.
Lillian Chonggum of Springdale dances a traditional Marshallese dance during the "Welcoming NWA: Celebrating the Cultural Diversity of Northwest Arkansas" a 2015 event at Shiloh Square in downtown Springdale. Members of the Marshallese community will celebrate the writing of the constitution of that island nation with events this weekend.

The community of Springdale that calls the Marshall Islands as their homeland will celebrate the Constitution Day of that country in the South Pacific this weekend.

"It will be three days of games, a parade and a pageant," said Chris Balos, an event organizer and a volunteer with the Marshallese Education Initiative in Springdale.

Events start Saturday morning, with a welcome from local dignitaries and special guests from the city of Springdale -- as well as the Marshall Islands, perhaps -- and a parade around the park area at the Jones Center for Families. Last year's parade -- the first in Springdale -- included five different groups with floats and marchers, Balos said.

"In the islands, every piece of motorized machinery that island has would be brought in for the parade," said April Brown, president and founder of the educational initiative. She also noted that Constitution Day in the islands is celebrated May 1 -- also called May Day, a celebration of spring -- but the observance here is held on the three-day Memorial Day weekend so more people can travel.

During the pageant, young Marshallese girls will introduce themselves in the traditional Marshallese language, and each will share about her individual culture -- which can be different for each of the five islands and 29 atolls in the island chain. The girls also will present a typical Marshallese art form -- like hula dancing or playing the ukulele -- as their talent.

Additionally, all pageant contestants will be given matching pieces of tropical-print fabric, from which to design and make dresses reflecting the girls' tastes. But here, the prize goes to the person who made the dress.

"There are a lot of seamstresses in the community, and this is a pretty competitive contest," Brown said.

"The thing that is important, in my view, is trying to get the girls to understand where they come from," Balos said, explaining most of the Marshallese children living in Springdale today were born in the United States. "The younger girls just aren't as aware.

"It's a part of the culture to know where you are from, where someone else is from, what family he comes from, what clan he comes from, what island he comes from," Balos continued.

Other Marshallese groups might hold their own celebrations with relatives or those who they grew up with on the same island or in a particular village, he said.

The games will include basketball, softball and volleyball tournaments, Balos said. However, in the islands, these games would have been geared toward the island culture: tug-of-war, husking a coconut or canoe racing.

Friends and family from Marshallese communities in Phoenix; Broken Bow, Okla.; Pine Bluff; Berryville; and elsewhere have been invited. And the sports tournaments usually include a couple of teams directly from the Marshall Islands, Brown said.

"The competition is fierce but congenial," Brown said. "There's no heckling, no negativity. You don't 'Boo.' In fact, you cheer for the other team.

"It's one big family, and everybody comes from all over the U.S. and some from the islands," she added. "Thousands live here, and thousands more come here."

"It's the biggest community celebration of the year" -- with the exception of perhaps Kemens, the expansive first birthday party for babies. But the size of those parties depends on the families, Balos said.

"I was raised in America, so I don't know as much about Constitution Day as I should," Balos said. "I know that we celebrate it as Independence Day or May Day."

"The Marshallese constitution is not taught anywhere," said Brown, who also is a history professor at Northwest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville. "There are no Marshallese history books. There are no Marshallese history classes [even in the Marshall Islands]. They only get what might be in American books."

"The way we learn a lot of this stuff was to talk to the elders. The elders would tell [the children]," Balos said. "Here, they figure you go to school and learn what you need to learn."

INDEPENDENCE

"The Marshall Islands were first claimed by Spain in the 16th century, but there is no good recorded contact," reads a history of the land provided by Brown. "The islands were likely first visited by whaling vessels."

Christian missionaries arrived in the islands in 1857 from Boston and started a long conversion process. Germany claimed the islands in the late 19th century, establishing a trading post on Jaluit Atoll for the trade of copra, dried coconut kernels from which oil is obtained.

"Following World War I, the Empire of Japan took over administration as part of the Mandate System under the League of Nations," Brown writes. "Japanese civilian administration turned to fierce military rule once the Pacific Wars of the 1930s began. The Marshallese were virtual slaves of the Japanese military during the occupation. The United States liberated the Marshall Islands from the Japanese during intense fighting in 1944."

(In fact, many families, clans and island communities celebrate the liberation of their individual islands as their Independence Day, both in the islands and in Springdale, Brown said. )

"After gaining miltary control of the Marshall Islands from Japan in 1944, the United States assumed administrative control of the Marshall Islands under the United Nations auspices as part of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, following the end of World War II," according to the website of the U.S. State Department. The trust also included the Caroline Islands and the Mariana Islands (excluding Guam) and the vast area of the Pacific Ocean known as Micronesia.

In early 1946, the U.S. government selected Bikini Atoll (in the Marshall Islands) for the site of the nation's first nuclear tests, and the Trust Territory became a Strategic Trust, which meant the U.S. could restrict movement in and out of the zone, Brown continued. "The U.S. administered the trust territory for more than 30 years before the Republic of the Marshall Islands became independent," Brown wrote.

Representatives of the Marshall Islands and the United States signed a Compact of Free Association in 1983, and the islands gained independence in 1986, when the compact took affect, according to the State Department website.

"The Republic of the Marshall Islands is a sovereign nation," reads the website. "While the government is free to conduct its own foreign relations, it does so under the terms of the Compact. The United States has full authority and responsibility for security and defense of the Marshall Islands ... The United States and the Marshall Islands have full diplomatic relations. Marshallese citizens my work and study in the United States without a visa and serve in the U.S. military.

"The U.S. Department of Defense, under the Military Use and Operating Rights Agreement, a subsidiary government-to-government agreement to the Compact, received permission to use parts of the lagoon and several islands on Kwajalein Atoll," the website continues. "The agreement allows the United State's continued use of the U.S. Army Kwajalein Atoll missile test range until 2066, with an option to 2068. Another major subsidiary agreement of the original Compact provides for settlement of all claims arising from the U.S. nuclear tests conducted at Bikini and Enewetak Atolls from 1946 to 1958."

Just before the testing on Bikini commenced in 1946, the native population was moved to other islands without receiving any compensation for their land, and the practice continued through the nuclear testing's commencement in 1958, Brown said.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Marshallese chiefs sided with the land owners who lost their homes, at which point some of the Pacific countries -- including some under control of other western governments -- became states independent of the United States (the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federation of Micronesian States and Palau among them). When the U.S. government recognized the Republic of Marshall Islands' sovereignty and signed the Compact, all legal claims against the U.S. government for loss of land or medical liability for the after effects of the testing were considered "settled."

"The compact allowed the Marshallese to travel, work and live in the United States without visas," Brown said. "Many Marshallese saw it as a 'perk' of allowing the United States to use the islands for nuclear testing."

But others did not. They saw the Compact -- and thus the dropping of liability lawsuits -- as detrimental to the people, she said.

"The politics are very confusing," Balos said.

A constitution for the independence for the Marshall Islands was written in 1979 in advance of the Compact, and this weekend, members of the Marshallese community in Springdale celebrate that document.

NAN Our Town on 05/25/2017

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