Origin Stories
In CHamoru legend, the god Puntan died and his sister, Fu’una, used his body to create the world. With Puntan’s back, Fu'una created the boundless sky and all its brilliant lights; and with his eyes she made the sun and moon. As the world was formed, Fu’una missed her brother deeply and cried tears that became the vast oceans.
Lonely, she turned herself into Fouha Rock on the island of Guam, from which all the peoples of the world sprang from.
This is how the CHamoru people explain their place in the world. But according to science and genealogy, three thousand years ago, an intrepid group of voyagers bid farewell to their families off the coast of Asia, pushed their canoes into the sea, and began one of the greatest voyages in human history. Looking east towards the horizon, using knowledge of past expeditions and rumors to drive them forward, they landed on the island of Guam which would be the first island in the Pacific to be settled by people.
Across the ocean in the lands and waters now called Việt Nam, another people defined their origins as the descendants of Âu Cơ, the mountain fairy, and Lạc Long Quân, the sea dragon king. Their union produced a hundred human children, Bách Việt. But she longed for the mountains, and he longed for the sea, and so they separated, dividing their children across the lands and waters of Vietnam. his originary division of a mother’s children prefigured future cleavages: the division of North from South Vietnam along the 17th parallel in 1954, followed by two decades of civil war and U.S. military intervention, and then the division of a unified Vietnam from its post-1975 refugee diaspora. In the spring and summer of 1975, the first wave of these Vietnamese refugees were processed in Guam.
Lonely, she turned herself into Fouha Rock on the island of Guam, from which all the peoples of the world sprang from.
This is how the CHamoru people explain their place in the world. But according to science and genealogy, three thousand years ago, an intrepid group of voyagers bid farewell to their families off the coast of Asia, pushed their canoes into the sea, and began one of the greatest voyages in human history. Looking east towards the horizon, using knowledge of past expeditions and rumors to drive them forward, they landed on the island of Guam which would be the first island in the Pacific to be settled by people.
Across the ocean in the lands and waters now called Việt Nam, another people defined their origins as the descendants of Âu Cơ, the mountain fairy, and Lạc Long Quân, the sea dragon king. Their union produced a hundred human children, Bách Việt. But she longed for the mountains, and he longed for the sea, and so they separated, dividing their children across the lands and waters of Vietnam. his originary division of a mother’s children prefigured future cleavages: the division of North from South Vietnam along the 17th parallel in 1954, followed by two decades of civil war and U.S. military intervention, and then the division of a unified Vietnam from its post-1975 refugee diaspora. In the spring and summer of 1975, the first wave of these Vietnamese refugees were processed in Guam.