CHamoru Environmental Stewardship: The Låncho as a Site of Inafa' maolek
On Guåhan, the låncho (farm) extends beyond the typical large-scale agricultural plots that we often envision. It includes family ranches, family “properties” and home gardens. The låncho constitutes a critical component and bastion of CHamoru culture and history being that the CHamoru have farmed and cared for their lands for centuries before colonization (under Spain, the United States and Japan) and during these eras of occupation. To this day and within the context of ongoing US occupation and militarization of Guåhan, låncheru (farmers) certainly still farm and steward their lands. Despite impacts on land-tenure systems and therein CHamoru access and claims to the land (by virtue of land theft) and the kinds of colonial, exploitative and intensive labor forced onto the CHamoru throughout 352 years of colonization, CHamoru farming epistemologies and practices historically and still to this day have drawn from traditional and deeply intimate knowledges of kinship and belonging, including the CHamoru ethical framework of inafa’maolek (reciprocity). As a result, the låncho is not just as a physical space in which låncheru raise their livestock and grow their crops, but indeed a highly complex site that hosts and fosters flourishing CHamoru ways of knowing, engaging with, protecting and nurturing the land according to the traditional CHamoru notion of inafa’maolek.