In April 2025, I flew 6,000 miles back to Guåhan, widely known as Guam, to attend the Conference on Island Sustainability hosted by the University of Guam. Flying home for only two weeks with a $2,500 plane ticket seemed absurd to me, but my mother insisted, and so I went.

In the previous weeks (as it still is now), the North American continent had been experiencing the instability of the current presidential administration. Budget cuts to social welfare programs, the attacks on free speech in institutions of higher education, the use of arguably extralegal immigrant detention and deportation practices, the ongoing wars and the possibilities for new ones, and the unwieldy personalities in the most powerful positions of United States government—all of this made existing in this moment so dire, so frantic, so lonely, so hopeless that it seemed that the only thing anyone, and I, felt like they could do was to doomscroll through the daily (sometimes hourly) news cycle. I boarded the plane ungratefully annoyed and somewhat perturbed (especially with the pressure on the FAA) by the thirteen hours of flying I had to do.  

In its sixteenth year, the theme for the Conference on Island Sustainability was “Sustainable Solutions for our Future,” where speakers, presenters, and leaders were given the prompt to dream up, innovate, propose, and share solutions to the environmental issues that islands face, particularly those in the Pacific.[1] These are not small problems. The legacies of colonialism, past, present, and future, not only caused many of these existential challenges, but threatened and constrained the possibilities for solutions.[2] Climate change and rising sea levels threaten low-lying islands and atolls. Ecological pollution caused by extractive industries and U.S. militarization have left us with contaminated soils, rivers, seashores, and ocean waters of the islands. For some Indigenous peoples, these lands and seas are their ancestors who continue to live in these islands alongside them. A loss of these islands and waters means a loss of a fundamental aspect of who they are.

People travelled from islands across Micronesia, and as far as Mauritius. What I found truly remarkable was how folks, despite the diversity of their solutions, all shared a fundamental and core belief: that their love and care for deeply cultivated relationships with their communities, each other, and their islands were the basis of their action. All who participated were agentic, precisely because they felt grounded in meaningful relationships. They spoke about their technological innovations, their academic research on corals in reefs, their artwork and storytelling that touched upon Indigenous ecologies, their social and economic initiatives to create jobs related to green economies, their work reforesting badlands with native trees, their organizations and communities dedicated to food sovereignty, and their international pledges to sustainability. Even the hotel chef gave a mini-speech about how they prioritized sourcing ingredients grown by local farmers and caught by fishers to cook delicious CHamoru food!

A sort of mantra emerged for me throughout the conference. Out of what little islands may have, there exist possibilities of abundance, if only we take care to cultivate those relations with the land, the sea, and each other. It makes sense, then, that the ethical foundations of the conference were the CHamoru words inagofli’e and inadahi. More familiar to me was the word inafa’maolek, which translates into “to make good” and refers to the reciprocal set of CHamoru social relations that bind kinship networks and friendships across generations no matter where those individuals are. But I’m so glad that I learned about inagofli’e and inadahi, which are within the ethos of inafa’maolek, but a little different. Inagofli’e and inadahi mean to care for and protect others and the world around you; but, as Michael Bevacqua teaches us, inagofli’e goes beyond care.[3] Separated into its infixes and its root word, inagofli’e means “to really see each other.” To see and care for each other’s humanity—for me, that’s an ethos of hope.

While some presenters offered academic, science-based research or spoke about their community projects, Guåhan-based Breaking Wave Theatre Company performed an abbreviated version of their play We Will Not Go Silent, a theatrical and musical commentary on the climate crisis, and importantly, CHamoru responsibility to their ancestors, Puntan yan Fu’una, whose bodies created the universe and the island of Guåhan.[4] A member of the Company described the play as “a fever dream” that collectively lamented the environmental pollution and destruction of the island symbolized by the disappearance the once ubiquitous bird song and the towering presence of a puppet of Fu’una. The play offered a way to grieve the legacies of colonialism, re-narrate our relationship to capitalism and land, and catalyze action to reacquaint ourselves. Cathartic, heartfelt, and moving, the play prompted half of the room to shed tears, while the other half struggled to hold them back.

In one segment of the fever dream, the BWTC so elegantly wove in the legend of The Women who Saved Guåhan, an often-retold legend that many children of Guåhan have heard ad nauseam growing up on the island. It was how Breaking Wave told the story that gave me new profound perspective in the context that we live in—especially with the ongoing American militarization of the island.

The story is that long, long ago, before colonialism took hold of the island, the CHamoru people noticed that Guåhan was getting smaller each day. One person noticed that a giant fish was eating the island from both sides, and it seemed that it might eat the whole of Guåhan.[5] The CHamoru people wanted to stop the big fish from engulfing their island. The CHamoru men with their sailing skills, their spears, and slingstones set out to sea to catch the fish and save their families. However, the fish was too powerful for their weapons. Amused, the women devised a different solution. They cut their long flowing hair to make a magical net, that grew larger and more magical as they worked to weave their locks of hair together. The women stood on the shore and lured in the giant fish with a beautiful harmony of voices, and when the timing was right, they cast that net into the sea. They trapped the fish in that net, pulled it ashore, and saved the island of Guåhan. This explains why the island is narrowest at its middle. The taotaomo’na (people from before, ancestors) have been teaching us; we need to see and hear it.

Filled with storytelling, music, song, dance, jokes, laughter, and delicious food, the conference I attended in Guåhan turned out to be a joyous gathering of people who generated hope by letting others know that they are not alone. Each of us join a strong and caring force of people who have taken it upon themselves to create change despite the seeming hopelessness of the world that we all live in. And they did so even if that might mean failing, because in this moment where all seems hopeless, we can give meaning to ourselves and our communities by doing our small part in a world of people doing what little they can. One of these days, each of our small actions will coalesce into something more than our individual selves in the same way those women wove a little part of themselves into a magical net to catch the big fish and save Guåhan. At least, I’m hopeful of it.