29/01/2026
A Letter from "A Little Chuukese Girl" Who Hopes She Belongs
|||A Letter to the Editor:|||
My name is Saiwe Kirachky
I am from Chuuk but I was born and raised on Guam.
I do not know the lagoons of Chuuk.
But I know the villages of Guåhan.
I know the heat. I know the thick, wet blanket of air that greets you when you step out of the airport doors. I know the smell of tangantangan after the rain. I know fiestas and that finadene is the only sauce that matters at the table. I know family bbqs, I know beach days and church on Sundays. This Island raised me. Guam is the only home I have ever known.
As a little girl I never questioned whether I belonged, until I started getting told I didn’t.
As I grew older, I started to hear the words people whispered. I learned that people like me were talked about differently. Blamed more loudly. Pointed at more often. I learned that mistakes made by individuals somehow became the burden of an entire people.
Now, as I watch billboards rise and videos circulate publicly shaming people who share my face, my language, my culture. I ask, must I be ridiculed for their crimes too?
I can’t help but think of my daughter and the other little boys and girls like me, and wonder how they would feel seeing them?
Fear?
Shame?
Confusion?
Feeling like they don’t belong?
What happens when the island they call home chooses to shame them as well?
What are we teaching our children?
I write this with deep concern for the direction of our community and the values we claim to stand for.
Let me be clear: I believe in accountability. I support the deportation of individuals regardless of background, who violate the law or cause harm to others. Public safety matters. Justice matters.
What I cannot support is the targeting and humiliation of a specific group of people.
The actions and message coming from the Attorney General’s office, particularly those directed at the Chuukese community, are discriminatory in nature and deeply troubling. Targeting one group for public shaming does not make our island safer, it divides it. It fuels resentment, and creates division where cooperation is needed. It teaches our youth that some people are less worthy of dignity than others.
Guam is a melting pot of Micronesian cultures with deep Christian beliefs. We have shared classrooms, work-spaces, neighborhoods, churches, and generations together. So why is one group constantly singled out? Why are Chuukese faces the ones often used to send messages of fear?
When a person’s face is plastered on a billboard, it doesn’t just punish them. It punishes their children who go to school the next day. Their parents who raised them. Their families who are trying to heal. Some of these individuals may be genuinely trying to change, to rehabilitate, to become better than their past mistakes.
Leadership is helping people rise, bringing communities together, not crushing them and creating deeper divide. Using humiliation as a tactic is cruel and wasteful and it sends the wrong message to every child and person watching.
We can enforce the law without losing our humanity. We can protect our island without targeting one people, collaboration over condemnation. We can teach our children accountability without teaching them hate.
Guam is my home too. It always has been.
With hope,
A little Chuukese girl
