Pacific Arts: The Journal of the Pacific Arts Association

On June 15, 2024, during the 13th Festival of Pacific Arts and Culture (FestPAC), the Bishop Museum held a ceremony honoring the latte—ancient Chamorro megalithic stone house pillars—that the museum stewards. Unlawfully removed from the Mariana Islands in the 1920s, these latte, along with over 10,000 artifacts, had been recently relocated to the Bishop Museum’s central courtyard by Hawaiian Chamorro diaspora members. The 2024 ceremony, attended by members of the Chamorro diaspora from the US and FestPAC delegates from Guåhan (Guam) and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, was the culmination of the reconditioning, relocation, and re-display of the ancestral latte, which took months of work. This paper, presented at the 2024 Pacific Arts Association-Europe conference in Berlin, focuses on the emotional connections that the latte ceremony elicited among three groups present: between Chamorros who attended, between Chamorros and the latte, and between Chamorros and their ancestors. Using interviews and photographs taken during the ceremony, the author emphasizes the importance of emotional responses in the processes of healing and of cultural revitalization in museum settings. More specifically, she argues that the latte were imbued with life again through chant, touch, and offerings, as the ceremony’s Chamorro attendants connected with one another and reconnected with their saina (ancestors).