The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that could determine the future of a beach with cultural and ecological importance to the Indigenous CHamoru people of Guam. The case is an appeal from the U.S. Air Force, which wants to continue the open detonation of obsolete munitions on Tarague Beach in northern Guam — a site located directly above the sole-source aquifer providing 80 percent of the island’s drinking water. To Moneaka Flores, a CHamoru activist on Guam, the appeal is a frustrating step back in a multiyear fight to protect her family’s ancestral land.
“This is actually a delay for justice for us,” said Flores. “We were moving forward in the District Court, and I consider this move by the Department of War to challenge it at the Supreme Court as a strategy to delay justice for our people and to answer to the law.”
Before World War II, Tarague Beach was where Flores’ grandfather and great-grandfather grew coconut trees to cultivate copra, dried coconut meat that was then the island’s biggest export, and where they raised pigs and fished. When the I... Read more
