Chamorro Hands in Education Links Unity
Chamorro Hands in Education Links Unity (CHE’LU) is dedicated to San Diego’s Chamorro community by strengthening their native language, culture, and health through education and cultural arts programs. The Chamorro people are the indigenous peoples of the Mariana Islands, including Guam. Today, Chamorros are the most widely dispersed U.S. Pacific Islanders, with almost two thirds of their population living outside of their native Mariana Islands. This isolation from their homeland, and the loss of access to language and cultural arts that first-, second-, and third-generation Chamorros living in the U.S. have experienced as a result, is a reality that CHE’LU seeks to address.
In 2015, a grant from ACTA’s Living Cultures Grants Program will support CHE’LU’s Uno Hit cultural education program, which provides free weekly dance workshops to Chamorro youth in San Diego. Uno Hit, meaning we are one, engages the expert instruction of U.S.-based master artist Heidi Quenga and Guam-based master artist Frank Rabon.
The following video features Uno Hit dancers perofmring at CHE’LU’s Chamorro Cultural Fest in 2014:
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