I didn't know what CHamoru dance was.

All I knew was that they were offering CHamoru dance with this man, Frank Rabon.

In the beginning, people always thought that I was authenticating CHamoru dance, and I keep telling them I'm not authenticating.

That's impossible.

It was beginning the stages of being organized as a CHamoru dance art form.

Guam is always marketed as a mini Hawaii or a mini Polynesia.

Back then, when we first started, all my uncles were the first ones to turn and say, “That's not CHamoru!” Because back then there was just one dance group and that was Taotao Tåno.

We loved the class so much that we ate it, we slept it, we dreamt it We woke up and we did it again.

What I wanted our people, our CHamoru people and the world to know is that we existed.

The CHamorus existed in the Marianas 4000 years ago.

We cannot continue to do borrowed dances like the båtsu and the jitterbug and the twist and the cha-cha when it doesn't belong to us!

We need to have something that we can call our own.