By (Eipéráng) Gregorie Michael Towai
Independent Researcher, Refaluwasch & CNMI Community Member
WHEN the Covenant is questioned, it is not just a document under review. It is our history, our trauma, and the protections our elders fought for being weighed once again.
Those who negotiated the Covenant were not far removed from war. They were still living with its consequences. Many were rebuilding their lives after World War II — after bombardment, displacement, hunger, and loss. Villages had changed. Families were missing. Stability was something they had to rebuild piece by piece.
Our community also remembers that the war did not only take Chamorro and Refaluwasch lives. Japanese civilians were part of our villages long before the fighting reached Saipan. Our elders grew up with them, went to school with them, worked alongside them, and formed relationships that felt ordinary then but remain meaningful today. When the war came, those relationships were torn apart.
In the final days of the Battle of Saipan, many Japanese civilians died at what we now call Suicide Cliff and Banzai Cliff. Influenced by fear, wartime propaganda, and beliefs about honor and surrender, some chose to jump rather than be captured. In some cases, entire families died together. Our elders saw this with their own eyes. They lived among death on a scale no community should have to endure. That trauma shaped the way they approached every decision afterward, including the creation of the Covenant.
This is the context in which the Covenant was negotiated.
Our elders understood, deeply, what happens when powerful forces decide the fate of small island communities. They had lived under multiple administrations and seen how quickly land could be taken, how easily people could be displaced, and how little protection civilians have when decisions are made far from home. They did not negotiate out of fear or bitterness. They negotiated with clarity shaped by experience.
That is why land protections for people of Northern Marianas descent were non-negotiable. Land was not just property — it was identity, continuity, and survival. That is why local self-government mattered. After living under systems where decisions were imposed without local consent, they knew governance had to remain with the people who live with the consequences.
Today, when the economy struggles, the Covenant is often framed as outdated or restrictive. But our economic challenges did not begin with self-government. They came after decades of development imposed from outside — models that promised prosperity but delivered dependency, environmental harm, and instability. When those systems failed, the Covenant became an easy target.
That framing is misleading.
The Covenant was never meant to be a scapegoat. It was meant to be a foundation. It protects the space for us to make decisions based on our values, our relationship to land and ocean, and our responsibility to future generations.
This is why calls to “review” the Covenant must be approached with care. Our history shows that when Indigenous protections are treated as negotiable, erosion does not happen all at once. It happens gradually, justified as necessary, until the safeguards our elders fought for are weakened beyond recognition.
This is not about rejecting dialogue or refusing progress. It is about remembering why the Covenant exists. It exists because our elders knew what it meant to live without protection, without voice, and without control over their homeland.
Legislators, when you debate changes to the Covenant, remember that you are not merely discussing policy — you are deciding whether to honor the sacrifices and wisdom of those who rebuilt our communities from the ruins of war. The Covenant is not fragile. Our memory of its purpose is.
If that memory fades, we risk repeating the very conditions the Covenant was created to prevent. That is a burden no future generation should have to bear — and a responsibility you carry today.
