More Than a Territory: Youth, Decolonization, and the Future of Guåhan

This study examines how CHamoru and Filipino youth understand Guåhan's political future under ongoing U.S. territorial governance. Using an interpretive mixed-methods design, this thesis draws on interdisciplinary approaches across law, international relations, anthropology, history, and Pacific and Indigenous studies. It combines survey data (n = 56; 41 CHamoru and 15 Filipino respondents) with semi-structured interviews conducted with two CHamoru and three Filipino participants to analyze how political knowledge, preference formation, and definitions of decolonization are produced across differently positioned communities within the same colonial system. Findings show that both groups report moderate to high familiarity with political status options. However, the most significant differences emerge not in overall levels of knowledge, but in how that knowledge is distributed and used in political reasoning. CHamoru respondents exhibit greater variability in perceived understanding and political preference, with uncertainty shaped by uneven knowledge and unresolved tensions between autonomy, economic feasibility, and security. Filipino respondents, by contrast, demonstrate a more consistent evaluative pattern and are more likely to move through uncertainty toward a stated political position, even when beginning from partial knowledge. Furthermore, while both groups define decolonization through culture and self-determination, CHamoru respondents more consistently center land, sovereignty, and the ongoing structures of colonialism, including militarization. Alternatively, Filipino respondents articulate decolonization more relationally, emphasizing support for CHamoru self-determination alongside commitments to a multicultural political community, with militarization less central in their understandings of decolonization. However, across both groups, education provides a shared foundational understanding of Guåhan's territorial status, typically introduced in K–12 settings through basic institutional framings. More substantive engagement with political status options is often delayed until later stages, such as high school or college, with deeper understanding developing over time as youth come of age and more critically engage their political environment. Therefore, in this study, I suggest that the central challenge in Guåhan is not simply awareness of political options, but how younger generations interpret and navigate them within uneven conditions of knowledge, history, and belonging. These patterns indicate that the question facing Guåhan may not simply be one of awareness, but of how younger generations interpret and internalize the possibilities of political status change, a dynamic that carries broader implications for how future debates over sovereignty and self-determination may unfold across the Pacific region.