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Who is Cinta?
"I lived on Pagan, a stunning volcanic island covered with lush jungles and ringed with white and black sand beaches. There were only 50 people on the island. Everyone cooperated and shared the fruits of the land and the sea. We had no electricity. We grew our food and gathered fish from the rich body of water surrounding our land. We depended on the goods from supply ships. We also relied on the ancient voices of the spirits to tell us when typhoons would arrive." - Cinta Kaipat, from her award-winning documentary film "Lieweila: A Micronesian Story".
Personal tragedy thrust Cinta Kaipat into the role she plays today as an outspoken advocate for social and political reform in the Northern Mariana Islands. As a child of ten living on the remote island of Pagan, Cinta watched in horror as a gunman shot her parents and 12-year old brother, then took her and her infant brother hostage as he fled into the jungle. Cinta escaped with her brother, but her father, Francisco Borja Kaipat, District Representative and leader of the Northern Islands community, was dead. Cinta's mother and brother were seriously wounded and in need of medical attention. The Kaipat family was broken up and left Pagan to live with relatives on Saipan 200 miles away.
This occurred in the early seventies. The Kaipat family struggled to get by on Saipan but held on to their dream of returning to their home. Sadly, in 1981, Mt. Pagan erupted, spilling a river of lava through the island's only village. Like the Kaipats, the residents of Pagan were forced to leave.
Despite the pressure of the family's financial hardship, Cinta was determined to stay in school and get her high school diploma. She got a lucky break years later when a young couple, former Peace Corps volunteers who taught Cinta and the school children on Pagan, offered Cinta a job in Chicago and a chance to finish her senior year of high school in Chicago, where she would then go on to college. For the first time in her life, Cinta left the Mariana Islands. Seven thousand miles away, she was alone, but eager for an education that could change her family's lives for the better. She chose law.
Cinta was away from home and family for 19 years. While in law school, she began her first project; co-production of a documentary film "Lieweila: A Micronesian Story," a landmark film that tells the origins and history of the Refalawasch (Carolinian) people who settled in the Marianas. The release of the film coincided with her return to Saipan.
Back on Saipan, Cinta was shocked to see the changes. In her absence, the Northern Marianas had become a United States Commonwealth, and with this new status came monumental social changes. Hotels lined the beaches, a huge new garment industry brought thousands of foreign workers to the island, consumer businesses lined the streets, and land prices had skyrocketed. But the sudden wealth enjoyed by many Saipan families came mostly through land ownership, and the landless Pagan evacuees were worse off than ever. While the Pagan families waited, the local government debated whether to allow them return to Pagan. Despite the new wealth of the community, the government seemed reluctant to make any expenditures for the basic infrastructure that would make resettlement possible.
As it turned out, there was a reason. Mineral deposits from the volcanic eruption had been found to be extensive and valuable. In the summer of 1998 the Commonwealth's House of Representatives proposed a bill to ban the former residents from ever resettling Pagan. According to the bill, resettlement posed dangerous health risks to the former residents. This bill, claiming concern for the health of the former residents, promoted Pagan be utilized instead for mining, eco-tourism, and as an endangered species sanctuary.
Cinta spoke out. "Unbelievable! If Pagan is safe enough for endangered species and other commercial and mining interests, then why wouldn't it be equally safe for those former residents who want to resume their lives there? Would they not walk the same grounds and breathe the same air?" She then organized the Pagan community to fight back. The United Northern Mariana Islanders Association (UNMIA) was founded and Cinta was voted President. UNMIA embarked upon a public relations and publicity campaign. They held group meetings with local politicians, got stories written in the local papers, and organized marches in which the Pagan families wore T-shirts depicting themselves with the caption "Endangered Species".
After months of hard work, in which UNMIA gathered community-wide sympathy and support, the House bill that would have banned them forever from their island home was defeated. In its place came House Resolution No. 12-028:
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House Resolution No. 12-028
A HOUSE RESOLUTION Relative to Petitioning the Board of Public Lands to issue permits for village homestead lots in the Northern Islands pursuant to Public Law 1-42, and for other purposes.
WHEREAS, Public Law 1-42 was passed by the First Northern Marianas Commonwealth Legislature in 1979, and
WHEREAS, it has been over two decades since the existence of a homestead program in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands; and
WHEREAS, residency has long been established by families who have inhabited the chain of islands that constitute the Northern Islands; and
WHEREAS, the residents of the Northern islands, likewise, have long been represented by elected officials in Election Precinct #3; and
WHEREAS, the residents of these far-flung islands have for long elected their own Mayor, and
WHEREAS, the present population, although relatively small in number, have yearned for a sense of identity and spiritual and physical connection with their ancestral lands; and
WHEREAS, it is abundantly clear that residents of the First, Second, and Third Senatorial Districts have, over a decade, benefited directly and indirectly from a multitude of federally-funded and locally-funded housing assistance and programs under the purview of the Mariana Islands Housing Authority (MIHA); and
WHEREAS, the residence of the Northern Islands have long been denied the full benefits of 1 CMC 4412(b) upon which MIHA was "organized and operated for the purpose of meeting the needs for descent, safe, and sanitary housing for persons of low and moderate income". And
WHEREAS, notwithstanding other common natural impediments that confront developing communities, especially those faraway from the central island metropolis, as is the case of our neighbor islands to the north, still the needs of these residents are real, legitimate, and urgent that must be fully addressed, now; and
WHEREAS, the residents of our neighbor islands to the north have not only languished in vain while waiting unspeakably for repatriation to their ancestral land, but also patiently endured the uncertainty of ever acquiring a parcel of land upon which their ancestors once tread; and now, therefore, be it
RESOLVED, that the Twelfth CNMI House of Representatives through this resolution expresses its sympathy to the plight of the people of the Northern Islands and support their quest for permanent settlement on their ancestral homeland; and be it further
RESOLVED, that the Twelfth CNMI House of Representatives unequivocally petition the Board of Public Lands to immediately extend to the residents of the Northern Islands the same benefits, privilege, and opportunities being enjoyed by the residents of the First, Second, and Third Senatorial Districts relative to the CNMI Homestead Program
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With the defeat of the House Bill to ban the Pagan residents from Pagan, and the subsequent Bill urging the establishment of a homestead program, it appeared the UNMIA's work was done. But it was not to be. Written into legislation to aid the resettlement of the Northern Islands (Resolution No. 6SMC-2RS-16 of the 6th Saipan & Northern Islands) was a clause calling for mining of Pagan:
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House Resolution No. 6SMC-2RS-16
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WHEREAS, the Council believes that it would be in the best interests of the government if the business developers are provided with an exclusive right to conduct mining business activities in the Northern Islands in consideration for their commitment to develop the islands
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Without the meaningful involvement and consent of the Pagan community, and with virtually no information provided to the greater CNMI public, permits were issued to mine Pagan. The first permit holder to mine Pagan promised free transportation to and from Pagan for the residents as one of the conditions of the permit. As it turned out, no free transportation was provided. For several years the Pagan residents were kept in the dark about what was happening on Pagan and kept off the island. Then the permit holder ran into financial difficulties and another permit requestor appeared on the scene. As before, the negotiations between the government and the permit requestor were done in secret and no details were provided to the Pagan residents or the rest of the CNMI community.
At this time, Cinta happened to be interviewed in connection with the Refalawasch community's involvement with the revival of the art of Carolinian traditional navigation and open ocean canoe sailing, led by Satawal's Master Navigator Mau Piailugh. The article in the San Francisco Chronicle quoted Cinta discussing the plight of the Pagan residents. This brought the plight of the Pagan residents to the attention of Chamorros in California who publicized the issue on the Chamorro.com web site. From this exposure grew more relationships that led to the formation of the community activist group "PaganWatch". Led by Cinta Kaipat and Peter J. Perez, PaganWatch took the lead in the fight to stop the mining of Pagan without the consent of the local community.
PaganWatch began by researching the mining industry and looking into the backgrounds and history of both the current permit holder and the new permit requestor. They found that the current permit holder was in arrears for mining fees and royalties by millions of dollars, and that it was actively engaged in mining without any supervision and with no environmental impact planning. They found that the new permit requestor had no funding of its own, had plans to divert funds given to a non-profit organization to build a museum to finance their mining operations, had no mining experience, no business plan, no operation plan, no environmental studies, had a history of knowingly illegally removing historic artifacts from the region and had plans to remove more. PaganWatch also learned the terms of both the old and prospective permits and found them to be so one-sided in favor of the permit holder and requestor that they amounted to gross exploitation.
Cinta and PaganWatch brought this information out into the open and into public discussion. PaganWatch members lobbied politicians and government agencies in the Northern Marianas, Guam, San Francisco and in Washington D.C. Volunteers wrote letters and made phone calls. During the last 9 months of 2004, over 200 articles and letters to the editor appeared in the media. Cinta was interviewed by the local papers, radio and television, the Guam Pacific Daily News, and ABC Radio Australia. PaganWatch membership grew to include influential people in the Federal and local government, in education, and Chamorros and Refalawash people worldwide.
In December, 2004, under intense pressure from the public and local politicians, the Marianas Public Lands Authority finally denied the new requestor's permit application. They also agreed to form a community task force to study the mining opportunity and to include PaganWatch and other community stakeholders.
At the urging of friends and community leaders, Cinta agreed to run for office as a Covenant Party candidate for House of Representatives for Precinct 1. Precint 1, the largest Precinct, includes her current home village of Koblerville.
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