I write this not as an abstract policy analyst, but as a Refaluwasch son of Garapan who survived the flames of 1983. I was raised in my grandparents’ home—the same home that burned where my Grandmother and I (God rest her soul) was a victim of when I was a child, the same land that carried our family’s stories, our grief, and our resilience. That fire taught me what loss feels like. But what came after taught me something far more insidious: how our own people, desperate and trusting, can be convinced to sign away their birthright for pennies on the dollar.
My grandparents, like so many NMD landowners of their generation, entered into a 55-year lease with a “savvy entrepreneur” for $500 a month—with sublease clauses allowing that same investor to charge $1,000 or more to tenants. We were fortunate. We renegotiated. But I grew up knowing that our survival was not guaranteed by the lease terms, but by our family’s refusal to accept them. How many families lack the knowledge, the legal resources, or the sheer stubbornness to fight back?
Now, Senator Manny Gregory T. Castro, with the full support of Senate Vice President Corina L. Magofna and her Committee on Resources, Economic Development, and Workforce (REDW), wants to extend these leases to 99 years. They call it “protection.” I call it what it is: a generational surrender dressed in the language of economic development.
Let’s be clear about who is driving this agenda. Senator Castro introduced S.L.I. 24-03, claiming it “balances indigenous land protection with sustainable economic investment.” Derek T. Sasamoto, Executive Director of the Commonwealth Economic Development Authority, praised it for creating “a longer-term foothold in the Marianas” for investors. Senator Magofna, as REDW Chairwoman and now Vice President of the Senate, has the power to advance or halt this initiative—and her committee’s hearing on February 25, 2026, in Rota suggests the leadership is moving full steam ahead.
But where in their press releases do they mention the grandchildren? Where do they account for the fact that 99 years means two generations of NMD children will inherit not land, but legal quagmires? The “financial protections” they tout—20-year review clauses, profit-sharing percentages—sound robust on paper. But I have read these papers before. I have seen how “transparent” clauses become opaque when landowners lack the capital to enforce them, when investors hire better lawyers, when economic desperation makes any deal look like salvation.
Article XII of our Constitution exists because our ancestors understood something fundamental: land is not real estate. It is relationship. It is the physical manifestation of our refaluwasch identity, our * Chamorro* tano’ —the soil that holds our ancestors’ bones and our children’s futures. The 55-year limit was never arbitrary. It was a recognition that we are temporary stewards, not permanent sellers, and that no generation has the right to bind the next to terms they cannot comprehend.
The Covenant that established our Commonwealth promised to protect us “against exploitation and to promote…self-sufficiency.” S.L.I. 24-03 inverts that promise. It asks us to trade self-sufficiency for investor security, to mortgage our children’s inheritance for short-term revenue fixes. This is not development. This is colonialism by contract—the same logic that stripped our ancestors of their lands under German, Japanese, and American flags, now repackaged as “flexibility” and “modernization.”
I am not opposed to economic growth. But I am opposed to growth that requires our people to become tenants in their own homeland. The 99-year lease does not empower NMD landowners; it institutionalizes their displacement. It tells a young Refaluwasch or Chamorro child born in 2026 that their land is already spoken for—that their grandparents’ signature in 2026 matters more than their own dreams in 2100.
Senator Castro says this initiative “secures our land and our future.” But whose future? The investors’ future is secured. The developers’ future is secured. Our children’s future is collateral.
To Senator Magofna, I ask: You campaigned as an independent “voice of reason” free from party politics, as someone whose “loyalty is to the people.” Will you exercise that independence now? Will your REDW Committee hold rigorous public hearings in every village, not just Rota? Will you demand an economic impact study that projects not five years ahead, but fifty?
To my fellow NMD landowners: Do not be swayed by the promise of “predictable income.” There is nothing predictable about a 99-year horizon except this: you will not live to see its end, and your grandchildren will not thank you for it.
We survived the fire of 1983. We can survive economic uncertainty. But we will not survive the slow burn of generational amnesia, the gradual acceptance that our land is merely an asset to be leveraged rather than a sacred trust to be guarded.
Vote no on S.L.I. 24-03. Not for us. For the children who cannot yet speak, but who will inherit the silence of sold lands.
By Eipéráng (Gregorie Michael Towai)
Gregorie Michael Towai is a cultural advocate, independent researcher on Oceanic indigeneity, and community leader who grew up in Garapan, Saipan. He is a vocal opponent of seabed mining and advocate for the Ocean Rights movement in the Marianas.
Editor’s note: The views and opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of NMI News Service or its staff. All assertions are the sole responsibility of the writer.
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