SPRINGDALE : Marshallese officials visit area’s islanders
Posted on Sunday, May 25, 2008
SPRINGDALE — A visit from the president wasn’t quite as exciting for Saimon Milne as other Marshallese who flocked to the Jones Center for Families on Saturday.
After all, Milne has known Litokwa Tomeing, president of the Marshall Islands, since the men were children. Milne, a security guard at the Jones Center, said that in the Marshall Islands, a collection of 29 Pacific atolls southwest of Hawaii, “everybody knows everybody.” Tomeing’s visit, the first by the president of the tiny island nation to Springdale in five years, was a highlight of Northwest Arkansas’ annual Constitution Day celebration. The event, which ends Monday, celebrates the 29 th anniversary of the constitution of the Republic of the Marshall Islands.
Hundreds of singing Marshallese lined a hallway at the Jones Center while they waited for Tomeing to enter. They kept singing as he greeted local officials and posed for photographs.
Northwest Arkansas is home to the largest concentration of Marshallese in the world outside of the islands, with an estimated 5, 000 to 6, 000. The Marshall Islands is home to 62, 000 — enough to fit in Fayetteville’s Reynolds Razorback Stadium with plenty of room to spare.
The islanders’ rich culture is at the heart of the celebration of the May 1 anniversary of the signing of the first independent Marshallese Constitution in 1979. Several thousand Marshallese are expected to attend the three-day event, which seemed like a large family reunion on Saturday.
Marshallese from across the state and country will compete in several sports tournaments in conjunction with the event. Team members of all ages paraded into the Jones Center gymnasium, carrying flags and wearing uniforms representing their teams.
Milne raised the spirits of the islanders as he performed a traditional chant in Marshallese during the opening ceremony.
He explained the chant afterward, telling the story of a rock skipping across the waves of the ocean. From that rock came all of the chiefs of the Marshall Islands, Milne said. The chiefs fought with birds, he said.
The chant lists the names of several kinds of birds used in pit fights. Cockfighting is legal in the Marshall Islands, he said.
Tony deBrum, the country’s minister of foreign affairs, spoke with the media after the ceremony. It was a chance that led to the large Marshallese population in the area, he said, because Marshallese families found success in the region and started inviting others to move here.
One of Tomeing’s grandsons lives in Northwest Arkansas, as does deBrum’s nephew and adopted grandchild. The officials attended “three or four [high school ] graduation ceremonies” on their visit, de-Brum said.
Plans call for the establishment of a Marshallese consulate in Northwest Arkansas, deBrum said. The 1986 Free Association Compact guarantees the Marshallese many of the same rights as U. S. citizens. Marshallese have the right to live and to work in the United States, and even to serve in the U. S. military.
DeBrum also summarized the speech given by Tomeing in Marshallese. The president spoke of the importance of the constitution, the country’s most important document, deBrum said.
“It defines who we are, and 29 years ago, it sheared the bonds of dependency that characterized our country,” deBrum translated.
Tomeing, who defeated incumbent Kessai Note in January, was accompanied by his wife, Arlin; Phillip Muller, the Marshall Islands’ ambassador to the United Nations; and Ben Graham, the country’s ambassador to the United States.
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