BlueSkies-2018

IN FOCUS: COP21
WHY DON’T
MARSHALLESE
PEOPLE LEAVE THEIR
CLIMATE-THREATENED
ISLANDS?
and is more than a pile of rocs, says athy etnilijiner it has eyes to see peoples greed and punish them.
B y K athy J etni l - K i j i ner
A few weeks ago I sat down with a CNN reporter who was in the
Marshall Islands writing an article on climate refugees. One of the
things we discussed was the importance of land to the Marshallese
people.
e explained that many Marshallese have told him that the loss
of our island to the rising seas from climate change would be
devastating. ut he wanted to know why hy would losing our
land be so devastating
I honestly didn’t know how to respond to this. It seemed pretty
obvious to me. It’s our land it’s our home. ut he claried further
that his audience mainly Americans might not understand the
value of land to our identity and culture. Some might say that we
could just pick up and move somewhere else if we lost it. hy
would that be so hard? C ould I ex plain it?
I thought about his question. Aer a while, the story of
iwtuonmour and idepdepju came to mind.
I came across this story while doing research for my thesis two
summers ago. iwtuonmour and idepdepju were sisters who
came to the Marshall Islands from Ep, thousands of years ago. They
were pillars of basalt stone who birthed the clans and the I rooj
chiey line.
Some say they had the power to bring Irooj back to life. Others say
their stone bodies were used to sharpen knives and spears before
battles. hat can be agreed upon is both of the stone sisters were
highly respected, and that one of the stone sisters, iwtuonmour,
went to live on Namo atoll while the other, idepdepju, can be
found on Aur Atoll.
uring the time when missionaries rst came to the Marshalls,
a rotestant missionary named r. ife threw iwtuonmour’s
stone body into the depths of the ocean, in an eort to stamp
out “pagan” practices eliminate the competition. idepdepju,
however, can still be found on her place in Aur.
P i l e of rock s
I met idepdepju years ago, when I rst moved back to the Marshall
Islands aer 6 years of living away. hile visiting Aur, one of the
islands my family comes from, my mother told me to go out and
see idepdepju. I didn’t know much about her except that she was
one of the important legends for people from Aur.
Once I got there all I saw was a pile of rocks, maybe up to my knees,
out on the reef. Needless to say I was unimpressed. There was no
massive stone alter, no crashing waves, no thunder and lightning,
no owers or spears nothing to t into my isney-addled cartoon
imagination. It really was just a pile of rocks. I didn’t understand the
signicance. I le, feeling a bit underwhelmed.
hen I returned to the Marshalls to do my research a few summers
later, her story came up once again. And then I became obsessed. I
wanted to know why this story was so important why this pile of
rocks?
I interviewed four elders during the summer that I was doing
research for my Master’s thesis. I asked them all about idepdepju.
hy hy was she so important to us, to our stories
P ermanence
The response that stayed with me the most was from Alfred
Capelle, head commissioner for Customary anguage and aw
Commission CC, and a noted Marshallese historian, linguist, and
cultural expert.
According to Capelle, the value in the story of the stone sisters is
one of permanence. Our ancestors saw those same stones, and
4 0