Embedded Files
06/26/2025—Saipan resident Dave Cabrera has no doubt that the U.S. Department of Defense made changes to the Revised Draft Environmental Impact Statement that was thumbed down by the CNMI community 10 years ago.
However, he feels that residents of the Northern Marianas have yet to fully comprehend the scope that the military is proposing under the CNMI Joint Military Training.
“I think that's because it's really difficult to unpack all the information that they're providing to us and my one hope is that eventually they'll get to a point where they find a better way to make it consumable to the general public so that we can fully grasp what's going on,” said Cabrera in an interview with Marianas Press last June 25 during the public meeting at Crowne Plaza Resort Saipan.
To this end, he intimated that an extension beyond the 75-day public review and comment period from June 6, 2025, to Aug. 20, 2025 is warranted.
Aside from the need for an extension, he believes the fundamental issue is that the CNMI people are not constantly part of the design of the Revised Draft EIS.
“We're given an opportunity. Like tonight, we have 2 hours to, you know, if you have a 9-5 [job], you likely have not unpacked any of the information that's provided until just now, seeing some of the visual aids and having been able to talk to some of these folks 1-on-1. But this is not nearly enough time to digest what's happening. And I think that we need more. We need more engagement throughout the entire design of these iterations,” he said.
John Oliver Gonzales, meanwhile, thanked the DoD for recognizing the importance of the community’s access to the ocean for sustainable fishing and living under the Revised Draft EIS, “so that we can anticipate and be able to prepare if and when war breaks and ships don't come, that we're able to access our fishing grounds and the marine mammals for our food, for food security.”
Ditto for recognizing the people of the CNMI’s access to forests, trees, and traditional plants for medicine and for food as well as access to lands for the grazing of livestock.
“We need to be mindful of those things because they're irreparable. And how do we put a price tag to those? No [we can’t]. Do we leverage and negotiate with the United States and say, you put in $50 million or $150 million, whatever, in reserves to compensate for the irreparable impact to our people, to our livelihoods, to our survival, to our environment and to the very sacred cultural homeland that we rely for living as native peoples and in addition to the residents who call Luta, Tinian, Saipan, and the Northern Islands home,” he said.
World War II survivor David M. Sablan, for his part, said he supports the Revised EIS, saying that in the end, it’s all for the safety of the residents of the Commonwealth.
“They're here to take care of us and protect us from any external matters that might damage these islands...I support the movement of military into the Northern Mariana Islands because we're part of the United States and we got to help the United States protect us from any outside element,” he said.
Anufat Pangelinan-Terlaje, one of a dozen protestors who attended the public meeting holding placards denouncing DoD’s militarization of the region, is opposed to any increased military activity within the Marianas.
“We want a space where Indigenous peoples have the rights and the autonomy to secure our own sacred lands and waters and at the same time be the forefront for advocacy for world peace.”
He added, “There's this promise that with more soldiers coming in, there's more income flowing into the hotels, flowing into local businesses, but that's just a temporary fix. That's not a long-term, sustainable economic plan. What we need to focus more on is our own sustainability culture. We've managed to survive for thousands of years off of food security, off of fishery security. By accepting more military personnel into our lands and propping up as—'oh, it's okay, they're bringing good economy’—we're essentially making a deal with the devil that we'll become over-reliant on the federal government as a whole.”
Another protester, Salam Castro Younis, echoed what Pangelinan-Terlaje said, adding that the solution is very simple and it's not militarization.
“It's more diplomacy. It's more giving back the land to the people, the real caretakers of the land who really cherish and nourish and would die for it. And that's what it's all about. It's not giving the land to more training for more killing. And that's what I'm here for.”
U.S. Marine Corps Forces Pacific executive director Mark Hashimoto spoke at the end of the Saipan public meeting and assured the CNMI community that they will be transparent during these public meetings and engagements with the community.
“There should be no surprises to the members of the agencies that we've been working with for years now, because our policy was we're not going to introduce anything into the concept that we haven't been talking about for at least one year.”
Hashimoto also said DoD will approach all its conversations with the local community with the policy and principle of mutual respect.
He then encouraged everyone in attendance and the community as a whole to make their thoughts known about the Revised Draft EIS. Comments can be written down through comment sheets at the public meeting venues, via email, and through an actual court recorder via Zoom. The latter only became available at the start of the Saipan meetings.
Aside from the June 23 and 24 public meetings on Tinian and last June 25 on Saipan, two more public meetings are scheduled on Saipan and Rota.
Thursday, June 26, 2025 | Crowne Plaza Resort Saipan (Hibiscus Hall) at 5pm
Friday, June 27, 2025 | Rota Mayor’s Office, San Francisco de Borja Highway, Tatachok, Rota
Report by Mark Rabago and Thomas Manglona II
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