Legislative Findings and Intent

I Liheslaturan Guåhan finds that the native inhabitants of Guam, since its recorded history, have been subjected to incessant control by external colonial powers. I Liheslaturan Guåhan further finds that upon the execution of the bilateral treaty between the two

(2)sovereign nations, Spain and the United States of America, the transfer of colonial control over the lands and the people of Guam was effectuated. The United States, as the succeeding colonial power over the lands and the people of Guam, acceded to and recognized in the 1898 Treaty of Paris that the political rights of the COL12302011 CH. 21 COMMISSION ON DECOLONIZATION FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION AND EXERCISE OF CHAMORRO SELF DETERMINATION native inhabitants of Guam shall be protected and that their collective right to political self-determination is inalienable. I Liheslaturan Guåhan further finds that the United States as the administering power, in the Charter of the United Nations, designated the territory of Guam as a ‘Non-Self Governing Territory.’ By doing so it recognized that the native inhabitants have the right to one day exercise their collective self-determination through a decolonization process, to either join the ranks of self-governing entities as an independent nation or an independent nation in free association with another nation, or become a fully integrated state within the United States of America. Consistent with these inalienable principles, the native inhabitants or people of Guam have been recognized by the U.S. Congress in the 1950 Organic Act of Guam, specifically in 48 U.S.C. § 14211, as reenacted in 8 U.S.C.§ 1407. Guam’s right to self-determination is further founded in the United States’ yearly reports to the United Nations on the Non-self Governing Territory of Guam; 1950 Organic Act of Guam; United Nations Resolution Number 1541

(XV)United Nations Resolution 1514 (XV); § 307

(a)of the United States Immigration and Nationality Act; and Part I, Article 1, Paragraphs 1 and 3 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It is the intention of I Liheslaturan Guåhan that three

(3)political options be presented to the Native Inhabitants of Guam to ascertain their future political relationship with the United States of America, namely, Independence, Free Association or Statehood.