Schools
Classroom resources
Not yet published.
Community and education
RJKC begins with and is centered on the Refaluwasch community. This is where the institution's educational work, oral-history practice, and community participation sit — and where younger generations are encouraged to research, write, publish, and take part in cultural stewardship.
Community and education content
Not yet published.
Participation
A trusted space to contribute and to benefit
RJKC seeks to create a trusted space where community knowledge holders, elders, cultural practitioners, scholars, students, researchers, families, and future generations can contribute to, and benefit from, a growing body of responsibly documented knowledge.
It should serve elders, families, youth, students, educators, cultural practitioners, navigators, historians, researchers, writers, scholars, and members of the diaspora. It should also engage broader Chamorro, Micronesian, Pacific, academic, museum, archival, educational, and research communities, where those relationships are appropriate.
Being Refaluwasch-centered must never require erasing or homogenizing other peoples. Refaluwasch, Chamorro, and the many distinct peoples of Micronesia and the Pacific should always retain their own identities, histories, languages, terminology, and authority.
Oral history
Recording voices responsibly
Oral history is central to RJKC's purpose — documenting oral histories and community knowledge before they are lost. The institution's approach treats consent as a documented process rather than a formality.
What consent requires
- A clear explanation, in a language and manner the narrator understands, of who RJKC is, what is being recorded, why, how it would be preserved, and who may access it.
- A record of precisely which permissions were granted and which were withheld — for recording, preservation, digitization, transcription, translation, research access, public access, quotation, publication, reproduction, educational use, and AI processing.
- An understanding that permission for one use does not establish permission for another — publication permission is not AI permission.
- Information about how a contributor may later ask for corrected attribution, increased restriction, review, takedown, or clarification.
What consent does not do
- It does not make consent universal: a narrator may authorize use of their own testimony while having no unilateral authority over culturally governed knowledge belonging to a family, lineage, community, or traditional authority.
- It is never obtained through coercion, deception, or the assumption that taking part in an interview means agreeing to every later use.
- It cannot be determined or manufactured by an AI system, and no AI system may judge whether a person is able to consent.
- Where authority is uncertain, RJKC defaults to restriction rather than publication.
Documentation, not paperwork for its own sake
Where consent is given orally, it is ordinarily captured in audio or audiovisual form and preserved as part of the record — in its original language. A structured written summary is also created so that future custodians do not have to interpret a recording to discover what was agreed, and the original recording is never silently replaced by a translation or transcription.
Nothing on this page is a consent form, and no interview can be recorded or submitted through this website.
Education and learning
RJKC intends to create educational resources for schools, universities, families, and community organizations. The categories below are drawn from that stated direction; the resources themselves are placeholders and none exist yet.
Universities
Teaching and course material
Not yet published.
Families
Family and household pathways
Not yet published.
Language
Language and cultural continuity
Not yet published.
Young people
Youth research and writing
Not yet published.
Public
Public history and exhibitions
Not yet published.
Events and community updates
Not yet published.
Community relationships and partners
RJKC intends to build relationships with cultural practitioners, community organizations, schools, archives, museums, universities, humanities organizations, and appropriate funders, across Micronesia and the Pacific. No organization, council member, partner, or agreement is named on this page, because no such relationship is reported for publication.
Where a relationship involves culturally governed knowledge, appropriate permission and cultural review precede any public attribution.
