Hami
The Core Initiators
Dakota Camacho
Artistic Director
Dakota Camacho is a Matao/CHamoru artist born & raised in Coast Salish Territory who creates indigenizing processes by weaving languages of altar-making, movement, film, music, and prayer. Camacho has presented yo’ña (their) work on five continents and throughout Oceania.
Camacho is a Nia Tero Pacific Northwest Artist Fellow, Western Art’s Alliance - Native Launchpad Artist and the recipient of The New England Foundation of the Arts, National Dance Project Award, The National Performance Network’s Creation Fund, NDN Collective’s Radical Imagination Grant, & Creative Capital.
Camacho holds a Masters of Arts in Performance Studies from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, and graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a Bachelor of Arts in Gender & Women's Studies as a First Wave Urban Arts and Hip Hop Scholar.
Camacho is a chanter, adjunct instructor, and core researcher for I Fanlalai'an Oral History Project based at the University of Guåhan.
Camacho co-founded I Moving Lab, an inter-national, inter-cultural, inter-tribal, and inter-disciplinary arts collective that creates community and self-funded arts initiatives to engage and bring together rural & urban communities, Universities, Museums, & performing arts institutions.
Jeremy N.C. Cepeda
Language & Culture Director
Jeremy N.C. Cepeda is a CHamoru Language and Culture Teacher, and Independent Researcher. He learned Fino’ CHamoru through his grandparents and a life-long commitment to elders throughout Guåhan, Luta, Sa’ipan, and Tini’an.
He is in his 13th year as a CHamoru language and culture teacher in the Guam Department of Education and an advisor for school clubs. He also teaches language at Guam Community College and serves on the board of the Guam Public Library System.
Cepeda has been invited to design and teach local non-profit organizations such as Nihi, Dukduk Goose, Ináfa’maolek Youth, & Håya Foundation. He has served as a language consultant for the development of the CHamoru Seafaring Lexicon, and Guam Community College’s Go’te Yan Adahi I Fino’-ta project.
He is the co-author, along with Dr. Carlos Madrid of the peer-reviewed article about the Garrido Document that unearthed the meaning of many archaic words, and word forms and serves as a resource for reconstructing sentence structures that are fading away. He is also the co-author, along with Dr. Lawrence Cunningham of the article entitled CHamoru Sidereal Direction Terminology, an article written for Guampedia.com.
His experience and insight is sought after by public, private, and scholarly entities in the capacity of teacher, consultant, translator, researcher, facilitator, presenter, editor, and master of ceremonies."
Our Design Collaborators
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Joseph Certeza
MALI’E’ Artist • Babao Designer • Design Consultant
Joseph Certeza is the creative & cultural mind behind Tao Pacific Designs
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Jessie Vergel
Design, Branding, & Symbol Sets
Jessie worked with the Gi Matan Guma’ team to design the look and feel of our digital presence, digitize Joseph Certeza’s initial babao design and render the Hinasson Nina’huyong Matao poster.
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Futsum Tsegai
MALI’E’ • Cinematographer
Hailing from South Seattle, Futsum Tsegai began working with Dakota Camacho on the early iterations of MALI’E’ during the creative process of ETAK • an [un]traditional Micronesian Navigation Chant.