For over four hundred years, colonial governments in the Northern Mariana Islands controlled resource development through the enforcement of land policy. While largely economic in nature, these land policies resulted in dramatic cultural changes for the native Chamorro people. However, as a self-determined United States territory, the indigenous government of the Northern Marianas has expropriated this framework of colonial land policy and transformed it into a protective tool against foreign exploitation. This thesis assembles an original and comprehensive analysis of Spanish, German, Japanese, and American colonial land policies and their connection to the documented cultural changes experienced in the Northern Mariana Islands.
