Each week on The Newsfeed, host Paris Jackson and a team of veteran journalists dive deep into one topic and provide impactful reporting, interviews and community insights from sources you can trust. Each day this week, this post will be updated with a new story from the team.
Hundreds gather to celebrate Chamorro culture in one of many fiestas
By Jaelynn Grisso
On a bright and sunny day last weekend, upwards of 500 people gathered on a farm outside of Graham, WA to celebrate Chamorro culture. The Seattle Metro area is home to one of the largest populations of Chamorro in the U.S., who are the indigenous people of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.
People came together with barbecued pork, live music and dancing for Inarajan Fiesta, named for both a town in Guam and the town’s patron St. Joseph. It’s a tradition the Leon Guerrero family brought with them from the fiesta’s namesake town in Guam.
“We came here in 1991, and we brought, over a small saint of Inarajan,” Lydia Leon Guerrero said, adding that she wanted a way to honor the saint. “My son said, ‘Can we have a barbecue now? Only for us. And some of my friends?' I said, 'Okay,' so we did a barbecue. Every time it comes on the first week of May, we start barbecuing. And then all of a sudden in the next year, the other year, it keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger.”
The Leon Guerrero family is only one of many who host fiestas throughout the region, Larimer said, often on private farms like the Inarajan Fiesta. Last year, Larimer and others organized the first Chamorro Day Festival, which had about 7,500 attendees, more than double what Larimer expected.
As part of the festivities, Chamorro culture nonprofit Guma Imahe performed Chamorro dances representing various periods of the islanders’ history, from its ancient period through Spain’s colonization to contemporary interpretations.
“The Chamorro culture. It's really, really, I would say diverse,” said Joel Larimer, Guma Imahe founder. "We are an indigenous people. We've had a society for over 4,000 years, so it's older than the United States.”
In the mid 1500’s, explorer Ferdinand Magellan travelled to Guam and claimed it for Spain.
“It was colonized by Spain for over 300 years,” Larimer said. “Over those 300 years, we lost our language.”
Larimer added that, while complicated, Spain’s influence is part of Chamorro history.
“There is a movement on Guam right now, and in the Northern Mariana Islands, to bring back... the indigenous language and try to not use as much of the Spanish language, as we currently do,” Larimer said. “But we can't deny history. The Spanish colonization is part of our history.”
Guam became part of the United States after the Spanish-American War. It's largely stayed that way, except for a period in WWII where Japan occupied Guam. The island was liberated, as Larimer puts it, in 1944 and is currently a territory.
“Our language was almost diminished because we weren't allowed to speak our language,” Larimer said. “Until, like the late early 70s, where it's just starting to be taught in the schools again. And, you know, for our ancestors, my grandfather [and] my grandmother, the spoke Chamorro. But my mom, she would only speak a little bit to me. The reasoning is, you know, is you're not really going to get anywhere speaking Chammoro. But I didn't let that stop me because I believe that the language is the heart of every culture."
For those living in the continental U.S., getting to Guam or the Northern Mariana Islands is difficult and cost prohibitive, making community events like Inarajan Fiesta all the more important.
“When they go out there and – not perform but – present our culture, it's it makes me really, really proud to be who I am and to see them chanting and singing,” Larimer said. “Our slogan is the images of the past, present and future. And those are what we sing about: the past, the present and the future.”
Guma Imahe and the Asian Pacific Cultural Center are again hosting the Chamorro Day Festival on June 17, 2026 and the public is encouraged to attend.
Seattle creatives preserve Southeast Asian music and stories in the CID
By Paris Jackson, story published 05/07/2026
A group of Asian American creatives are keeping their music and culture alive through curated events in Seattle’s Chinatown International District.
With every record spin, SEA Vinyl Society aims to share and preserve musical genres that tell stories from the Southeast Asian diaspora.
“We want folks to just feel a sense of community and belonging in the most natural form, which is through music and celebration. Although many of us may not understand the language that's being sung, we can feel it,” said Diana Ratsamee, SEA Vinyl Society Co-founder & KEXP Host.
In 2023, the group was founded by a community of activists, artists, DJs and journalists – all with deep roots in Seattle’s creative scene.
The collective’s members represent various southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam, Lao, Philippines, and Cambodia.
“I grew up eating McDonald's with fish sauce, like it's... it was that space in between. And it, you know, when you live in Seattle, a predominantaly white city... there, there just kind of feels that disconnect. So, with SEA Vinyl Society, our stories are weaved in through our songs," Ratsamee explained. "You know, the records that I collect, I collect a lot of music from Southeast Asia, a lot of like psychedelic rock and folk and funk. And that is music that, like, kind of bridged the world from... like the U.S. and Southeast Asia."
Some records hearken back to the Vietnam War era. One of their signature monthly events is Third Fridays at Hood Famous Cafe and Bar in the CID, where people of all ages and backgrounds are welcome.
The collective is also considering what their events mean for those within and outside their community.
“We think about the future of our community and how we can tie people together, the inter-generational part. But also thinking back a couple of years when so much more was happening in the neighborhood before the COVID pandemic and trying to bring people back into the neighborhood and invite those that are not familiar with this part of Seattle to come in,” said Chris Govella, SEA Vinyl Society Co-founder & DJ.
“And so, it's Third Fridays, but it's also it's block party, it's music an mahjong. It's having listening parties, it's having dancing in the street. It's having all kinds of fun community events together," Govella said.
Longtime Seattle anchor pens memoir of Asian American journey
By Venice Buhain, story published 05/06/2026
Lori Matsukawa was a staple on Seattle’s TV screens for almost four decades. She was an anchor and reporter on KING 5 TV for 36 years, retiring in 2019.
Matsukawa’s memoir Being There: Memoir of an Asian American Journalist (Chin Music Press) traces her journey from growing up in multicultural Hawai’i to touring the world as Miss Teenage America to sitting at an anchor desk in Seattle.
“It's a story about a lot of people. Every woman who wanted to be a journalist, every Asian American woman who wanted to be a journalist, and everyone who has been through that era when... there wasn't much diversity, especially here in the Seattle market,” she said.
When Matsukawa started her career in the 1980s, she took initiative to cover diverse communities—despite the risk of being pigeonholed as the “minority affairs reporter.”
“I found out if I didn't do the stories, nobody would do the stories. That’s not a good thing for our viewers and our audience. They should see stories that are meaningful to them, that they're interested in. So I said, okay, pigeonhole or no pigeonhole, I’m going to cover everything. So I became the ‘international reporter.’ Any festival, any culture, I was there in spades because I figured if I didn't do it, nobody else would do it,” she said.
Audiences connected with that sincerity.
“I think the audience is pretty smart. They tend to look past things like, what do you look like? What's your name? You know, they tend to look for, are you telling me something I care about? Are you sincere? Are you telling me the truth?”
And at least one young woman told her how important representation was.
“She said, ‘Oh, you know, every night when you would come on TV, my dad would say, “Lori’s on TV!” And everybody would have to come into the room to watch you. ... He was so thrilled that there was an Asian woman on TV, and he wanted all of us to watch you together,’” Matsukawa said.
Local filmmaker tells the stories of the families forced out
By Lizz Giordano, story published 05/05/2026
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, more than 110,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese Nationals along the West Coast were forced from their homes. Many never returned. A new Cascade PBS series, Origins: Our Thousand Days, follows two women who were children when their families were taken away.
We spoke with filmmaker Andrew Inaba about why he made the series, and why so few Japanese Americans did not return to Western Washington.
In the film, Inaba focuses on two survivors who were children when their families were imprisoned. One of them recalled her mother telling her when they were first leaving their homes that it would be like a vacation.
“Those stories are actually pretty common of parents telling their children that they're going on vacation. It seems like it's the easiest way to reconcile leaving the home for an unknown duration of time,” Inaba said.
Inaba says many Japanese Americans never returned to their homes.
“They didn't want to either come back to that, the pain of remembering what they had and what they now have lost. And a lot of them were just looking for a fresh start, and they found that in eastern Washington and throughout the nation,” Inaba said.
The series is part of Cascade PBS’s Origins project, which awards grants to local filmmakers to tell a story about their community.
“It felt like a really pertinent story right now. It felt like a story that was close to home, and one that everyone in the Pacific Northwest shouldn't know as part of our history,” Inaba said.
Local Studio Teaches K-pop Dance Amid National Rise in Fandom
By Jaelynn Grisso, story published 05/04/2026
May is Asian American Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage month, and so this week, we’re bringing you arts and culture stories from the AANHPI community, including the rise of a now internationally known genre of music and dance: K-pop.
K-pop, short for Korean Pop, has gained widespread popularity in the U.S. Earlier this year, the hit “Golden” from the movie KPop Demon Hunters made history by being the first K-pop song to win a Grammy and the first to win an Oscar.
While the genre is growing nationwide, the West is home to the most K-Pop fans, according to a Billboard survey from last summer. One of those fans, Tory Tao, wanted to share her love for the genre, so she founded CoffeeDance Studio in Bellevue in 2020 to teach K-Pop and related dance styles. She said the community is now around 11,000 people.
“I wanted to build a place that can make people feel so good about themselves,” Tao said. “People carry different social roles in daily life. I hope they can have ‘me’ time here, so when they come to the studio, they just enjoy the dance and show a different version of themselves.”
The genre incorporates elements of pop, hip-hop and R&B. But almost equally important is the power of a spotlight. The folks at CoffeeDance Studio get that. So, in addition to offering dance classes for kids and adults, they also offer a program to develop K-pop music videos.
“K-pop is not just about music and dance. It's about storytelling," Tao said. "I feel like it's really easy for people to express themselves, and, also at the same time, bring joy and connections and confidence to them.”
