This article analyzes cultural persistence in Guam through plaiting, material culture, and maintenance activities, a set of daily practices that are essential to social continuity and well-being. The colonization of Guam began in 1668 with the Jesuit missions. Jesuit policies utilized maintenance activities to colonize Indigenous lifeways and subjectivities, but we believe those activities also functioned as reservoirs of traditional knowledge. Although plaiting has been situated in different historical contexts across the centuries, it no doubt expresses material continuities stretching from a precolonial past. The article also challenges today’s widespread belief that the search for change is a universal value. It argues that societies appreciate continuity over change in inverse proportion to technological control over nature, asymmetrical relationships of power, and specialized fragmentation of functional tasks. In the absence of such features, the best guarantee of survival lies in maintaining the balance achieved by traditional lifeways.

本文通过编织、物质文化和维护活动来分析关岛的文化持久性，这是一组对社会连续性和福祉至关重要的日常实践。关岛的殖民化始于 1668 年的耶稣会使命。耶稣会政策利用维护活动来殖民土著生活方式和主体性，但我们相信这些活动也起到了传统知识库的作用。尽管编织在几个世纪以来处于不同的历史背景中，但它无疑表达了从前殖民时代延伸的物质连续性。这篇文章还挑战了当今普遍的信念，即寻求变革是一种普世价值。它认为社会欣赏变化的连续性与技术对自然的控制成反比，权力的不对称关系，以及职能任务的专门碎片化。在没有这些特征的情况下，生存的最佳保证在于维持传统生活方式所达到的平衡。