Mario is the son of a carpenter and fisherman and one of 12 children in the Budoki-Toliok family. He served nearly 23 years in the U.S. Air Force in avionics maintenance and later as a senior systems analyst in the space surveillance field. He received his B.S. in Aerospace Engineering in 1979 from the University of Texas at Austin, a Master’s in Astrodynamics at the Air Force Institute of Technology, and another Master’s in Engineering Management from the University of Southern California in 1983. He is a credentialed secondary mathematics teacher and has taught in the San Diego Unified District. He is married to JoJo Ann Perez Aguon (Manggåfan Makaka - Bali Tres), and currently lives in San Diego, Calif.Since his retirement, Mario has devoted his initiatives, energies and drive to promoting his island culture and language within the Chamorro community in California. His belief that “culture begets language and language begets culture” has been the basis of his passion and purpose, he says. As a fluent native speaker, he continuously advocates the community’s increased use of the vernacular for the purpose of preserving the Chamorro language. As a result of his volunteer work helping Chamorros maneuver through the local court system, Mario became the first official Chamorro interpreter for the federal court system. He is a lifetime member of the Sons and Daughters of Guam Community, and currently serves as a senior cultural advisor for the Chamorro Hands in Education Links Unity (CHE’LU), a non-profit group based in San Diego.
But, what turned Mario into ta’tasi (a seafarer) began during his formative years on Guam. He says that he and his seven brothers began building galaides out of roofing tin – ultimately developing a critical understanding of form and function. Since then, his accomplishments relative to the seafaring history of the Mariana Islands have been numerous and far-reaching. Without any formal training in canoe making, but building on his understanding from his early days, he carved his first authentic Chamorro vessel in San Diego from the trunk of an Acacia “silk oak” tree. It was a 12-foot fishing canoe christened “Galaide TaoTao Tano”, which he says was built as a tribute to the arrival of the Hokulea, a 67-ft double-hulled Hawaiian canoe. The year was 1995 and Chamorro seafaring was born in San Diego!
After several years of research and study on Chamorro seafaring, encouragement from Señot Carlos Taitano, weeks of hands-on training from Master Canoe Builder Chief Bruno Tharngan of Yap, and the generous resources contributed by Emma and Pete Perez, Mario began the construction of a 47-foot sakman in 2010. The hull was carved out of a redwood tree from Mendocino, Calif. using both traditional and modern handheld tools. He used scaling data based on a drawing from Sir George Anson dating back to 1742, and engineered many tools and special devices to achieve the hull asymmetry that made the Chamorro flying proa renowned for its design, performance, and speed. It took the crew of seven equally-motivated fellow enthusiasts from the San Diego Chamorro community a full year to complete the 47-ft single outrigger “Sakman Chamorro”.
Mario continues to share his love of the Chamorro language, culture, and seafaring with students and the community at large whenever opportunities arise. He was selected as a FestPac Guam Delegate for Traditional Arts in 2016.
