Fitial is the first elected governor of Carolinian descent in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). Carolinians are indigenous to the Caroline Islands, and the ancestors of most Carolinians now living in the northern Mariana Islands immigrated there in the early 19th century, from the Yap and Chuuk island groups of what is now the Federated States of Micronesia. The Chamorro are the indigenous inhabitants of the Marianas, and past winners of gubernatorial elections in the CNMI had been Chamorro.