SUVA, FIJI
Rural Tutuila shoreline
Even after Hawaii there is a spectacular beauty in American Samoa’s patterns of reef and rugged green mountain. Samoa’s people smile more and wave to both newcomers and the more permanent palangis or foreigners.
Instead of going right into Pago Pago, I stayed with friends in rural Leone, across Tutuila Island near the airfield. Toward sunset we drove down to the far end of the island, past idyllic beachside villages where lamps and cooking fires flickered in the open sides of the beehive-shaped fales or Samoan homes.
It was indeed the far Pacific at last, far from the American scene. Yet two hours later a news broadcast brought first word of Senator Robert Kennedy’s shooting. We went down to the new radio station where the bulletins were coming in. A young Samoan announcer working with the American manager shook his head in sadness and dismay as he ripped them off the machine. He read them directly on the air, translating into Samoan as he went.
We drove home. In the fales the transistors, along with the TV sets were carrying the news. And without anyone having to explain, it was clear that in spirit Samoa is not that far from home and that its people see their pain and destiny linked with ours.
(Honolulu Advertiser map)
It is possible to overestimate the importance of American Samoa in today’s Pacific world. It is, after all, only Tutuila and six even lesser islands, all making up about 76.2 square miles, the size of Washington, D.C. It’s 28,000 well-fed souls would fit into almost any modern football stadium or could be handled on the welfare rolls of’ larger U.S. communities.
American Samoa’s political status still reflects the late l9th century struggles between the big powers for bases and influence in the uncertain Pacific island areas. We divided the Samoas with Germany. Our goal was Pago Pago’s great harbor for a coaling station. People called Samoans just happened to live there.
Now the situation has reversed. Doubtless the U.S. military would scream about Pago’s great harbor and its latent if unused potential for nuclear subs. We would be reminded that this is, after all, our only Pacific possession south of the equator and thus of great potential value for jet operations (as indeed we have been using it to monitor the French nuclear tests to the east.)
Still, if the U.S. is unlikely to give up American Samoa for a variety of reasons, our focus is now of necessity on what its people want.
In effect, Samoa is a challenge for the U.S. It can embarrass us, as it did in the 1950s and early 1960s when our social and economic neglect became a well-publicized shame.
It is hard to now call it a showplace, for it is really too small and too newly touched by belated American affluence for anything but the most superficial economic judgment. Money is a good part of the answer, but it will not be all.
What American Samoa most certainly is, however, is a public problem for the U.S.
Some, such as the respected King of Tonga, say that the U.S. is not under strong moral pressure to have an ultimate policy for Samoa because its people are free to go to the States and become full American citizens. Indeed, there are said to be as many Samoans in Hawaii and California as in American Samoa. Each year a third of the high school graduates so depart.
Still the islands and a booming population remain. There we still face the task of blending political, economic, and cultural factors into a meaningful system of life. Will they be Americans, Samoans, or some respected status known as American Samoans? Do we want a reservation, a nation, or part of our own country?
Governor Owen S. Aspinall says the future of the people of American Samoa is up to them. He and others describe U.S. policy as preparing the Samoans to make intelligent decisions when faced, as they inevitably are being, with the challenges of the 20th Century. But in accepting this idealistic goal it must be recognized that the U.S. is late, and it is obvious the very means we adopt will influence the ends.
The process has already begun, and there may be validity in the words of a bright young Samoan chief: “Because of the past neglect, the major American effort to make up for it in recent years, and our own relatively small size, the political-cultural situation in American Samoa may be changing faster than anywhere else in the South Pacific today.”
The Political View
Politically, Samoa is in its fourth American era. There was the U.S. Navy period, which began in the late 1800s and became the dominant fact of life when we formally took over the eastern Samoan islands in 1900 (the western ones going to Germany and after World War I to New Zealand). The U.S. Navy had no mandate and little interest in developing the people, although it did provide a substantial industry in the Pago Pago Bay area.
Then there was the first ten years of rule by the U.S. Interior Department which took over from the Navy in 1951. This dismal decade was marked by economic decline, disinterest in Washington, and a revolving door of changing governors.
And there was what must be called The Age of Rex Lee, the dynamic little Interior Department career man who was sent out by President Kennedy in May of 1961 with orders and authority to get Samoa cleaned up and moving.
Governor Lee combined energy, drive, and ideas with an ability to win cooperation not only from most Samoans but also from that fountainhead of funds, the U.S. Congress.
He stayed for six years and in that time even his enemies came to agree Samoa saw more material progress than under all the other civilian governors. Monuments to the Lee era include dozens of handsome schools, an educational system that makes maximum use of television, miles of new roads, a massive modern hospital, a hotel that brought the spark of tourism, and a strong surge in the change from the communal to a wage economy that spells inevitable cultural crisis.
Now Samoa is in what may be called a reaction period under Governor Owen Aspinall, 40, who first came to Pago Pago in 1962 as Attorney General and later served as Territorial Secretary or Lieutenant Governor before succeeding Lee a year ago.
The contrast can be startling to those who have worked for both: Lee, the tough, cold, sometimes almost arrogantly confident career man brought out to do a rough job. Aspinall, younger, quieter, yet more human by some estimates, less certain of himself, married to a Samoan chief’s daughter, concerned about the culture to the point of wearing a skirt-like lava-lava himself on Fridays, always aware of Lee’s accomplishments and perhaps of the feeling of many, fairly or unfairly, that he owes his job to the fact his father is Congressman Wayne Aspinall, the powerful chairman of the House Interior Committee.
There is a fascination in reactions to the two men by others, including shrewd-judging Samoans. But perhaps one of the more meaningful points was made by Aspinall himself on the subject: “Governor Lee was a very strong, a very dynamic man. He did many things here. There is also a time when you should fall back and regroup and see where you are. There are virtues in both positions.”
Culturally, he has a point, for American Samoa has been moving at a rate that seems bound to hasten major cultural change.
A Changing Culture
The Matai system is Samoa’s cultural starting point, the essence of “Fa’a Samoa” or the Samoan way. It centers around the extended family group or aiga, a group of relatives (perhaps 200 or more) which joins together to select in more or less democratic fashion one of their number as matai or chief.
Each aiga has a village or area. The land is owned in common. Tasks about the village — fishing, farming, house building — are assigned by the matai who also represents the clan at regional or higher level meetings. He maintains discipline and in return is supported by the family. There are even a few women matai.
The matai system in a subsistence economy offers work, food, relative equality and social security. It runs into trouble when the villagers go off to work in a wage economy; sometimes even the matai himself takes outside work. Common food crops and upkeep of the village can suffer under such circumstances. So can the authority of the matai.
Over the years the matai system has undergone many stresses and modifications what with Navy and other commercial operations and emigration to the U.S. The rule of thumb seems to be the closer you get to Pago Pago the less effective it becomes. What once might have been dictatorial matai rulings over the right to live in a village, etc. are now sometimes challenged in court.
Still more than 96 per cent of the land in American Samoa is communally owned under Samoan custom. The matai system with its batteries of local and regional chiefs and their “high talking chiefs” or sort of prime minister-spokesmen remains a formidable if vulnerable force. Control of the land remains especially critical.
In this equation, the governor operates with strong executive power and control of the budget. He is responsible and answerable to Washington, although there are some formal and not a few informal restraints on his power locally. Whatever the system, however, he is, or at least can be, the power.
There is a legislature or fono of limited but increasing importance. Its makeup represents an attempt to blend the two major elements in American Samoan political life, the matai system, and U.S. democracy. The 15-member senate is composed of matais and elected by them. The 17 members of the House of Representatives are elected through adult suffrage from districts around the islands. Senate President, A.P. Lauvao-Lolo, thinks senators should be popularly elected by the people from among the chiefs, as do many others. But he feels the legislative system also has its strengths. “The house members say they are the true representatives of the people. We in the Senate know we are the chiefs of the people.”
There is also an informal Council of Chiefs, which meets with the Governor. Although members of this group, both Lolo and House Speaker Muagututia F. Tui’a were among those especially critical of Governor Aspinall for dealing more with the Council of Chiefs. “We feel it is a mistake working so closely with the chiefs if it leaves the assumption the chiefs still have the ruling power. As long as the legislature is the only elected body, it should make the policy,” Tui’a said.
I only talked to one leader who felt there was the chance for American Samoa to go anywhere politically but toward closer relations with the U.S. This district chief felt the territory should become part of independent Western Samoa, taking any economic hardships as part of the price to be paid for true freedom and nationhood.
Leaders such as Senate President Lolo, who served with the Marines in World War II and attended the University of Hawaii, and House Speaker Tui’a, who lived 20 years in Hawaii, foresaw an Organic Act soon, meaning full American citizenship (instead of “national” status as at present), a locally-elected governor, and other measures for more self government.
But everybody also foresaw the inevitable day when the culture and the changes would meet, when, for example, the toughly protective restrictions on land sale to any but Samoans would clash with the regular American right to buy and sell freely. Some like Lolo said they had hoped an Organic Act could contain special protections for Samoan land such as are provided for American Indians and Hawaiians. But they say recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions render this less likely. Tui’a sees changes in the land system as inevitable: “ We must open up the land if we want Senate President Lolo (top); progress. We can’t hold the land only House Speaker Tui’a for Samoans and still demand the privileges of other American
Generally it would seem there are two small extremes in American Samoa today. One is of the older chiefs who resent Westernization and want to keep Fa’a Samoa and the matai system in the traditional way. The other is the impatient young, some educated abroad and held down by less qualified matais, who would wipe out the old system. The big significant middle group, however, wants to combine the best of the old with the attractive advantages of the new.
“We think about losing the old culture,” said one young talking chief. “Then we consider the advantages and conclude it may be worth it. “
From the Samoan standpoint that might well be true. But it still leaves the question of whether a little island territory like American Samoa can make its way in the modern economics of the jet age.
The Economics
A Pacific scholar one day was describing various degrees of problems in the area. Finally he said: “Then there are those situations that are impossible — like American Samoa.”
What he meant was that American Samoa is too small to be viable alone, politically or economically, in the modern world. He has a point, especially when you consider much of American Samoa is shifting from a rural communal agricultural system to an urban wage economy. The evidence of tin can culture, taking the worst of both possible worlds, is still to be found in Pago Pago despite improvements and cleanup campaigns in recent years.
Still a goal of U.S. policy for American Samoa is economic self-sufficiency. This means both new industry and expansion of some present ones. Since the goal involves Samoan participation, it can also mean making haste very slowly.
The big factors in the Samoan economy are U.S. government spending (especially in recent years for major public works projects), fish canning, copra production, and tourism.
Congress in fiscal 1967 provided $9.1 million in appropriations and grants for government operations. (Public works appropriations in recent years total well over $30 million.) In pre-Lee days the operating appropriation average was about $1.5 million annually. Thanks to new income and other tax provisions, local revenue now tops $4 million annually, and local economic experts say that with luck it should continue to rise significantly.
The two American tuna canning companies and an adjoining canning plant provide employment for about 1,300 Samoans. In addition, more than 4,000 Japanese, Korean, and Chinese Nationalist fishermen operate the more than 200 boats, which provide fish for the canneries.
As everywhere, there is much talk about tourism in relation to American Samoa; it offers, after all, the only jet airstrip in this part of the Pacific and a 100-room hotel done in modernized Samoan style on Pago Pago Bay. Still some indication of the priority may be seen by this passage from a recent official estimate made to Washington by Governor Aspinall:
“The economic future of the territory of American Samoa rests on four factors. The first is the lure to the islands of light industries (watch assembly and lumber finishing are most discussed). The second is the training and placing into business of local Samoans in those small enterprises that every American community should have (drug stores, laundry, etc.), The third is taking advantage of those grants and matching fund projects that have been provided by the United States Congress, and the fourth and last phase is an overhaul of the entire government structure so that it operates more efficiently.”
The Governor is not anti-tourism, although it is considered a Lee pet project. Aspinall is actively seeking better air routes for Samoa and he has opened his mansion for Monday night “open house” cocktails for visitors. Rather the view seems to be that tourism has not produced up to expectations and that what potential there is for Tutuila is limited.
The hotel has suffered from changing managers four times, a reputation for poor service and high prices, travel cutbacks because of the U.S. gold drain, and the feeling that, after all, there is not much to do in American Samoa except enjoy some fine scenery when it isn’t raining. In the process, the American Samoan Development Corporation, a group formed to invest local money in such projects, has gone profitless and has achieved a controversial reputation of an organization going nowhere slowly.
But there is a more bullish side to American Samoan tourism. The visitor flow is rising and should be up over 12,000 this year. Present airline plans and the outcome of the Trans-Pacific Route Case before the Civil Aeronautics Board in Washington make it inevitable more people on more planes will be coming. Airlines or others are expected to build one or two more hotels. American Samoan officials seem most aware of Tutuila’s size limitations and of the advantages of working in cooperation with other areas on Pacific package tours.
**Portion of Pago Pago Harbor with Governor’s white mansion on hill and hotel on peninsula on left.
Money, or at least making a way in the world, is important for any people. As stated earlier, American Samoa is small enough to treat as a sort of Indian reservation welfare community. Its population could be usefully absorbed as needed hotel workers in Hawaii alone.
But obviously it will or should continue as a living community, not frozen in a culture that served well in the past but also not forced into change that deprives some of the world’s most magnificent people of their natural dignity. For in the long run, the greatest importance of the little islands called American Samoa for the U.S., may be what they tell us about ourselves and what we have learned about Pacific peoples since the days of coaling-station colonialism.
Received in New York August 19, 1968.
Mr. John Griffin is an Alicia Patterson Fund award winner on leave from the Honolulu Advertiser, Honolulu, Hawaii. This article may be published, with credit Mr. Griffin, the Honolulu Advertiser, and the Alicia Patterson Fund.
