313 Anolani St.
Honolulu, Hawaii
Western Samoa is the home of the tribe that did not lose its head. Instead its 135,000 people have embarked on one of the more isolated but interesting experiments in the Pacific Area. It involves trying to preserve the biggest and perhaps finest remaining example of Polynesian culture.
In the process, Western Samoa is several things:
It is, in political status, ahead of most Pacific areas — the first Polynesian state to become independent in the 20th Century. This was formally accomplished on January 1, 1962, when New Zealand gave up its United Nations colonial mandate.
It is much different from American Samoa, the U.S. territory some 50 miles away. For one thing, Western Samoa is much bigger, some five times so in population and 15 times in land area. One of its two main islands, Upolu, is the size of Tahiti or Oahu, Hawaii’s capital island; most of the population is on Upolu. The other main Samoan island, Savaii, is even larger.
Equally important is the point that where the American islands are becoming increasingly and inevitably westernized, Western Samoa is largely dedicated to keep the old. Fa’a Samoa, the Samoan way, is virtually a national motto.
There is something special in this. Natural beauty abounds, and, as in the American islands, visitors and local folk even find a charm in the rain that falls almost straight down several times a day. Just the simple 23-mile ride from Falefo Airport to the capital of Apia on Upolu becomes a memorable panorama of flowered villages and palm-framed beaches, which even the outhouses built on rickety jetties out to sea, cannot really mar. And there is also a feeling about Western Samoa, an atmosphere if you will:
Apia, the capital and chief town of some 25,000 population, is bigger and less spectacular than American Pago Pago with its surrounding fiord-like harbor. Here is a South Sea town rambling for several miles along the fringe of a large bay. It seems that in viewing it everyone is a prisoner of his past. One writer, for example, compared it to a Spanish town. For me there were memories of Jakarta in the mid 1950s. This is not calling up the later Indonesia of President Sukarno’s wild dreams, rising Communist influence and attempted coups. Rather it refers to a mixture of a struggling inexperienced government still housed in old wooden Germanic buildings, facing serious economic problems, yet infused with a pride based on old culture and the new nationalism of independence. It is alive with both hope and problems.
Hurricanes and History
Samoa is on the outer fringe of the Pacific hurricane belt, so the deadly storms of the December-April season generally miss it. Yet the two hurricanes, which have swept across these islands in the past 70 years, have had major political and economic affect.
The first, in March of 1889, hit during a period of high international tension. Britain, Germany, and the U.S. were all vying for power and influence among the feuding factions of Samoan chiefs. So touchy was the situation that officers of seven warships ignored the storm warnings and kept their vessels in the Apia roadstead to watch each other.
All were trapped there by the hurricane. Only the single British warship managed to fight its way out of the harbor to safety in the open sea. Three German and three American vessels were swept ashore with heavy losses.
The tragedy helped ease tensions among the big powers. A temporary settlement called the Berlin Treaty was reached in June of 1889, installing an independent Samoan government. Samoan feuding and fighting eventually brought the powers back into contention over the islands, but the result this time was political agreement in 1899. The eastern Samoan islands went to the U.S., the bigger western islands to Germany. New Zealand took over Western Samoa under League of Nations (and later U.N.) mandate when Germany was defeated in World War I and lost its Pacific colonies.
For decades the blackened hull and spars of the German battleship Adler, grounded on the harbor reef just off Apia, stood as a symbol of the 1889 turmoil and tragedy. When the Adler was covered up with soil in a reef reclamation project in the there were those of a superstitious nature who warned that doing so would lead to another hurricane.
Samoa’s second hurricane in modern history struck in January of 1966. It did not have the dramatic international impact of the first storm. But it did have profound effect on the young nation. Economically, it was a disaster to Samoa’s export crops of bananas, copra, and cacao. The related political effects seem more subtle. They might include greater realization of what it means to be alone in the world (“Unlike Pago, we have no Santa Claus,” says one official), and, temporarily at least, greater receptivity toward outside influence.
The Cultural Guideline
Whatever the natural or outside influences, the essential point today about Western Samoa is that culture is king. Where other Pacific Island cultures have been disrupted, defeated, and changed by the West, Samoans are proud to consider themselves the purest surviving Polynesians.
“They have taken religion, canned goods, and maybe a bit of parliamentary system for frosting from us, but that’s about all,” said one frustrated “European,” the word, along with palangi or foreigner, used in the islands to cover all white men.
There is a certain confidence here, perhaps based on appraisals such as that made by C. Hartley Grattan in his two volume history of the Southwest Pacific: “The Samoans have a claim to being the most ardent politicians of all the island peoples, and the reputation for being the best mannered.” The Samoan view was indicated by a top official in Apia when I asked if he felt U.S. Peace Corps volunteers in the villages will affect the culture. He said, “We hope they will bring new ideas but we are not worried about them disrupting our system.”’ He smiled: “Maybe it will be the other way and they will be influenced.”
As in the American islands, the Samoan cultural core is the matai system. The basic unit is the aiga extended family of blood, marriage, and adoptive relatives. Family members in relatively democratic manner select a matai or chief to both run their clan and to represent them in village and local councils. In short, he or she is a selected trustee rather than a hereditary overlord, although sons do sometimes follow fathers as matai. Some 80.5% of Western Samoa’s land is communally owned by the aiga.
The matai system has its obvious strengths. It provides guidance, family ties and a sense of belonging, varying forms of social security, as well as local government and civic discipline. Western Samoans are proud that their islands require a, police force of less than 200 men, in fact not many more than in the American territory, which has one-fifth the population. These policemen go about like tropical London bobbies, unarmed and wearing high helmets and lava lava or sarongs.
A Samoan “bobby”
The end result for Samoa has been a generally satisfying way of life, one with strength and flexibility enough to survive the varying influences of the West, from black birding or slave trading to German and New Zealand colonialism to the sometimes-disruptive impact of missionaries.
Still the matai system has its weaknesses, especially as Samoans face the modern, Western world. A young Samoan educated in New Zealand put his views this way:
“They talk about the matai system being democratic. Politically that may be partly so. But economically it is feudal with little chance for the individual to rise. You have to give service and money to the matai. People have to spend the rest of their money for weddings, entertaining visitors, and other rituals. There is nothing left for higher education of the children, buying houses in town, savings, or accumulating development capital.”
Some see built-in conflict in what’s being tried. Says an educated American Samoan leader who has looked closely at the matter: “The Western Samoans are finding that when you emphasize the old way you contradict yourself because these old traditions conflict with the modern laws they want and need. It won’t work, and they are going to have to change.”
Common ownership of land raises special problems in the face of modern private development ideas. The Pacific Islands Year Book, a knowledgeable, if conservative, commercially-oriented Australian publication, offers this judgment on the Western Samoan scene:
“It is undeniable that the present system of communal land ownership stultifies individual enterprise, results in neglect of the land and makes it difficult to plan for increased agricultural production.”
How — or even whether — the matai system can be modified to allow easier economic development is one of the key questions about Samoan culture. Some argue it cannot be done, a view, which foresees major change and perhaps tragedy. Others feel it is possible, perhaps with some imaginative and modified use of Western cooperative systems.
An Upolu village church
Religion’s Role
Possibly the role o f religion provides some hint of how Western ways can blend into the Samoan system. For if culture is foremost in these bucolic islands, Christian religions have come to be an important part of it.
In fact, one of the most striking sights in Samoa is the cathedral-like churches that stand out in the nest villages of native houses or fales. Looking at this pattern of simple homes and giant churches by village greens, an anthropologist friend remarked: “It’s like a medieval scene with the peasant houses around the cathedral.”
Religious activities, a round of prayers, services and singing, make up much of the Samoan social life. And quite naturally this influence extends into political life. “Samoa is founded on God” who is “Ruler of the Universe and Protector of Independent Western Samoa, it say the inscriptions on the independence monuments.
The Congregational Church, founded by and evolved from the London Missionary Society, is the largest and most powerful religious organization today. Methodists, Roman Catholics, the Latter Day Saints (Mormon) Mission, Anglicans, and Seventh Day Adventists are well represented in varying degrees.
There are a variety of reasons for how religion came to be such an important part of Samoan life without disrupting the culture as it seems to have helped do elsewhere.
Some suggest Samoa’s old pre-palangi society was more secular and less religion oriented than those of, say, Hawaii or Tahiti. As a result, the theory goes, the change from the old gods to the new Christianity offered relatively little strain on the matai system.
More historically certain is the fact the principal early missionary, John Williams of the London Missionary Society, was a talented man. Further, he arrived in 1830 at a time when Samoan internal conditions allowed for great religious change within the old framework.
Finally, Western Samoa and the missionary effort have benefited by the islands’ relative isolation from high-pressure Western influences; the clergy quickly became Samoanized. The result seems to have made religion a positive modifying force and a conservative influence in the Samoan cultural system.
The Politics of Perpetuation
Western Samoa’s politics stem from its culture and the desire to perpetuate it. The political system operates on two levels. The matai system provides local government. The centralized national government follows a modified British parliamentary system. But there are times when the national Legislative Assembly operates Fa’a Samoa with its method of long discussion until a general consensus is reached; at these times the ranking chiefs have special influence over other assembly members.
Suffrage is not universal except in the sense that all adults pick matais at the village levels. Universal suffrage in a national vote wag used only for the United Nations plebiscite on independence. Now only the two non-Samoan or “European” members of the 47-seat Legislative Assembly are elected by adult suffrage in that small (perhaps 10,000) group. The other 45 members are elected by a vote among the matais. (There are some 8,500 matai titles, but a number are vacant. Many matais hold several titles but vote only once.)
The Head of State is by custom from one of Samoa’s four so-called royal families. Maliatoa Taumafili II, who has served since independence, is an amiable but largely ceremonial figure.
In practice, political power in Western Samoa centers around its first and only Prime Minister, Fiame Mataafa, who is also from the royal families. Mataafa is considered a strong and relatively progressive force in most areas. He is, however, circumscribed by traditional Samoan conservative forces. For example, it was reportedly necessary for him to threaten to resign to push through the Legislative Assembly plans for an American firm to develop timber resources on Savaii island, the first major new project involving foreign investment.
The Legislative Assembly meets in one of the most simple yet attractive parliament buildings in the world. It is basically a large meeting house type of fale, a circular building with grass roof and open sides set on a grassy palm-shaded field on a peninsula on Apia’s outskirts.
Samoa’s legislative building
Inside there is simple wooden furniture and an electric sound system. Members attend in garments ranging from western suits to the topless tapa cloth lava lava and seed garlands worn on ceremonial occasions. The building is always open.
(The day I wandered in alone and unhindered, there was among other things in the clerk’s “in” basket a mimeographed information bulletin published by the Soviet Legation in Wellington, New Zealand -which is something that could be exaggerated but which indicates Western Samoa’s educated elite is not completely unaware of Cold War politics. Mataafa, in fact, spoke out in 1966 in disappointment because needed post-hurricane Western aid was not forthcoming. He suggested Western Samoa might be forced to seek help from the Communist bloc. Many considered this a frustrated bluff, but it did bring headlines, attention, and some help.)
There are no political parties in Western Samoa. That factor, plus the inclination to operate Fa’a Samoa by unanimous consensus, can be confusing for Western observers.
“The party in power here-is really a great amorphous mass,”’ said one European long on the scene.
“What you have,” said another, “is a situation like England in the l7th Century where instead of parties you had people coming together to support various ideas… They might be five or ten years away from formal parties.”
There are, of course, various identifiable political influences aside from the culture and the special matai elite represented by Maleatoa and Mataafa. These include the continuing impact of New Zealand through aid, teachers, various technicians, and general tradition. There is the considerable economic power of the important local business organizations run by mixed-blood citizens of part-European background, the so-called Euronesians. Finally, both in and out of the culture, there is the influence of the various churches; this influence has been seen recently in moves to enforce a strict prohibition on alcoholic beverages, something that could hinder any further growth of tourism.
In summary, it would seem Western Samoa’s political situation offers a happy yet hazy outlook:
The mixture of old culture, general Samoan satisfaction, and a system that reflects tradition while being moderately representative makes for a general political stability seldom found in a struggling new nation. Unlike Fiji, or even Tonga or the U.S. Trust Territory, you find no one predicting political trouble or turmoil for Western Samoa. One becomes prone to count the obvious blessings.
But, again, the political situation is based on cultural stability. That in turn, goes back to the question of whether cultural disruption is inevitable or whether the good old ways can somehow be blended with rising new needs and pressures. Here Samoans and others find themselves discussing whether they can be economically as well as politically independent.
A village on Savaii
The Economics of Independence
The revolution of rising expectations is but a faint ripple in these lush islands. The average Samoan, and equally or more important his matai, seems content to live in what would be called a most pleasant form of poverty by Western material standards.
There is, to be sure, a-well-established dependence on such imported items as canned food and cloth; Samoans also increasingly value and need health services, education, and other programs offered by the government. But the essential point, as posed by the economists, is not that there is great popular pressure for economic advancement. Rather it is the need to stimulate general agreement on new development to meet the pressures of a fast-growing population. Primarily concerned about their culture, Western Samoans are both conservative and cautious to a degree that is both frustrating and admirable.
The traditional economy is simple, prone to trouble and quite likely inadequate for future needs. It is based on three long-term tree crops — copra or the dried meat of the coconut, bananas for a New Zealand market, and cacao for chocolate. All face the perils of fluctuating world prices and increased competition. In addition, the 1966 hurricane and to a lesser extent a major storm early this year were serious blows to the copra industry; there is not enough money for needed major replanting. The storms also damaged the banana industry. More important has been an affliction called “bunchy top,” a sort of botanical hoof-and-mouth disease that requires destruction of entire groves to halt its spread. Samoan cacao, although valued for blending, is not considered to have major new potential in crowded world markets.
People — workers going abroad and the money they send back — have also been one of Western Samoa’s revenue-raising “exports.”’ During the 11-year period ending in 1965, more than 10,000 persons, about 7.7% of the population, left the islands. But the two major destinations have since tightened up: American Samoa, concerned about its own peoples’ needs, has imposed immigration and job restrictions. There is still free movement to New Zealand, but that country has job requirement restrictions.
Faced with a tightening situation, Western Samoa cannot be accused of irresponsible attitudes since independence. Finance Minister G.F.D. Betham tells the national assembly and visitors, “We know we must cut our cost to fit our cloth.” Economic Development Director Hans Kruse, like Betham a part European, seems equally realistic.
The government runs on a relatively modest scale in old buildings and cluttered offices. Its operating budget is pictured as a third smaller than what American Samoa receives from Congress. Most foreign aid, from New Zealand, Australia, and the United Nations, comes as technical assistance personnel and teachers. The U.S. provides about 130 Peace Corps volunteers who serve as teachers, in public health, and as middle-level government service specialists.
Nowhere is the official-level realism about Western Samoa’s economic development problems better summarized than in the economic development plan for 1966-70. It cites these factors against growth: geographic isolation, inefficient agriculture, the lack of capital by the government and individuals (average per capita income is less than $200 compared to almost $600 in American Samoa), the lack of business and labor skills, high government operating costs compared to income, lack of diversification in agriculture, the limited internal markets, and perhaps most important a population growing at the annual rate of 3.7% (about 3.3% after out-migration) — one of the world’s highest rates.
In the face of these problems, Western Samoa has taken steps in recent years to set the stage for development. These include establishment of an economic development board and department, passing an economic incentives act, drawing up the five-year plan, setting up a handicraft development corporation measures to make land leasing easier, and several steps in the field of tourism, including playing host to the “Heart of Polynesia Visitors’ Conference,” held early last year and attended by many of the top figures in Pacific tourism.
Apia’s Main Street
Some 3rd and 4th Thoughts
Yet while the legal machinery is there for development and some of the groundwork laid, Samoan political leaders have held back. Not only have there been some second thoughts but seemingly third and fourth thoughts as well. Explained one top official candidly: ”We don’t know much about foreign investment, so we are suspicious.”
One example might be the Savaii lumber and forestry development program by the American firm, Potlatch Forests Inc. This pioneering economic incentive project has gone ahead but not without strains and continuing doubts.
An even better example is provided by tourism development. At the time of the Heart of Polynesia Conference, Prime Minister Mataafa said: “While we in Western Samoa have been for sometime conscious of the potential of the tourist industry, we have been concerned at the effect that a full-scale promotion of it would have been on our social structure. We are now satisfied that with proper organization and control the two can coexist successfully, and in fact give each other strength.”
This was hailed as a major change in attitude at the time. Western Samoa had a Honolulu planning firm draw up a tourism facility development program, which envisioned 24,000 visitors annually by 1970, compared to about 5,000 last year.
What has happened is very little, either in terms of the regional cooperation moves recommended by the conference or in Western Samoan tourism. Instead Samoa has made more negative news by putting off various proposals for hotels and other tourism development.
There are mixed reasons for this. Some Samoans in business and in the Legislative Assembly feel that if increased tourism is necessary it should be developed with local money — despite the nation’s serious lack of development capital. This is part of larger doubts about foreign investment. But following the government’s positive decision for tourism, there has also been a revival of anti-tourism feeling because of concern over the potential impact on Samoan culture. The result has been to leave Samoan tourism pretty much where it has been, with less than 100 adequate rooms in Aggie Grey’s Hotel, a spot of rambling and pleasant informality.
Do Samoan leaders have a point in going slow on tourism?
Most visitor industry experts would argue that tourism does not have to be destructive — if the growth rate is kept modest and managed and if cultural preservation is made a keynote. They would add that resulting economic benefits can, in fact, strengthen the existing society against other impacts.
But there are those who have come to wonder about the impact of tourism on an area of limited size and a society of limited experience with foreign influence. Some of this was expressed by a leading figure in Pacific tourism who in briefing this writer before leaving for Western Samoa said: “You are going to see one of the world’s most pleasant societies as it has been. And it’s a pity it has to be fouled up by tourism — and if you quote me by name on that I’ll sue you.”
Hard economics may force Samoans into accepting more tourism and foreign investment, but it can hardly be said they do so with the unthinking enthusiasm noted elsewhere in the Pacific Islands.
Comparing Two Samoas
Some might consider it unfair, but it is difficult to see both American and Western Samoa and not compare the two. Despite the 68 years of political separation, the people are closely related and have traveled back and forth over the centuries.
“We hear a lot about other countries that have been divided by big power politics — Vietnam, Korea, Germany,” said one American official. “Samoa is a far earlier and more senseless case.”
Both have suffered at times under colonialism.
The U.S. record of Congressional and Interior Department neglect in the 1950s, following a half-century of narrow Navy coaling-station conservatism, is painfully well known. We still have not caught up, especially in the political field.
Germany was a tough and repressive colonial master, although its 1900-14 period of rule is also remembered for progressive steps in plantation development and other economic activity.
New Zealand had a dismal record of repression and military-oriented rule in the 1920s and into the mid 1930s; at times Samoans were on the verge of open rebellion. But in later years New Zealand adopted a much more sympathetic and progressive approach in keeping with its international trusteeship position. Above all, and in shark contrast to the vacuous U.S. position, New Zealand in the post World War II years had a goal — preparing Western Samoa for independence. Despite limited resources and the narrowness of its philosophy in education, the end result of New Zealand’s colonial role seems relatively favorable.
Whatever the past mistakes, the fact of two separate Samoas remains, not just legally but emotionally as well.
It is possible to cite the common ties of blood, friendship, matai titles and economic activity of migrant workers, the taro trade, and now even shared tourism. But some of the important differences are perhaps best summed up by these two quotes from across the 50-mile gulf of water between the islands:
From a chief in American Samoa: “Let them have their culture and their poverty over there (in Western Samoa). We’ll take our steak and ice water over here.”
From a prominent Western Samoan. “Pago Pago is an American slum. They are trying to become American in such a hurry. It’s ridiculous, all those chiefs over there with their fat cigars, horn rim glasses, speaking Samoan with an American accent…Sure, some of our people go there because of the jobs, but most of us do not find American Samoa attractive.”
Some leaders in the American islands may admire Western Samoa’s independent status and its cultural concern, but very few seem willing to give up the material and political aspects of association with the U.S. in return for junior or even equal status in the Apia government. Similarly, some in Western Samoa may envy the growing affluence of Pago Pago and a few long for the universal suffrage of American Samoa’s limited political system. But I failed to find anyone wanting to give up independence to join a U.S. colony or commonwealth.
“Like Australia and New Zealand we are close and should be together, but we have each gone our own way too long,” said one Western Samoan leader.
What could and should be, however, is increased dialogue between the two Samoas, not on formal political ties but on economic and social matters. Instead the trend has been toward more restrictions on movement and diplomatic formality. The situation is not tragic for either side, but like so many such matters in the world it seems sad and unnecessary.
School dance party
Can Simplicity Survive?
So Western Samoa goes its poor but proud way. For some it is honestly impossible to see how its experiment in cultural conservation can succeed; the feeling is there can only be a holding action against internal pressures of population and material wants and the influence of outside economics. On the more hopeful side, there are those who note Samoa’s relative isolation and its history of flexibility in keeping Fa’a Samoa where other cultures have perished. The feeling here is that the best of the old can be saved — if change is not pushed too fast and if power flows to those young Samoans, often educated abroad, who understand the ways of the outside world but appreciate their heritage. The hope is for a happy compromise.
It is said that if a Samoan has healthy children, a nest and comely wife, a house of his own, a coconut tree and a banana tree and a few pigs, he has intelligence enough to know that he is well off.
Life is not that simple for anyone these days, even in Western Samoa. But in a world of people too often caught on meaningless treadmills, it is pleasant to know someone is seeking to preserve the warm virtues of Fa’a Samoa.
Received in New York November 11, 1968
© 1968 John Griffin
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 to Mr. Griffin, the Honolulu Advertiser, and the Alicia Patterson Fund.
