Chapter 26

After spending equal parts of my life in Samoa and the United States, I came to the formal study of Samoan culture and history in my late twenties. In part such an endeavour was an attempt to pacify inner tensions between my Samoan and American selves before they erupted into all-out warfare in a bi-cultural psyche. After a rather bewildering childhood, with little cognitive understanding of either culture, I was later fortunate enough to spend years researching and writing about each of these worlds and their historical interactions with each other.

Early in the 21st century, I am all too aware of how much devastation has been wrought on many Samoan children and young people, who are struggling to negotiate extreme tensions between traditional Samoan cultural values and the onslaught of western mores and influences. While such problems cut across all ages, we see the potential of too many youngsters, both at home and in the diaspora, being thwarted by the consequences of domestic violence, substance abuse and rampant materialism. While admittedly the situation is complicated, what I see lurking at the heart of such problems is essentially a distortion, if not an absence, of any coherent framework of meaning informed by an indigenous Samoan belief system. As the wisdom tradition – the primordial belief system – in any culture resides in its mythology, it is essential to the viability of Samoan culture that its own traditional knowledge be fully reclaimed from the disrepute into which it was cast by Judeo-Christian missionaries in the 19th century. However well-meaning, their misbegotten project to erase indigenous spiritual practices may have been the single most devastating blow to Samoan culture in our history.306

However, all is not lost. We have it in our power to reclaim and restore a conceptual framework of belief that would provide the most powerful antidote possible to the ravages of western hegemonies, whether cultural or political. By reinscribing Samoa’s indigenous epistemologies, her ancient divinities and her wisdom tradition with the respect and honour they deserve – by reinstating them once again in the public conversation – we begin the process of healing the profound socio-psychological wounds, shame and guilt that foster the repressed, ‘whispered’ religious discourse that lingers to this day. It is with this aspiration that I gladly join Tui Atua and other distinguished thinkers in the transformational project of this collection. Towards that end, I explore in this essay two Samoan mythological heroes, Sina and Nafanua, who exemplify many of the deepest values and principles of ideal human behaviour.

As a Samoan girl coming of age in the American South of the late 1950s, I found the prevailing role models for womanhood (such as Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, Miss America and Jayne Mansfield) to be limited and disheartening in the extreme. Thankfully, by the time I reached adolescence amid the social and political transformations of the 1960s, the roots of feminist thought had begun to take hold in US soil and to flower into more diverse role models for both women and men. Along with many others in that generation, my own journey towards self-understanding was especially enhanced by richly complex figures such as the Great Mother Goddess of pre-Christian times.307 Here at last was a role model I could relate to. A being who embodied all the quintessential human polarities: male and female, creative and destructive, nurturing and aggressive. But it was not until graduate school in the 1970s, when research led me to the Samoan goddesses Sina and Nafanua, that I felt as though I had finally come home.

Enroute to that profound homecoming, a further delight was the discovery of the Mother Goddess’s many faces in cultures throughout the world.308 In Mesopotamia I found Ishtar, who governs fertility, love, war and sex. In Egypt: Isis, ruler of fertility, motherhood and magic. In Greece: Athena, the multi-faceted virgin governing wisdom, strategy and warfare. In India: Kali, mother of creation and destruction, birth and death. And closer to home in Hawai’i: Hina and Pele, goddesses of moon and volcano, respectively.309 It was in such compelling, multi-dimensional company that I began to understand Sina and Nafanua as Samoan counterparts in the powerful, mythic sisterhood that recurs throughout human history.

As scholars of religion and culture have argued, a significant function of mythology is to reconstitute the creative power of the origin of the world.310 Moreover, as a template of divine order in the world and its seasons, myth functions more broadly as a charter for belief in a sacred order of both the universe and human society.311 Through its symbolism, myth illustrates and sets forth models of correct behaviour, constructive values, ethics and morality – in short, a primeval framework of spirituality.312 Joseph Campbell’s lifelong scholarship elaborates on these principles from a psychological perspective, characterising mythology as analogy for the unknown, whether it be the mysteries of the divine or those deeply embedded in the human psyche.313

Tui Atua’s reading of the folk narrative, ‘Mating of sun and a woman’, is an astute illustration of mythology’s power to weave fundamental tenets of worldview into the very fabric of culture. His articulation of the two central points of the myth – familial interdependence between human and cosmic worlds and “a moral narrative about male and female relations” – could well point to the profound value given to relationship in Samoan culture. As an originary cultural template for the balance of power between genders, the narrative is most instructive. Not only does the woman exercise her own discretion about whether and when to engage the advances of such a compelling suitor, she also demonstrates ingenuity and strength in carrying out her capture of him, as well as subsequently mothering Tagaloaui, one of the creator deities of Samoa. As metaphor for indigenous spirituality, one could hardly hope for a richer, more exquisite expression of the core cultural value of complementarity. Fortunately, Samoan oral tradition offers a phenomenal array of narratives that form the earliest frameworks of meaning, regarding both cosmic and human worlds, as well as of the nature of their interrelationship. This essay elaborates on Tui Atua’s folkloristic analysis by exploring the legendary cycles of two leading culture heroes, who singly and together have much to tell us about Samoa’s primordial religion.

In Samoan mythology, to oversimplify for the moment, female characters tend to fall into one of two categories: creative and destructive. Idealisations of each type can be found in Sina and Nafanua, two significant figures appearing in various guises throughout the mythic tradition. Sina is associated with beauty, fertility, love and benign nature; Nafanua with courage, loyalty, ferocity, war and violent nature.

Sina is generally associated with one or more several basic motifs:314 the moon, an eel paramour, food production, and the rescue of her brother(s) or of her husband. In an early, recorded version of Sina and the Moon, we meet the goddess during a period of widespread famine.315 Here Sina and her daughter sit together making tapa (bark cloth) as a full moon rises. In her extreme hunger, Sina imagines the moon as breadfruit and wishes it to come closer so that her child might have a bite to eat. Reacting to such indignity, the moon becomes angry and swoops down to snatch up the two, taking them into the sky to live forever after in the moon. Even now, the legend goes, they can still be seen in the night sky, at work with their tapa boards and mallets. As a template for human behaviour, the narrative highlights ideals of nurturing and industry, and links Sina symbolically with lunar aspects of illumination.316

Another major Sina tale type,317 linking her with the origin of the coconut tree, revolves around her involvement with an eel paramour. One version opens with Sina (or her mother) finding a baby eel in a nearby spring.318 After carefully raising the eel to maturity, Sina becomes dismayed when her pet declares his love for her and begins to press his affections. Despite Sina’s protests, the eel persists, so Sina flees in dismay to a remote village. Overcoming the huge obstacles flung in his path, the eel perseveres in pursuit of his beloved, until at last he is attacked and mortally wounded by alarmed villagers. In his final moments, he instructs a grief-stricken Sina to bury his head in a special place, from which a wondrous new kind of tree will grow. Not only will it supply leaves for thatching roofs, floor mats and fans, it will also bear a marvelous fruit. Forever after, when she drinks from the nut, she will be kissing the face of her lover, his eyes and mouth memorialised in the three markings on the shell of every coconut. And thus, as the legend goes, the coconut tree remains to this day a living monument of the eel’s undying devotion to his love.

Another version of the narrative opens with Sina swimming in a pond and gathering fruit that has fallen from a tree on the bank. Suddenly she is ‘struck’ or ‘pierced’ by the tail of the eel she has raised from infancy. Startled and dismayed, she flees to another island, is pursued by her eel pet, and so on as before.319

One variant features a Romeo and Juliet motif, with Sina and an eel-boy as children of feuding clans.320 After the eel-boy is sent to Sina’s family to attempt reconciliation, he and Sina fall in love, but are summarily separated by her disapproving parents, who then force her to flee. From there the tale proceeds as above, with the dying eel offering himself as literal ‘seed’ for the first coconut tree, and thus eternal sustenance for Sina and her people.

Striking aspects of Sina and the eel tales include love and fecundity, metaphorically expressed by the prolific, productive coconut plant. Because sexual consummation of this love is forbidden, it must be sublimated through the coconut tree – emblematic of sustaining affection. The implicit nature of the forbidden love is incestuous, as suggested by symbolic parallels between the eel–Sina relationship and that of child to mother. Incest, therefore, albeit obliquely expressed, is another important motif in this tale type.

A third type of Sina tale finds her rescuing her brothers from their Tongan kidnappers.321 After following the brothers to Tonga, Sina proceeds to plant the yams she has brought along as a food supply. Each day as she eats from the vine, it grows farther up the mountain, marking a path to her brothers’ prison, until finally Sina locates them and enables their escape. Again, we have Sina associated with fecundity (vis-à-vis prodigious yam production), only now in combination with rescuing her brothers. In this tale type, another significant motif – sister rescues brother(s) or woman rescues men – is at play.

One variant of the ‘rescue’ tale type opens with Sina as a beautiful princess, much desired by many suitors.322 Shortly after their wedding, her groom is killed by his jealous brother. Sina follows her dead husband into the underworld below the sea, guided by several helpful birds. Thanks to advice from these magical helpers,323 she eventually locates an old woman with the power to call her husband back from the dead. After passing the old woman’s test of wits, Sina reunites with her husband, and they live happily ever after with the old woman under the sea.324 Here, notable motifs include (Sina as) beautiful heroine, sibling rivalry, woman’s rescue of man and animal helpers. As a tale type, this appears to be a kind of Orpheus–Eurydice variant in reverse, and with a happy ending.

Taken overall, the major motifs common to all the Sina tale types comprise a profile of Sina as desirable, loyal and fecund. She rescues her brothers or husband from mortal danger; she receives aid from animal helpers; and she manages to avoid incest with her ‘adopted’ son (the eel).

In contrast to the benign Sina, the other major Samoan female character type is generally associated with darker qualities of war and death. One distinctive aspect of Nafanua legends is the elaboration of her genealogy. For example, one must know that she is the daughter of Saveasi’uleo, half-human, half-eel and ruler of the underworld. Her mother is Tilafaiga,325 human niece and consort of Saveasi’uleo (making Nafanua the child of an incestuous union). When Nafanua is born extremely prematurely, her mother hides the ‘blood clot’ in the forest. However, Saveasi’uleo’s preternatural powers lead him to locate and unearth the foetus–child, whom he promptly reclaims and names Nafanua (hidden in the land).326

When she has grown into a strong young woman, Nafanua learns that humans in the upper world, including her family, are being tyrannised by an invading tribe. Resolving to go to their aid, she first consults with her formidable dad, who gives her several magical weapons, each with a special power and name.327 Counselling her in the arts of war, he assures her of his continuing help. Moreover, he enjoins her to follow several specific instructions, most notably: to conceal her sex by keeping her chest covered at all times; and to refrain from pursuing the enemy on to the homestead of her own relatives. Equipped with her father’s preternatural blessings, advice and weapons, Nafanua departs for the upper world, determined to help liberate her people.328

Upon reaching her family village she attempts to mobilise her disheartened relatives, but is able to muster only one couple to join her in battle. Mystified as to how they can win with so few comrades, the two are reassured by the awe-inspiring Nafanua that a great army will materialise on the battlefield to assure them of victory. The next day, this indeed comes to pass, when the enemy is roundly defeated after much bloodshed. Nafanua’s invincible (and invisible) army turns out to be countless family ancestors embodied as dragonflies and cicadas, and therefore imperceptible in battle to the enemy. The final blow against the invaders comes with the shock and shame of discovering that the mysterious warrior is female!329

The victorious hero then proceeds to restore lands to their rightful owners, and concurrently to consult with the highest chiefs in restructuring the government of Samoa. Consequently, Nafanua’s reputation as a war goddess is established far and wide, and her favour highly prized in subsequent hostilities between clans. As her patronage is believed to ensure victory in battle, Nafanua skillfully leverages her influence to the point of exerting control over the four paramount chief’s titles, thus extending her rule over the entire country.330

Significant motifs associated with Nafanua include supernatural birth, rescue (by a woman), warrior nature, political strategy and leadership. Turner notes several customary associations between the war goddess and the coconut plant, for example, the traditional practice of marking land boundaries with coconut ties on trees, originating with Nafanua who marked her newly won territory just so.331 Turner also comments on Nafanua’s custom of wearing a coconut leaf blouse, and of her troops wearing coconut leaf belts, to symbolise their allegiance. In districts where she was worshipped as a village god, warriors were required to undergo purification rites before battle. These involved confessing offences against others, followed by ablutions with coconut water, thus honouring Nafanua’s special plant. If the rites were properly conducted, victory was thought to be certain.

Taken together, Sina and Nafanua can be understood to represent sets of complementary characteristics: benign–fierce, domestic–political, generative–destructive. While such polarities may appear oppositional on the surface, correlating motifs between the two goddesses – rescue, eel relations, the coconut tree – point to deeper, more complex currents of cultural significance. Because these correlations deviate dramatically from apparently binary ‘norms’ (Sina’s mildness for example versus Nafanua’s ferocity), they serve symbolically to highlight core values and dynamics of complementarity in Samoan culture.

For example, both Sina and Nafanua share the motif of rescue, specifically that of women rescuing men.332 In Samoan culture, this motif correlates with the notion of feagaiga, complementary relations, as exemplified in the reciprocal relationship between sisters and brothers. Other expressions of this complementary bond ideally mark relations between women and men, high chiefs and orators, mana (intrinsic–static power) and pule (extrinsic–kinetic power).333

That both Sina and Nafanua are centrally engaged in rescuing others, and specifically men in Sina’s case, evokes the nature of gender relations in Samoan culture. Since these relations are ideally marked by complementarity, they provide a kind of social corollary for the balancing of oppositions in society as a whole. The cultural bond of feagaiga can thus be understood as analogous to the mythical bond between the two goddesses, Sina and Nafanua, and those they rescue. For it is as women, however preternatural,334 that they enact appropriate socio-cultural behaviours by providing aid to their brothers, husbands and families.

The second correlation between the Sina and Nafanua narratives involves motifs of the eel paramour and eel father, respectively. In Sina’s case, the eel paramour illustrates a kind of ‘higher’ order of romantic love, in which sexuality is sublimated – or “mediated”335 – by the willing sacrifice (of the eel) into a symbolic (and asexual) form of fecundity, that is, the coconut tree. As the tree provides food, clothing and shelter, an association between the Sina–eel motif and life-giving, nurturing nature is clear. For Nafanua, on the other hand, the eel–father motif represents incest, that is, a forbidden (and perhaps ‘lower’) form of love. Within the narrative, the result of this incest between the eel–man (Saveasi’uleo) and his human niece Tilafaiga is Nafanua herself. However, as she will become one of the most powerful figures in Samoan history, Nafanua can hardly be seen to symbolise a sanction on incest. On the contrary, Nafanua is stunningly successful. The point here is that her ‘success’ is of a qualitatively different kind than Sina’s, but significant nonetheless.

The third bridging motif shared by Sina and Nafanua is that of the coconut plant, a link I find both curious and noteworthy. For Sina, the association is with sublimated ‘incest’ (that is, a lower or ‘dark’ impulse), which is purified through sacrifice and the provision of sustenance for her beloved people and progeny. With Nafanua, the coconut plant functions as a badge of identity, as well as medium of purification. The correlation symbolically linking the two goddesses strikes me as almost uncanny – they otherwise seem to be dramatically marked by binary opposites, and yet they are profoundly joined in yet another important dimension. I would suggest, then, that what appears on the surface as antithetical between the personae of Sina and Nafanua is closer to a kind of complementary dualism, and is perhaps the key to understanding them as symbols of overlapping, as opposed to mutually exclusive, categories. In other words, Sina and Nafanua together represent a holistic female identity, which balances many aspects of divinity, however contradictory or seemingly incompatible at first glance. Such a complex notion of female identity, which incorporates both oppositional and correlative traits, corresponds directly to Mother Goddess figures elsewhere – whether she is called Magna Mater, Great Mother, Gaia, Ishtar, Isis, Kali or Athena – all of whom precede the patriarchal Judeo-Christian god Yahweh, by centuries, if not millennia.

Clearly there is a vast, untapped treasure in the mythology and traditional lore of Samoan culture. If Samoa is to continue moving forward, with wisdom and strength, into an ever more challenging future, she must confront and heal the wounds of the past, most notably the suppression of her indigenous traditions by Judeo-Christian missionaries in the 19th century. Reclaiming and restoring those traditions would not entail the destruction of (or even a frontal attack on) Christian beliefs and practices. Instead it would involve establishing a framework of meaning to contextualise the belief systems that came to us from abroad. As with living organisms in a healthy biosphere, such a framework would provide the occasion and material for cultural cross-pollination of a kind that marks the highest degrees of civilisation.

As we, citizens of the 21st century, bear witness to the global decline of monolithic, patriarchal models of dominion over imagined ‘others’, we must change our ways if we are to survive. The violations we perpetrate daily (against our planet; against others through acts of terrorism, coercion and greed; against ourselves through abuse of any kind), reveal the utter failure of an adversarial worldview. Lacking in that ethos is an understanding that the ‘other’ is actually a projection of ourselves. Like the dark side of the moon, the two are inseparable. From Sina and Nafanua, we might learn that we each have inside us both light and dark, male and female, warrior and maiden selves. From Sina and Nafanua, emblems of an entire mythological universe that sustained Samoa for millennia before the arrival of Christianity, we might learn that there is in fact a rich field of spiritual wisdom awaiting our thoughtful, informed attention. As Tui Atua reminds us, there might be something of great value in the “old religious culture that we could learn from and take pride in”. Out of loyalty to our forebears, if for no other reason, we can and must rise to the occasion of reflection and open dialogue about all the streams of religious thought, ancient and modern, that flow into the ocean that is Samoan culture.

306 As elsewhere in the colonised world, Western capitalism has served to exacerbate the deleterious effects of Christianity vis-à-vis the systematic undermining of indigenous epistemologies, values and social structures. Max Weber’s (1905) magisterial work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, frames and establishes the argument with its path-breaking analysis. While the interlocking mores of Christianity and Capitalism continue to wreak havoc on the indigenous epistemology of Samoa, the scope of this brief essay is necessarily limited to the former as a catalysing vehicle of cultural trauma. As religion codifies belief, with profound implications on epistemology, this would seem to be a likely first step in unpacking the complex effects of western colonialism on indigenous worldviews. See Weber, M. (1930). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (P. Talcott, Trans.). New York, U.S.A.: Scribner’s.

307 Neumann, E. (1955). The great mother: An analysis of the archetype. (R. Manheim, Trans.). New York, U.S.A.: Pantheon.

308 Motz, L. (1997). The Faces of the Goddess. New York, U.S.A.: Oxford University Press, pp. 5–23.

309 Beckwith, M. (1940). Hawaiian Mythology. Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawai’i Press. Retrieved from http://www.sacred-texts.com/pac/hm/index.htm. See also, Luomala, K. (1986). Voices on the wind: Polynesian myths and chants. Honolulu, Hawaii: Bishop Museum Press.

310 Eliade, M. (1974). Gods, goddesses, and myths of creation. New York, U.S.A.: Harper and Row. See also, Eliade, M. (1967). Myths, dreams, and mysteries. New York, U.S.A.: Harper and Row.

311 Malinowski, B. (1954). Magic, science and religion: And other essays. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, pp. 101, 107–8, 117. See also, Malinowski, B. (1961). Argonauts of the Western Pacific. London: E.P. Dutton, pp. 303, 328.

312 In this essay I employ the more encompassing term ‘spirituality’ over ‘religion’ as the former denotes a more holistic, less bureaucratic modality than that characteristic of most religions.

313 Campbell. J. (1968). The hero with a thousand faces. Princeton, U.S.A.: Princeton University Press. See also, Campbell, J. (1959). The masks of God: Primitive mythology. New York, U.S.A.: Viking Press.

314 The term ‘motif’ in this essay is drawn from conventional folkloristic sources, such as Kirtley, B. (1971). A Motif-Index of Traditional Polynesian Narratives. Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawai’i Press, as well as Thompson, S. (1928). Motif-index of folk-literature. Bloomington, U.S.A.: Indiana University Press.

315 Turner, G. (1884). Samoa: A hundred years ago and long before. London, England: Macmillan. Retrieved from Project Gutenberg Search, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14224/14224-h/14224-h.htm#i2HCH0017.

316 The connotation of reflected light here with Sina vis-à-vis lunar/solar polarities correlates nicely with the key Samoan notion of feagaiga (complementarity), as illustrated by the Sina/Nafanua dyad discussed in the following pages. Schoeffel, P. (1978). Gender, Status and Power in Samoa. Canberra Anthropology, 1(2), 69–81. See also, Shore, P. (1981). Sexuality and gender in Samoa: missed conceptions. In S.B.Ortner and H. Whitehead (Eds.), Sexual meanings: the cultural construction of gender and sexuality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 200–201.

317 The term “tale type” is drawn from Aarne, A., and Thompson, S. (1928). The types of the folktale: A classification and bibliography. Bloomington, U.S.A.: Indiana University Press.

318 Wright, G. and Fitisemanu, T. (1980). The Sacred Hens. Honolulu, Hawaii: Conch Press.

319 Stuebel, C. cited in Nelson, O. F. (1925a). Origin of the cocoanut [sic] tree. Journal of the Polynesian society, 34, 132–134. See also, Nelson, O. F. (1925b). Sina and her eel. Journal of the Polynesian society, 34, 142–145. See also, Department of Education. (1975). Tala a Samoa Anamua, Legendary Tales of Samoa. Educational Bilingual/Bicultural Project. Pago Pago: Department of Education, pp. 13–18.

320 Nelson, O. F. (1925a).

321 Wright and Fitisemanu (1980).

322 Herman, B. (Ed. and Trans.). (1903). Tales from Kraemer. (n.p). pp. 33–34, 37–40.

323 The “magical helper” represents one of Propp’s eight dramatis personae in Indo-European folktales. Propp, V. (1968). Morphology of the folktale (2nd ed.). Austin, U.S.A.: University of Texas Press, pp.79–80.

324 Here, the departures from European narrative paradigms, as initially established by early scholars such as Propp and others, are noteworthy. Not only does this particular hero (Sina) forego the return home (‘Hero returns’) upon the attainment of her goal (‘Solution’), she instead makes a new home in the faraway place of her quest, which moreover, is located in the underworld. Among the rich symbolic implications here is the notion of a non-binary underworld, which offers a viable alternative life-world to the one left behind. It also opens the possibilities of multiple life-worlds: if one can end up living happily under the sea, then why not in the sky, under the earth, or in some other dimension altogether? Here perhaps is a telling structural link between Sina and Nafanua, emblematic of Samoan worldview, in which any numbers of life-worlds can (and do) operate and interact at any given moment.

325 The saga of Tilafaiga and Taema, the illustrious twin sisters, precedes and lays the groundwork for Nafanua’s later ascendance in Samoan cultural history. From childhood, the adventurous girls travel the world performing feats such as introducing the art of tattooing to Samoa from Fiji, inventing the war club, inventing make-up and foretelling fortunes in war. Honoured in some districts as war goddesses, these precursors of Nafanua were esteemed elsewhere as powerful guardians of travellers. See Turner (1884), Ch. IV, p.33.

326 Fanua can mean either land or placenta, a telling linguistic glimmer of Samoan worldview.

327 Stuebel notes two war clubs: “Faauliulito…Things are not getting any better”; and “Fesilafai…Things are going to get better”; and one oar: “Ulimasao…Don’t let yourself be carried away by anger”. Stuebel, C. (1976). Tala o le vavau: Myths and legends of Samoa. (B. Herman, Trans.). Wellington, New Zealand: A.H. & A.W. Reed, p.50. See also Sio, G.P.S. (1984). Tapasā o folauga i aso afā: Compass of sailing in storm. Apia: University of the South Pacific Press, p.113, who notes four clubs, with the same names as above, plus one additional: “Fa’amategatau”. According to Schultz, E. (1950). Proverbial expressions of the Samoans. The Journal of the Polynesian Society, 59 (3), 207–231, the two war clubs were called “Fa’auliulito” and “Fesilafa’i” and the canoe paddle, “Ulimasao” [steer safely]. Retrieved fromhttp://www.jps.auckland.ac.nz/document/Volume_59_1950/Volume_59,_No._3/Proverbial_expressions_of_the_Samoans,_by_E._Schultz,_p_207–231.

328 Sio (1984), p.116.

329 Stuebel (1976), p.44.

330 During the reallocation of political power among the high chiefs, Nafanua prophesies the coming of Christianity, in connection with the future ascendance of the Malietoa title. Meleisea, M. (1987). Lagaga: a short history of Western Samoa. Suva, Fiji: University of the South Pacific, p. 230.

332 One noteworthy aspect of this motif is its reversal of the conventional casting of heroes as primarily male in western mythology.

333 Shore, B. (1982). Sala’ilua: A Samoan mystery. New York, U.S.A.: Columbia University Press.

334 I use this word purposefully to indicate Sina and Nafanua’s dual status as both natural and supernatural, something beyond natural/mundane, but still functioning in the human world to varying degrees.

335 Levi-Strauss, C. (1979). The Structural Study of Myth. In W. Lessa, and E. Vogt (Eds.), Reader in comparative religion (pp.562–574). New York, U.S.A.: Harper and Row.