Chapter 36

I would like to open by first explaining the Samoan saying quoted above. This refers metaphorically to the story of Sina and the Eel.439 Fusiga refers to the packing, that is, the husk that surrounds the coconut. Fisiga refers to the process of dehusking. Niusina is the white coconut inside the husk. Inside the white coconut is deliciously nutritious coconut milk and the equally nutritious and edible soft white flesh. The phrase is interpreted as: It is not the protective wrapping of the husk, or the dehusking, but the coconut inside that is core.

The mythological story of Sina and the Eel is well known to Samoans and to others in the Pacific. In the development of proverbs such as this, ancient Samoans were very conscious of the music in words and liked to play on it (for example, fusiga, fisiga, niusina), and as well on the intellectual and allegorical beauty of metaphor, which often drew on mythology. These are the pearls of tomorrow that began yesterday.

‘Tomorrow began yesterday’ captures the theme of this essay. It is a phrase from our Marist mission document,440 which indicates that ministry and mission move towards an unknown future. This phrase started from my attempt to juxtapose Tui Atua’s Samoan indigenous religious reference with the Marist Charism and Christian spirituality.441 ‘Tomorrow began yesterday’ also says to me that I cannot minister in my teaching profession to Samoan children, without appreciating or understanding that which is spoken of in “Whispers and Vanities”. In my view, my ministry is shallow without it.

I quote a story from a school newsletter prepared by the principal of Marist College Emerald, in Australia:

Many of us have played the game Chinese whispers as children, sat in a circle and whispered a sentence to our neighbour. Generally the outcome is a distorted and incoherent mix of key words. So it can also be with that most common of pastimes, ‘having a chat’ to a friend. Casual conversations that fill us in on how others are going, the weather and general goings on are the social glue which holds communities together. However, I’m sure none of us are immune to the odd descent into gossip.

The little tale below is a cautionary reminder about the dangers of ‘believing everything you hear’. In ancient Greece (469–399BC), Socrates was widely lauded for his wisdom.

One day the great philosopher came upon an acquaintance who ran up to him excitedly and said, “Socrates, do you know what I just heard about one of your students?”

“Wait a moment,” Socrates replied. “Before you tell me I’d like you to pass a little test. It’s called the Triple Filter Test”.

“That’s right”, Socrates continued. “Before you talk to me about my student, let’s take a moment to filter what you are going to say. The first filter is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell is true?”

“All right”, said Socrates. “So you don’t really know if it’s true or not. Now let’s try the second filter, the filter of goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about my student something good?”

“So”, Socrates continued, “you want to tell me something bad about him, even though you’re not certain it’s true?”

Socrates continued. “You may still pass the test though, because there is a third filter – the filter of usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about my student going to be useful to me?”

“Well”, concluded Socrates, “if what you want to tell me is neither True nor Good nor even Useful, why tell it to me at all?”

Sometimes I need to remind myself of these famous three filters. Hearing bad news about someone is much more interesting than good news. Even in a Christian community we need to be reminded to ‘look for the best’ or to ‘search for the core elements’ in our cultures and not to enjoy the possible titillation of useless, untrue or ill-founded tales that may be circumnavigating our communities, towns and country.

Tui Atua’s essay “Whispers and Vanities” provides an opportunity to continue to search for the core elements of the fa’asamoa and of Samoa’s indigenous religious reference, and to do so through the ‘Triple Filter’. In my view, this principle of ‘looking for the best’ (that which is true, good and useful) has helped create a framework of Samoan spirituality that informs my Christian ministry.

Most Samoans are affiliated with or members of a Christian denomination and have integrated, to a large degree, church and fa’asamoa practices. It is difficult in contemporary Samoan life to separate church matters from everyday living concerns. So much has the Christian church influenced Samoan thinking and practice that it has successfully ingrained itself in the belief and value systems of Samoans, their theology and morality. The Christian church has contributed immensely to Samoan civil society, and will continue to do so. In the recent past, and today, the church has distanced itself from some ‘old core’ pre-missionary Samoan spirituality elements. This has created a degree of suspicion, even amnesia, around these pre-missionary beliefs and practices. For some Samoans, it has created a sense of guilt, as society deems such practices inappropriate, dishonourable or just wrong (heathen, pagan or even satanic) for this day and age.

It has been said that Christianity, through the movement of Christian missionaries, brought Samoa into ‘enlightenment from the dark’, saving our souls and teaching us the ways of civility. This legacy includes ideas of sin and guilt, associated with Victorian, colonial German and New Zealand cultural attitudes to sex, gender roles and responsibilities, and religion. This undermined pre-colonial Samoan values and either replaced them or transformed them into something else. Tui Atua suggests that: “We have yet to find a way to move beyond our Augustinian guilt so that we speak of our ancient religious beliefs without fear of reprimand”. He challenges the religious ministry and religious educators to reflect on this. As a Catholic religious lay brother443 who teaches and ministers, I am told that ‘one can apply an already existing literature, experience, history, mythology, charism and body of knowledge as tools to go into the depths of the unknown or into the state of the unconscious”.444 This resonates with Tui Atua’s explication of the Samoan principles tofā sa’ili and moe manatunatu (which I explore later). He suggests we can use these as tools to search in a dialogical way with our spiritual selves for effective ways to inform and/or re-create conversations, programmes and pedagogical practices; to delve equally ‘into the depths of the unknown’. The seeds of God’s love and revelation were, as Tui Atua brings to light, here in Samoa before Christianity arrived. They have grown with the people and will remain long after we leave this world. As Tui Atua states:

In searching for truth in our religious cultures, I find it impossible to believe that the religions of my forebears during pre-Christian times were not invested with the wisdom and divinity of a loving God. I cannot bring myself to believe that my Christian God, a loving God, didn’t speak or connect with my people for all those 3000-odd years before Christianity [came to Samoa]. It seems a gratuitous insult to both God and my forebears to assume that there was a disconnect between them for all that time.

My theological reflection of Jesus is that he/she represents a God who is continually unconditional and loving to all creation – including those people who have not heard the gospel.445 God’s unconditional love can be found in the way pre-Christian Samoan indigenous or ancestral gods were personified in indigenous or ancestral practices of worship and ethics. So while I find that Christian theology has 2000 years of solidity (that is, since the Apostle Paul), in which I find much truth, good and usefulness as a framework for worship and meditation, I acknowledge that it has both helped and not helped my understanding of Samoan indigenous spirituality and religion. The vehicle for much of my religious ministry lies in my vocation as a teacher. As GK Chesterton says, “The object of opening the mind, like opening the mouth, is to shut it on something solid”.446

Christian theology, informed by a systematic methodology of searching for and establishing religious doctrine, articulated for Europeans a religious belief system that was spread (mainly by English and French missionaries) through ministries of teaching (evangelising) throughout the world, including the Pacific. These teachings were not always rejected; often they were warmly received. While these teachings initially rejected pre-missionary Samoan culture and politics, and to some extent exacerbated the civil wars of 19th century Samoa, they eventually came to inform peace-keeping. But, as Tui Atua writes, Christian theology also relegated Samoan mythology (our fagogo) to a position of whispers, which like fables were told and heard as curious mementos from the past, not really relevant to the present.

Teaching is the apostolate of my ministry. It is important to note that ministry is not reserved for ordained ministers; rather it is a call that is available to all peoples. An example of this is the ministry of being mother, wife, husband, father and other noble roles. The point here is that all tofiga (vocations) are a call from God and not necessarily reserved for ordained ministers.

Earlier in my mission work in Aotearoa New Zealand, I taught Māori and other ethnic minority students. Understanding Māori spirituality and kaupapa Māori theory was key to this work. In a land where I was not indigenous, and where at that time our Polynesian brothers and sisters were disenfranchised in more ways than one, Māori theology and spirituality helped me to understand and appreciate Māori culture; guided my involvement in Māori ministry; and also helped me to gain a better understanding of my identity as a New Zealand-born Pasifika447 person. I found a methodology and framework located initially in the Catholic-Māori theological works of Fathers Michael Shirrers OP and Pa Henare Tate of Te Rarawa,448and then in the works of the late Bishop Takuira Mariu SM of Tūwharetoa and in Māori-Anglican perspectives from Canon Hone Kaa and Selwyn Muru.

Pope John Paul II recognised Māori identity and spirituality, and its contribution to the church, in his statement to the New Zealand Māori Catholic community during his 1986 visit: “It is as Maori that God called you to be members of the universal Catholic Church”.449 The Pope, on behalf of the Catholic Church, recognised here the legitimacy of the inheritance and heritage of the Māori people. I take this as a Pasifika person in my calling, my ministry with our young people today. Ministering to Samoan young men and women requires a spiritual, theological and cultural reference that can draw out the essence of what is Samoan for them, similar to my work with Māori spirituality. Teaching Samoan young people in Christian and secular education in Samoa is a ministry and vocation that requires such a reference. “Whispers and Vanities” offers insight into that reference and the ongoing need for discernment and reflection.

School teachers act in loco parentis for the hours that children are in school. Teachers are also custodians of knowledge. All teachers not only learn and pass on their knowledge and values, but are also committed to be in solidarity with their students, as a parent would be with their child. In this sense, school teachers have a duty of care for the learning of each child who comes into the classroom. In a teacher’s classroom, the child’s welfare is sacred; any breach of this duty affects their tofi (sacred designation, appointment or inheritance) and mana as teachers.

Teaching as a tofi or tofiga requires sacrifice. Ministering through teaching involves sacrifice in terms of foregoing higher salaries, particularly in the South Pacific islands. As a Samoan Kiwi450 working in Samoa, I believe there is a ‘continuous reciprocity’ in the classroom similar to that in the Samoan āiga between elders and children, such as the gifting between my Samoan father, our family and me. Samoan families sacrifice for the wellbeing of the whole. My father in his reciprocity and sacrifice provided the raison d’etre for my ministry. Tui Atua picks up on this when he says:

I am not an individual, because I share my tofi (an inheritance) with my family, my village … I belong to my family, and my family belongs to me … I belong to my village and my village belongs to me … this is the essence of my sense of belonging.451

Without the sustenance of faith and belonging to my Samoan family and community, the tofi aspect of my ministry in Samoa (or anywhere else for that matter) could become just another job or career, vulnerable to binds and persuasions. In other words, the tofi of being a teacher in the sense I am describing demands the kind of sacrifice found within the service we give to our families. And like that service, our service in ministering as teachers is susceptible to whispering and vanity. Tui Atua states that whispers “can include those … that are life-affirming, love-affirming and faith-affirming, such as a mother talking in loving whispers to her unborn child”. They have “elements of love and awe that motivate and define [them] … implicit in tala tu’umumusu, that is in the culture of whispers engaged by Samoan custodians when passing on sacred knowledge”. The whispers of tala taumusumusu, those “usually motivated by arrogance, jealousy or spite”, together with these kinds of nurturing whispers, are worth reflecting on for their pedagogical significance.

Students under the guidance of their school teachers learn best through life-affirming, love-affirming and faith-affirming recognition and communication. Such an environment grows naturally confident and inquisitive learners. Tui Atua discusses the importance of authenticating knowledge and notes that there existed a process among Samoan traditional knowledge custodians where arguments were scrutinised for factual evidence, using a triangulation of known nomenclature, genealogies, oral history, existing place names and so on. This alludes to the existence of a teaching-learning pedagogy, methodology and ‘schooling’ system that characterised my father’s raison d’etre mentioned earlier – one that includes both tala tu’umumusu and tala taumusumusu. Although Tui Atua suggests exclusivity in this pedagogy, this was not without reasonable cause or purpose, given the context. If tala taumusumusu is understood as part of God’s ‘prompts’ to participate in dialogue, then whether people understand, identify or respond to the ‘prompt’ is immaterial. The prompt is still a prompt from God. It is for us to determine what to do with it.

The message I take from “Whispers and Vanities” about teaching (and especially where teaching is considered a vocation) is that for Samoa and the learning of things Samoan, tomorrow’s teaching began yesterday. The sacrifice of today’s ministry is tomorrow’s gain. The tofi of a teacher in the teacher-student relationship is one of working alongside; working in a ‘bon enfant’ brotherly relationship with students. Therefore, it is as ‘brother’ (in the Catholic and pedagogical sense) that I teach and learn with the students in my classroom.452 Tui Atua’s conceptual tools of tofā sa’ili, tuā’oi and mamalu have been useful in my reflections on this.

Tui Atua refers to tofā sa’ili (search for wisdom) as instrumental for describing a method and a journey in search of core elements: “Tofā sa’ili is a Samoan concept denoting man reaching out for wisdom, knowledge, prudence, insight, judgement, through reflection, meditation, prayer, dialogue, experiment, practice, performance and observance. Tofā means wisdom. Sa’ili means ‘to search’”.453 May I suggest that the result of tofā sa’ili is, as Hawking mentions, that “we and our models are both part of the universe we are describing”.454 Tui Atua is describing a Samoan universe in a way that recognises that we who write about this universe cannot extricate ourselves from being a part of it. The tofā sa’ili or search for wisdom that we undertake as teachers or ‘brothers’ is premised on this.

Tofā sa’ili incorporates an active state of movement that can be linked to Freire’s notion of transformative praxis.455 Together with the conditioned experience of moe manatunatu456 (dream dialogue), tofā sa’ili offers a reflective process and a state of being that draws on the continual praxis of regular spiritual communication with God. It allows, as Tui Atua says, for, “the discernment of message and the apprehension of meaning and the sharing of insights and perspectives … [for the] healing of the body, mind and soul”.457 These concepts characterise Samoan indigenous spirituality as grounded and organic.

The tuā’oi (boundary) between man and all other living things is tapu and mamalu (sacred) in Samoan indigenous spirituality, because of the “shared divinity with God Tagaloa”. This boundary assumes an innate relationship between man/woman and God. The priestly class and higher ranked matai (chiefs) were treated with respect and considered tapu and mamalu because of their perceived closeness to God or the gods. In school ministry in Samoa, for a long time now, religious priests, nuns and brothers have been held in similar esteem.

Until about thirty years ago, most Catholic schools were run and taught almost exclusively by these ‘people of the cloth’. Notwithstanding some harsh teaching methods, many ‘old boys’ still consider their former teachers tapu and of considerable mamalu. While it must be recognised that everyone has a mamalu (spiritual dignity or mana) quality within them – which may be linked to the tenet of Genesis that ‘we are all made in the image of God’ – there is a public privileging of the mamalu of ‘people of the cloth’. In our pursuit of tofā sa’ili, and our recognition of tuā’oi and mamalu, we ought not to suggest that the Samoan form of spirituality rivals (or is better than) Christianity or Judaism, as if there cannot be an accommodation. Rather, we must look for what we share in common as children of God. Tui Atua locates this accommodation in the tofā sa’ili (dialogue) needed to recognise our indigenous spirituality, but also in our tuā’oi with the environment and its tapu and mamalu qualities:

To dialogue with the indigenous reference is to first understand what that reference is. It is to explore without apology its core values, beliefs and practices … I share not only my history but me … The world needs a culture of dialogue but one that can accept that the problems of taking responsibility for protecting our environment are the problems of all.458

This process recognises our fagogo and their significance to understanding our Samoan spirituality.

Fagogo are stories that have moral, educational and entertainment value.459 In the preface to the fagogo about the mating of the woman and the Sun, Tui Atua explains what custodians impart when they tell fagogo, for example, the titillating story of a human mating with a deity. Here, Socrates’ three filters of truth, goodness and usefulness can be applied. In explaining the value of fagogo, Tui Atua says:

In telling this story the custodian imparts two key things: first, narrative affirmation and respect for the familial relationship between humans and the cosmos; second, a moral narrative about male and female relations (my emphasis).

Meta-narratives promote the moral imperatives of a society. Fagogo offer teachers a tool to minister to and reach the minds of those they have the privilege to teach. Trying to understand my Samoan spirituality has led me on a journey of reading Samoan religious and spiritual references such as those drawn from fagogo. These have assisted me in the reading of my Christian theology. As I discover more and more about both religious cultures, I have been able to explain, teach, dialogue, debate, discuss and inform my students accordingly.

Where we have had the privilege of learning from great teachers and students, we afford them great respect. It is a favourite pastime of many to reminisce about their teachers and students. Stories – tala tu’umumusu and tala taumusumusu – abound about both. Some of these stories, whispered or not, turn into great fagogo. Such fagogo are wonderful teaching tools, not just because they convey profound messages about our lives and aspirations, but also because they offer us relief from the mundane and the serious, both of which all too often undermine the fun and magic of learning and teaching.

God’s presence is universal and so can be found in places as remote or small as Samoa, or as internationally renowned as Jerusalem. In Samoa there is a place that Samoans call Mataolemu (the eye of the volcano). Like Jerusalem’s wall it is a sacred place. Rituals are performed in recognition of its sacredness. When I visited both these places, I was struck with awe and immediately felt the presence of something beyond me. Mataolemu had a profound impact on me as a Samoan. I am comfortable to say that having experienced both these places, I believe that the God of Christianity and the gods of pre-Christianity, such as Tagaloa of Samoa, are one and the same. Many may not like to see it that way, but our mythological characters, gods and deities do personify the tuā’oi, mana, tapu and mamalu of God’s presence, spirituality and image in us – in all of us, pre-Christian and Christian. In places such as Mataolemu and Jerusalem’s wall, we see God’s work and feel His or Her presence.

During the writing of this essay, my ministry has been intertwined with sorting out violent, inter-school fighting between students from my school and others, in and around the Apia marketplace.460 Reflecting on “Whispers and Vanities”, I can’t help but wonder why this fighting is taken up by boys schooled in a Christian environment, in a country that is overwhelmingly Christian. I wonder about the lives of these young boys and how it is that they come to school with no apparent tendency towards violence, yet after leaving our school gates become embroiled in violent, gang-like behaviour. And I wonder whether instruction in the kind of Samoan spirituality implicit in “Whispers and Vanities” may help address the violence.

Reading the fagogo of the mating of the woman and the Sun, and of the sa’ē, I wonder whether the sexual assertiveness and bodiliness described in these may have a positive influence over our young school girls. I think of the careless decision by a naive Catholic school girl, who took a picture of her exposed body for her boyfriend and sent it to him via cyberspace through her cell phone.461 Unfortunately, and to her and her family’s great shame, her boyfriend was unable to control its public dissemination.

What can we draw from these fagogo as lessons for our young today? While perhaps unlikely to be practised today, the sa’ē when understood in context can offer insight into our vanities, especially when it comes to sex and sexuality. Māori girls who seem very quiet in the classroom are often transformed when performing their tribal haka (dance). They seem transfixed, similar to the young dancers of the mwaneaba of South Tarawa, Kiribati. What causes such a transformation? Moving beyond our whispers and fears to a wider and deeper view of one’s relationship with the spiritual realm, “Whispers and Vanities” is affirming and reassuring. In a Samoa that has accepted the practices of Christianity at the expense of its own indigenous spirituality, it will be difficult to explain why there persists a profound spiritual presence in places like Mataolemu. But explain we must.

In my formal and informal training as a missioner and teacher, I have been taught that to accept my Christian beliefs I must discard the thought of an extant indigenous (non-Christian) belief system. Yet both Christian and indigenous religious belief systems evangelise in their own ways, because each have equally and legitimately witnessed the presence of God in their respective places on earth. I want to end by suggesting that Jesus’ evangelising and experience of God-search, or what we might call tofā sa’ili, was a two-way interaction inclusive of many ways of knowing; many faiths. The last thing I want to do in my ministry and teaching is to teach and minister from a position of displacement.

As Samoan Christians, understanding Jesus’ profound promise that he is the way, the truth and the life means being able to employ without bias Socrates’ triple filter of truth, goodness and usefulness. It means realising that we must minister and teach Samoan young people in such a way that gets at the niusina that is core to their being.

438 Many thanks to His Highness Tui Atua for offering an explanation of this Samoan proverb.

439 See Tui Atua, T.T.T.E. (2009a). Water and the Samoan indigenous reference. In T. Suaalii-Sauni, I. Tuagalu, N. Kirifi-Alai, N. Fuamatu (Eds.), Su’esu’e Manogi: In search of fragrance: Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Ta’isi and the Samoan indigenous reference (pp.199–206). Le Papaigalagala, Samoa: The Centre for Samoan Studies, National University of Samoa. See also, Charlot, J. (1988). Some uses of chant in Samoan prose. The Journal of American Folklore, 101, 302–311.

440 Aotearoa New Zealand Marist Brothers Province of New Zealand, Fiji, Kiribati, Samoa. (2011, January). Marist Newsletter. Marist Publications.

441 Samoan indigenous religious reference is used interchangeably with Tui Atua’s phrase ‘Samoan indigenous reference’.

442 May 2011 Newsletter. Mrs Marie Martin, School Principal of Marist College Emerald, Queensland: Lavalla Publications, Sydney Province of the Marist Brothers.

443 ‘Religious’ is a term used in Catholic terminology to refer to one who has a vowed life within the constitutions, rule and spirit/charism of that particular religious order; it is often used to indicate a brother, nun or priest of a religious order. The lay brother is non-clerical, although belonging to a religious order of teaching brothers constituted by the Catholic Church. In this case the author is a member of the ‘Little Brothers of Mary’, better known as the Marist Brothers of the schools founded by a Marist priest St Marcellin Champagnat in South Eastern France in 1817.

444 This was a teaching used by one of the Brothers during my undergraduate years.

445 Pa Henare Tate and Father Michael Shirrers OP (1991, April). Lecture Notes in Maori Theology. Te Unga Waka Marae, Epsom, Auckland.

446 Cited in Tui Atua, T.T.T.E. (2009b). Le taulasea e, ia mua’i fo’ia lou ma’i: Physician, heal thyself: Planning for the next generation. In T. Suaalii-Sauni, I. Tuagalu, N. Kirifi-Alai, N. Fuamatu (Eds.), Su’esu’e Manogi: In search of fragrance: Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Ta’isi and the Samoan indigenous reference (pp.142–152, p.145). Le Papaigalagala, Samoa: The Centre for Samoan Studies, National University of Samoa.

447 Pasifika means to be from the Pacific, notably Polynesia. In my case, I have Niuean and Samoan heritage but am New Zealand born, and with a developed New Zealand heritage.

448 See Tate, H.A. (2010). Towards some foundations of a systematic Maori theology. (PhD Thesis, Melbourne College of Divinity, Australia).

449 Quote by John Paul II (1986) cited in The Catholic Church in Aotearoa New Zealand. (n.d.) Catholic Māori. Retrieved from http://www.catholic.org.nz/our-story/dsp_default.cfm. http://www.catholic.org.nz/nzcbc/dsp-default.cfm?loadref=22.

450 ‘Kiwi’ is a colloquial term used to refer to New Zealanders.

451 Tui Atua, T.T.T.E. (2009c). In search of meaning, nuance and metaphor in social policy. In T. Suaalii-Sauni, I. Tuagalu, N. Kirifi-Alai, N. Fuamatu (Eds.), Su’esu’e Manogi: In search of fragrance: Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Ta’isi and the Samoan indigenous reference (pp.79–92, p.80). Le Papaigalagala, Samoa: The Centre for Samoan Studies, National University of Samoa.

452 This comes from my understanding of the Marist Spirituality of the early French Brothers, in the districts of La Valla en Gier, Le Rosey, St. Chamond (L’Hermitage), Tarantaise, Marlhes, Les Maisonnettes, Bourg Argental (south-eastern french hamlets and towns where St Marcellin and the early Brothers started their schools, and their relationship with the local people and their children) and other places where the Marist project initially took shape from 1817 to the present time.

453 Tui Atua, T.T.T.E. (2009d). Bio-ethics and the Samoan indigenous reference. In T. Suaalii-Sauni, I. Tuagalu, N. Kirifi-Alai, N. Fuamatu (Eds.), Su’esu’e Manogi: In search of fragrance: Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Ta’isi and the Samoan indigenous reference (pp.173–188, p.183). Le Papaigalagala, Samoa: The Centre for Samoan Studies, National University of Samoa.

455 Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Harmondsworth, U.K: Penguin Books.

456 Moe manatunatu is a time to retreat and separate; to go to reflect, think and discern. It was a time for matai and elderly men /leaders to be alone to think, and to converse with the gods.

457 Tui Atua (2009b), p.151.

458 Tui Atua, T.T.T.E. (2009a), pp.205–6.

459 See Tui Atua, T.T.T.E. (2011, July 5). Sufiga o le tuaoi: negotiating boundaries – from Beethoven to Tupac, the Pope to the Dalai Lama. Keynote address at the Samoa Conference II, National University of Samoa, Le Papaigalagala Campus, Vaivase, Apia, Samoa. Retrieved from http://www.head-of-state-samoa.ws/speeches_pdf/HOS%20NUS%20Keynote%20Address.pdf.

460 See Samoa News staff. (2012, August 13). Brawl between Avele and St. Joseph students leads to some being charged. Samoa News. Retrieved from http://www.samoanews.com/?q=node/7814.

461 See Field, M. (2011, August 12). Catholic school girl’s sex causes turmoil in Samoa. Retrieved from http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/south-pacific/5436451/Catholic-schoolgirls-sex-causes-Samoa-turmoil.