Uesifili Unasa
A boundary is not that at which something stops ... boundary is that from which something begins its presencing.
Martin Heidegger
In the paper ‘In Search of Meaning, Nuance and Metaphor in Social Policy’, His Highness Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Ta’isi Efi writes as he speaks - with the measured gentleness of the wise old man that he is, and the eloquence of the Samoan storytelling tradition in which he is ineluctably embedded. There is a great deal in this paper which continues to stimulate my thinking. Tui Atua’s personal and moving recollection of Samoan life and tradition resonates with my own childhood memories growing up in the village and, as of late, observing my elderly parents’ emotional reminiscing of Samoan life triggered by a pese (song) on the radio or the aroma of a boxed umu (traditional Samoan cooking oven)1 from a newly arrived Samoan relative. Tui Atua’s vision points to ways of being Samoan appropriate to the twenty-first century. He rightly recognises the connections of family genealogy and stories to the understanding of Samoan identity and meaning, which without, will make our future very bleak.
However, I want to push in two other directions stemming from Tui Atua’s thoughts, but which might not go where he intended. In the first instance, I want to come at this from a theological perspective, as it is the only one I can adequately speak from, but also because I am convinced the tradition might offer an alternative perspective to what might otherwise be an academic exercise. Secondly, any talk about Samoan cultural identity as being central to the articulation of meaning and understanding of Samoan people is highly contestable, if not problematic. The notion presupposes a pre-described Samoan cultural identity which is immune to change. As one of the characters in Hanif Kureishi’s (1995) novel Black Album put it, ‘there was no fixed self; surely our several selves melted and mutated daily?’ (p. 274).
Samoan cultural identity is no longer one thing or another. It is intrinsically multi-layered as it seeks to establish a ground of affinity. From the perspective of biblical scholarship, the prominent post-colonialist Sugirtharajah (2002, p. 90) pointed out one of the basic assumptions biblical hermeneutics makes when engaging in interpretive activity is that personal and communal life is in a fixity state. Although Sugirtharajah himself is a staunch advocate of contextual and indigenous hermeneutics, he is of the view this is only possible if people are living settled lives, share the same values and meanings, and are rooted, localised, integrated in self-contained communities.
In today’s globalised world where there is a constant movement of Samoan people caused by family conflicts, economic and education reasons, finding cultural-specific analogues can be difficult. The connections between the local Samoan culture, or the ‘vernacular’, in Sugirtharajah’s terminology, and the global is so enmeshed and engrained, it is becoming increasingly problematic to determine what is Samoan or non-Samoan. The Indian scholar Homi Bhabha, in his thought-provoking work The Location of Culture (1994), suggested there be a new place to explore identity. Bhabha refers to this new site of narration as the ‘space of liminality’, where the idea of ‘nationhood’, as defined by Western nationalism and imperialism, is not a fixed social formation but an ambivalent and vacillating representation of people. In the space of liminality, Bhabha argues, the homogenised nature of nation and culture gives way to the possibility of other narratives of the people and their differences. The dualistic thinking of ‘us’ and ‘them’ that sees the people and culture outside of the imagined community as ‘other’ becomes redundant. According to Bhabha, once it is acknowledged that the nation is the space of liminality, then ‘its difference’ is turned from the boundary ‘outside’ to its finitude ‘within’, and the threat of cultural difference is no longer a problem of ‘other’ people. It becomes a question of the otherness of the people-as-one. In the space of liminality different voices of the people emerge.
There are obvious parallels between post-colonial thinking and the issue of locating Samoan cultural identity. Samoan traditionalists have long held the view that Samoan culture and identity can only be defined and expressed in certain ways - theirs. Samoan cultural understandings and practices sanctioned by their brand2 of ‘tradition’ are readily embraced whilst anything and anyone that espouses something different are kept at a distance. Of course, globalisation and its undoubted impact on the coalitional and multi-layered nature of Samoan identities does not allow for such a simplistic scheme. The well-regarded Samoan writer Albert Wendt first articulated the changing Samoan cultural identity after the first wave of Samoan migration to New Zealand in the late 1950s. In his landmark novel Sons for the Return Home (1973), he highlighted the difficulty, even impossibility, of returning to the Island home that one has left. The narrative tells the story of a Samoan family who moves to New Zealand to educate the sons who, in their parents’ eyes, will one day return with the knowledge and skills to take up their place in Samoa. In the event of returning to their home village after a considerable period of time in New Zealand, the younger son discovers that the return home is a journey into exile. The romantic and idyllic village life of sun and fun his mother had faithfully recounted during their life in New Zealand was far removed from the reality he encountered on his return. Instead, the mosquitoes, flies and village uiga (behaviour, meanings), make him an outsider rather than one who has arrived home. At the close of the novel, the son makes the return to New Zealand where he is in mid-flight between Samoa and New Zealand. Neither at home in New Zealand, because of the imminent idea of always belonging somewhere else, and subsequently in Samoa, Wendt pointedly suggests the inhabitation of a home in the middle realm, a home that is a state of mind as much as a geographical or cultural location.
Moreover, the in-between-ness of Samoan meaning and identity or the ‘identity of undecidability’, as Bhabha calls it, is reality at the local level. In the New Zealand post migration experience, Jemaima Tiatia’s book Caught Between Two Cultures: A New Zealand Born Perspective (1998) tells of her journey to forge an identity out of the Samoan culture of her parents and her own New Zealand world where there was the:’... onerous responsibility to keep within the boundaries of Pacific Island cultures ... at the same time fit into the education system and New Zealand society at large which challenges them to adopt individualism, and to think of and behave contrary to the Island habitus of their home and church environment’ (p. 22).
Another young Samoan and rising theologian, Risati Ete, in a contribution to Clive Pearson’s Faith in a Hyphen: Cross-cultural theologies down under (2004), described it as traversing the inherent Samoan world and the immediate New Zealand one. Ete’s description of what is at the heart of the identity crisis is worth recounting here:
Life becomes an endeavour to succeed in both social entities, but the undertaking of one often means the deconstruction of the other. It is a constant struggle of communalism versus individualism, unquestioned obedience and respect versus critique, speaking in Samoan versus speaking in English, family and church obligations versus education and work, the faa-Samoa (sic) versus the Palagi way, waiting to be told what to do versus acting out of one’s own initiative. It is a world of disorientation and confusion, a world of low self-esteem and frustration. Who are we?
Are we New Zealanders or Samoans? Are we Samoan New Zealanders or New Zealand Samoans? We ask this because neither culture seems to embrace us unconditionally. One emphasizes (sic) our European ideologies; the other underlines our Samoan heritage. This is the world of the New Zealand-born Samoan generations, the world of the ugly duckling and the quacking swan (cited in Pearson, 2004, p. 47).
It would be a mistake, however, to think this interstitial existence was the sole preserve of the New Zealand-born Samoan generations. For the first wave of Samoan migrants who left their homeland, they were met with the tensions of practising an authentic faasamoa, Samoan ways, in the midst of an alien New Zealand culture. On one hand they tried to uphold an identity that had its roots in their Samoa village life. On the other, they welcomed the daily realities and the ‘what is’ of their New Zealand life and experience. In what has been loosely described as the faaniusila (New Zealand ways) they adapted, and in some cases substituted, faasamoa village practices for the practical and convenient. Hence, the evening prayers, dress code, chiefly hierarchy, patriarchal protocols and church affiliation of village life accommodated the need of an industrial and modern city. Subsequently, one of the lasting legacies of the faaniusila was the loss of the Samoan language amongst post-migration generations of Samoan children. To the majority of the Samoan migrants, proficiency in the English language paved the way to a prosperous and successful future for their children. Indeed, the encouragement of the English language within and beyond the home was a sure sign of adjustments to the local conditions. More importantly, it was the touchstone in the shaping of the New Zealand-Samoan identity.
Thus, there was an uneasy co-existence of the faasamoa and faaniusila. Nowhere was this tension more acutely evident than in the life of the Samoan church. The new arrivals entrenched in the faasamoa were often critical of the faaniusila and its perceived watering-down effects on Samoan customs and practices. In essence, the faasamoa sought to retain the authenticity of Samoa village life and practices, whilst the faaniusila advocated for a more pragmatic consideration of the New Zealand context. Inevitably, disagreements arose and the resultant antagonism sometimes deteriorated into violent clashes between families and cultural factions. The attempts to resolve these differences always consisted of a compromise between the faasamoa and the faaniusila. When these efforts failed and disagreements persisted, it was expected that families amicably severed their ties with the church. In most cases, the faasamoa was gradually won over to the faaniusila.
At the heart of the faaniusila was the profound shift in the understanding of two fundamental concepts of the faasamoa: aganuu and agaifanua. The prefix ‘aga’ refers to acts or orientation; ‘nuu’ (village) and ‘i fanua’ (land). In their general usage and understanding, aganuu refer to ways that hold core values of the Samoan culture and identity, whereas agaifanua are the practices pertaining to a particular village and location. Hence, the emerging post-migration Samoan identity morphed into a hybrid identity of aganuu (as maintained by the faasamoa) and a contextualised agaifanua advocated by the faaniusila. In its very basic form, this hybrid identity can be seen in the dress code for formal and informal occasions, where the ie faitaga (menswear) is worn with shoes and socks, the exchange of gifts, recognition of women, egalitarianism rather than patriarchal hierarchy, and the prominence of the faifeau (clergy) as opposed to the matai (chief). Today, the hybridised Samoan cultural identity in New Zealand has continually evolved to the point where it can no longer be solely understood as Samoan culture or tradition. Rather, it is a cultural identity derived from this place and its unique landscape.
So what can be made of all this? Instead of romanticising a Samoan cultural identity that no longer exists and striving to reclaim a past that is becoming increasingly removed and distant, it would be timely and necessary in the twenty-first century to take seriously the evolution of Samoan culture and identity into hyphenated and hybridised forms and practices. Its relevance cannot be measured by its ability to invoke lost authenticities of traditions, but by its ability to give meaning to what has gone for those who are present. The success of this new Samoan identity depends on its willingness to renegotiate its role built on differences and acknowledging that there is no stable point of view or a homogeneous unique truth. In the post-colonial notion of hybridity, it is not about the dissolution of Samoan cultural identity differences but about renegotiating structures of power built on differences. It is a two-way process in which the traditional and new forms of Samoan cultural identities interact so that something new is created.
To this end, the critical challenge facing a re-formation of Samoan cultural identity is the extent to which it can be, in Homi Bhabha’s phrase, ‘a vernacular cosmopolitan’. In Bhabha’s view, a vernacular cosmopolitan ‘translates between cultures, re-negotiates traditions from a position where “locality” insists on its own terms, while entering into larger national and societal conversations’ (Bhabha, 2000, p. 139). The post-migration generations of Samoans around the globe have no option but to occupy in-between-spaces as a result of their historical and geographical distancing from their Samoan cultural homeland. From this space, priority must be given to the ambiguities of being wanderers and transitional than any claim to cultural purity and autonomy. Furthermore, Edward Said saw much potential in the marginal position of migrant peoples. For him such people offered a perspective that can challenge and resist the forces of hierarchy, uniformity and hegemony:
It is no exaggeration that liberation has shifted from the settled, established, and domesticated dynamics of culture to its unhoused, decentred, and exilic energies whose incarnation today is the migrant, the artist in exile, the political figure between domains, between forms, between homes, and between language (Said, 1993, 403).
Of course, this is not saying anything new. Long ago, the biblical tradition put it in the language of the Jewish diaspora and exilic narratives. It described Israel’s dislocation from ‘the promised land’ of their forebears. The memorable words of the psalm movingly captured the Jewish people’s acute sense of their alienation:
By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for a song, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land? (Psalms 137, 1-4).
The exiled Jews of the Old Testament were geographically displaced. Moreover, it was a social, moral and cultural displacement. They experienced the loss of the structured and reliable world that gave them meaning and coherence. In defining exile, Alan Mintz (1984) writes it as ‘the power to shatter the existing paradigms of meaning’ (p. x).
Notwithstanding, the remarkable observation from this exilic experience was the unwillingness of the Jews to abandon their faith in Yahweh (God). Rather than settling for hopelessness and despair, exile propelled them to a sureness and buoyancy beyond the dire realities of their circumstances. It evoked the most brilliant literature and the most daring theological articulation in the Old Testament. Songs of praises told of great trouble being transformed by the power of God. They remembered God’s past wonders whilst also asserting hope and confidence that the God who acted in the past will also act in the present and in the future. In oracles of promises, Israel’s speech is preoccupied with God’s future, which will be worked out of the present shambles.
On the contrary, the Samoan ‘exilic’ experience is permeated by its sense of anger, failed hope, wistful sadness and helplessness. There is sadness about their Samoan-ness that was and now is not and will never again be. Nevertheless, the counter argument is to reflect upon the power of promise in their new circumstances. In the new multicultural and pluralistic situations of Samoans, the old modes of Samoan culture and identity are no longer trusted. This is not to say that the aganuu absolutes that have the responsibilities for family and community at heart are no longer trusted. But the old modes in which these absolutes have been articulated are increasingly suspect and dysfunctional. They are patriarchal, hierarchical, authoritarian and monologic. It is clear that the faasamoa notion of’tradition’ has become a handmaiden of certain kinds of power. This refers not only to the control of the cultural identity agenda through generational politics, but also recognises that ‘absolute knowledge’ most characteristically means agreement of all those permitted in the room.
In this new pluralist setting, Samoan culture and identity is open to many meanings and more than one is legitimate and faithful to the Samoan aganuu. This can be readily seen in the life of the Samoan church, in the awareness that many preachers on any given occasion preach many sermons on the same scriptural texts. While all such sermons may not be legitimate and faithful, many of them would qualify as such. Criticism is all too common from theological college-trained clergy who believe in ‘the meaning’ of the text. In contrast, the Jewish midrashic tradition of text interpretation does not seek to give closure to texts, but can permit many readings to stand side by side, reflecting both the rich density of the text and the freedom of interpretation. To be sure, the realities for the construction of a contemporary Samoan culture and identity lie in the willingness to entertain the endless possibilities of meaning and interpretations.
Furthermore, being Samoan need not rely on a universal or coherent description of Samoan culture and identity. The alternative to this systematic, large and comprehensive understanding is that of concrete, specific and local identities. It is enough to work and live with the local details and interests as a Samoan person with a heritage and kinship to their distant homeland. Such ‘local’ works and acts characterised by generosity, respect and modesty are ways Samoans the world over can, to paraphrase Jacob Neusner (1987), imagine themselves to be Samoan.
The American scholar Walter Brueggemann, writing in his book Cadences of Home: Preaching among Exiles (1997), explained exile as a metaphor for the experiences of loss, bereavement and rootlessness. There is an increasing danger for Samoans in their state of exile in pluralistic and rapidly changing environments to reclaim a faasamoa ‘tradition’ whereby those in charge, whom to trust and obey are known at the expense of re-thinking, re-imagining and re-describing an alternative. A tradition which has taken the form of certitude, order and coherence, because the world of the Samoan village for which it found its relevancy was reliably simple and predictable. Today, the ever-widening geographical, social, moral and cultural distance between post-migration Samoans and their Samoa homeland impinge in different personal and public ways. It has invited all kinds of extreme notions of fear, resentment and anxiety that eventuate in a state of despair and acts of brutality. Brueggemann would insist that old, conservative certitudes will not do in the state of exile. Thus, the new global circumstances permit and require something of the Samoan culture and identity that it has not been permitted or required to do before. With all that is available to them in their many and varied contexts, Samoans can voice and offer a re-described cultural reality that is credible and evocative of a new Samoan identity.
It is not always feasible to recover one’s authentic roots or even to go back to the real ‘home’ again. At a time when Samoan communities are becoming more multicultural, where traditions, histories, and texts co-mingle and interlace, a quest for unalloyed pure native Samoan roots could prove to be not only elusive but also dangerous. It could cause complications for the everyday business of living with neighbours of diverse cultures, religions and languages. What the emerging hybrid Samoan identity suggests is that we take for granted more or less fractured, hyphenated, multiple identities. As generations of Samoans look to understand themselves and relocate their place in an ever-changing and global world, it would be timely to recall the wisdom of Hugo St Victor (as cited in Said, 1993), a twelfth-century monk, who said: ‘The person who finds his home sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong’ (p. 407).
Bhabha, H. K. (1994). Location of culture. London: Routledge.
Bhabha, H. K. (2000). The vernacular cosmopolitan. In F. Bruce and N. Khan (Eds.). Voices of the crossing: The impact of Britain on writers from Asia, the Caribbean and Africa. London: Serpent Tail.
Brueggemann, W. (1997). Cadences of home: Preaching among exiles. Westminster: John Knox Press.
Kureishi, H. (1995). The black album. London: Faber.
Mintz, A. (1984). Hurban: Responses to catastrophe in Hebrew literature. New York: Columbia University Press.
Neusner, J. (1987). The enchantments of Judaism: Rites of transformation from birth through death. New York: Basic Books.
Pearson, C. (Ed.). (2004). Faith in a hyphen: Cross-cultural theologies down under. North Parramatta: UTC Publications.
Said, E. W. (1993). Culture and imperialism. London: Chatto and Windus.
Sugirtharajah, R. S. (2002). Postcolonial criticism and biblical interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tiatia, J. (1998). Caught between cultures: A New Zealand-born perspective. Auckland, New Zealand: Christian Research Association.
Tui Atua, T. T. T. (2003). In Search of Meaning, Nuance and Metaphor in Social Policy. The Social Policy Journal of New Zealand, 20, 49-63. [See chapter 6 of this publication].
1An umu is a traditional Samoan earth oven. Family members returning from Samoa (to New Zealand) sometimes bring back boxes of traditional foods, e.g., taro and palusami, cooked in these earth ovens. Food cooked in an umu has a distinctive aroma.
2Tiatia, J. Caught between Cultures: A New Zealand Born Perspective (Christian Research Association, Auckland, 1998), p. 22.