FA 'A-SAMOA AND POPULATION MOVEMENT FROM THE INSIDE OUT: THE CASE OF SALELOLOGA, SAVAI'I A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI'I IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN GEOGRAPHY AUGUST 2004 By Sa'iliemanu Lilomaiava-Doktor Dissertation Committee: Murray Chapman, Chairperson Mary McDonald Brian Murton Peter Pirie Alan Howard © Copyright 2004 by Sa'iliemanu Lilomaiava-Doktor iii This work is dedicated to my father the late Tinousi Lilomaiava Niko and my mother Fa'alenu'u who have taught us, children a love for humanity, the 'aiga, village, and Samoa. And to my daughter Leilani and her generation, this work is dedicated to them as well. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENT So many people have contributed one way or another to this endeavor. I want to thank first the people of my village Salelologa especially those of Foua in Samoa, Auckland, New Zealand and Santa Ana, California U.S.A. for their love and support in this research. Your enthusiasm and readiness to engage in my inquiries and questions have been a source of inspiration. I am most grateful for the encouragement and exchange of hospitality and kinship. Fa'afetai tele mo 10 'outou lagolago mai 'i lenei taumafaiga. I wish to extend my deep appreciation to my dissertation committee, Mary McDonald, Brian Murton, Alan Howard, Peter Pirie, and Murray Chapman. I highly appreciate your intellectual contribution in different ways during this scholarly endeavor, especially the writing of letters of references during efforts to get funding for this research. To Murray Chapman, my chair for his unfaltering support, intellectual guidance, and gentle nudging of my gut feelings about issues throughout my graduate program at University of Hawai'i. Your genuine interest, attention to detail, and constructive criticisms are a testament to the consummate scholar that you are. Thank you for going all the way. There is also the love and prayers of my many families and friends. To my mother, Fa'alenu'u and all of my siblings and their children (too many to mention!) thank you for the good wishes and keeping me, Bob, and Leilani in your prayers. Special thanks to my husband and best friend Bob Doktor for his love and unquestioned support in this endeavor, and to my daughter Leilani. Thank you both for your patience, now we can do a lot more family outings! v The institutional support I garnered for this research was great. I would like to acknowledge funding from the University of Hawai'i Arts and Sciences Advisory Council 1998 which helped with pre-dissertation fieldwork in Samoa; Social Science Research Council (SSRC) International Migration Minority Dissertation Workshop 1999; the American Association of University Women (Honolulu) Pacific Scholarship Dissertation Grant 1999; Globalization Research Center, University of Hawai'i Dissertation Travel Grant 2001, and University of Hawai'i Graduate Student Organization Travel Grant 2002 which enabled me to present papers at the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania conference held at the University of Auckland, New Zealand February 2002, and for the Pacific History conference held at the National University of Samoa Apia, December 2002, part of which are presented in chapters six and seven. During my time in Hawai'i pursuing higher education I have met wonderful people in the academy, Lola Quan-Bautista from Guam who has just completed her own Ph.D., thank you heaps for friendship and for reading my first draft. Asenati Liki, Carlos Andrade, and Kathryn Besio (KB) from Geography what a great bunch of classmates during a thought provoking seminar with Brian Murton. To Teresia Teaiwa of Victoria University, Wellington from East-West Center days; Raymond Young and Yvonne Underhill-Sem, mahalo for collegiality and email conversations. To Aumua Mata'itusi of the Samoan Language Department, University of Hawai'i for unselfish sharing of her Samoan knowledge and cultural wisdom, Robert Kiste and the Center for Pacific Islands Studies gang for following my footsteps, and Robert Franco of Kapi'olani Community College (KCC) for his efforts to increase the visibility of Samoans in higher education. My experience of teaching at KCC between 2001-2002 may have slowed the dissertation Vi but has opened my eyes to the huge work that still lies ahead in the university's collective efforts to increase the number of underrepresented populations, namely Pacific Islanders and Native Hawaiians in the University of Hawai'i statewide system. To my 'adopted' friends and families in Australia, New Zealand, California, Hawai'i and both Samoa: Tim and Adrienne Roberts of Newcastle, Maureen and Guy Powles, Lotomau and Palepa of Melbourne, Luamanuvae Pigota and Teleise of Sydney; Paneta and Leativa of Auckland; Sanele and Sialafua, Kristie and David Holt of Santa Ana, California; Sisi and Richard, the Ala'ilima family at Niu Valley; Marlene and Leiataua Birdie Ala'ilima of American Samoa, Joan, Jim and Andrea Williams of Apia from Logo'ipulotu days-thank you so much for your interest, love, and prayers. To those whom lowe thanks for their help at various stages and in numerous locations that I may have missed, please know that your love and prayers for the successful completion of this research are deeply appreciated. Soifua... Vll ABSTRACT Migration research in Oceania has produced a problematic genre that continues to be dominated by conceptions of population movement occurring between two poles: the rural and urban, or village and metropolitan areas. Embedded in migration assumptions are notions of individualism, social disjuncture, and the primacy of economic motivations as understood in capitalist terms. Rather than construct movement and identity of people in places rural or urban, or framed by the bipolar model of settler and sojourner, this study goes beyond such polarities. Through an analysis of how culture, in this caseJa'a-Samoa, integrates movement, 'aiga (household, family), and configurations of mobility, this dissertation argues that embodied experience is central to Samoan identities as exemplified in local metaphors of movement, identity, and place. This research focuses on the experience of people from Salelologa village on Savai'i, the big island of Samoa, and its social extensions abroad. Based on more than eighteen months fieldwork in Salelologa with members of 'aiga in sites in Auckland, New Zealand and Santa Ana, California, this study tells of the transformations occurring in local society and the individuals within it. Fa 'a-Samoa (Samoan way of life/culture/knowing) is a conceptual tool with which to examine concepts of migration, diaspora, transnationalism, and place. Cultural metaphors of movement: malaga (moving back and forth), and of where: Jafo (overseas) and rinei (here), most clearly expressed identity and conceptions of movement and place for Samoan social worlds. Questions about movement led to how people think of personal and group relationships and how social connections express continuity in interactions with others who move, rather than around notions of cultural rupture and social dissipation. Samoans, viii through personal narratives of identity and movement, evoke va (social space) or the space that relates rather than separates and which guides appropriate behavior, acts of reciprocity, and continued links and interactions between people and places. In this study, the emphasis is on the dialectical interaction betweenfa'a-Samoa, movement, polities, and intricate processes of westernization and globalization for local societies and economies. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication IV Acknowledgement V Abstract viii List of Tables xiii List of Figures xv CHAPTER ONE: WEAVING TOGETHER BEGINNINGS 1 Fa'a-Samoa as concept and meaning 9 Synthesis, Themes, and Concepts 11 Language, Style, and Outline 16 Approaches to Population Movement 20 Neoclassical and Structural models 21 Dependency model 24 MIRAB model 29 Humanistic approach 33 Circular mobility 36 Transnational approach 40 CHAPTER TWO: CONTESTED FIELDS AND METHODS 43 Reflections on the Research Process 44 Insider, Outsider, Indigenous Research 50 Field Strategies and Methods 56 Field Instruments: Samoa, New Zealand, and United States 59 Field Census 64 'Home' and 'Reach' Surveys 65 Participant Observation 66 Interviews 67 Life History 68 Biography 69 Formality of Research: 'Field' Experience 70 Learning from the 'Field' 73 CHAPTER THREE: MAPPING THE STUDY COMMUNITIES 75 National Context 77 Environmental Setting 87 Early Savai'i and 'Upolu 88 Origin of the Name Salelologa 92 Village context 96 Malai system 99 Fa'alupega 0 Salelologa 109 Salelologa Then and Now: Communication and Settlement 112 The establishment of the wharf at Salelologa 122 Air transportation 127 x Sociodemographic Profile of Foua, Salelologa 129 Education and agriculture as ways of life 136 Overseas Movement and Modernity: 141 Auckland, New Zealand, and Santa Ana, California, U.S.A 141 CHAPTER FOUR: FA'ASAMOA, CULTURE, IDENTITY, AND MOBILITY: CRITIQUE, CONTEXT, AND DIALOGUE 148 Culture as Concept 152 Culture in geography 156 Culture as superorganic 158 Identity Is it Ethnic or Cultural or Both? 162 Approaches to ethnicity and identity 163 Emotion as emblem of identity 168 Ethnicity and culture 171 Fa 'a -Samoa in action: cultural mandate, values, ideology, or power? 174 Elements of Samoan Perception: tautua,Jesoasoani, and fa'alavelave 181 Fa 'a-Samoa and the Lotu (church) 188 Lotu in transnational context 190 Fa 'a-Samoa, Culture, and