FPIF Commentary |
A Tale of Two Samoas
Andre Vltchek | May 23, 2008
Editor: John Feffer
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The two Samoas are divided by politics, economics, and a stretch of Pacific Ocean. Samoa, once known as Western Samoa, became the region’s first independent country when it separated from New Zealand in 1962. American Samoa, on the other hand, remains an unincorporated U.S. territory.
The larger Samoa is burdened with an almost feudal political system, while the smaller Samoa is subject to decisions made in a far-away capital. Independent Samoa, with 180,000 people, faces a crippling brain drain. American Samoa, with only 66,000 people, is disproportionately suffering the effects of the Iraq War.
Although they share a name, the two Samoas are heading off on two very different paths. The prospect of unification is becoming increasingly unlikely.
Pacific Poverty
Samoa is full of paradoxes. With a GDP per capita of $2,593, the island is very poor. And yet its citizens face some of the highest prices in the world. The Samoan government supplies international organizations with inflated statistics. Yet it is fighting the UN decision that it is ready to graduate from Least Developed Country status. Most of the long-term growth comes from outside the country. Although slightly declining in 2007, remittances still represent approximately one quarter of the country’s GDP.
Tourism is becoming an important source of income. With its stunning natural beauty, the island is now the third largest magnet for international tourism in the region, after Fiji and French Polynesia. But hostility toward foreign investors, as well as a lack of transparency and complicated set of laws, all hold back growth.
Out-migration is increasing. American Samoa is one of the main magnets for legal and illegal economic migrants from Samoa. It houses two of the world’s largest tuna processing factories, which pay higher wages in U.S. dollars. Its GDP per capita of $9,000, approximately 3.5 times higher than in Samoa, is still much lower than the U.S. poverty rate. Tens of thousands of Samoans have also gone to live in the United States and Australia. New Zealand has a “Samoa quota scheme” by which up to 1,100 people can legally migrate on a yearly basis. Overall, more Samoans live abroad than in their own country.
Samoans leave for more than just economic reasons. Samoa is a feudal and extremely oppressive society, a combination of imported democratic principles and the tribal rule of the so-called matai (chiefs). Ordinary citizens are controlled by the chiefs, the family, and religious institutions including the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses. The suicide rate is very high in both Samoas as is the rate of sexual abuse, domestic violence, and violent crime in general.
Boredom is another factor behind emigration. The entire country of Samoa boasts only one bookstore, which is really a bible shop rather than a bookseller. There is only one cinema. Samoa may be a paradise for a few, mainly retired, foreigners who call it home. But despite the bombardment from the government of nationalist and often xenophobic slogans, Samoa is hardly a paradise for the great majority of its citizens. Fa’a Samoa – the Samoan Way – justifies all manner of ills and inequities.
On the American Side
In the 21st century, American Samoa is a very sad place. Two tuna canneries harbor Asian ships and hundreds of illegal workers. Local youth hang out aimlessly around a capital city that increasingly resembles a U.S. ghetto. There are abandoned and burned-down buildings. Graffiti is ubiquitous. Everything is in a state of general disrepair. City residents are moving out to the suburbs. The only hotel in town recently shut down one of its wings.
American Samoa is also awash in yellow ribbons, as well as bumper stickers that read “Support Our Troops in Iraq.” On one of the most picturesque parts of the island, an enormous banner proclaims: “May Peace Be With Our Samoan Soldiers in Iraq. God Bless You All.” U.S. flags are everywhere.
American Samoans are dying in disproportionate numbers in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is difficult to compile exact figures, but at least 15 American Samoans have died in Iraq. The death toll is tremendous, considering that the territory is the size of a small American city. Many American Samoan soldiers have come back with devastating war injuries. Post-traumatic stress disorder also plagues the returnees. Behind its barbed wire, the United States Reserve Te’o Soldiers Support Center offers a telephone number for the suicide hotline. It is posted near the entrance door, together with other emergency numbers.
On March 5th, 2006, when the death toll was still much lower, NBC News acknowledged that American Samoa is a recruiter’s dream. The recruiters come around to explain the benefits for young people to sign up, including perks like fully paid college tuitions. But American Samoa has paid a heavy price.
“It has the highest per capita death rate of any U.S. state or territory,” the NBC reporter summarized. “Among the victims was 22-year-old Tina Time, who was killed in a desert convoy accident. In the Samoan tradition, her crypt lies in front of the parents’ house, bedecked with flowers. Inside the house, her mother, Mary Time, has erected a memorial shrine, featuring many of Tina's glamour photographs, medals, sympathy cards, and condolence letters from President George W. Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. With three other children in the U.S. military, Mary Time still supports American involvement in Iraq – despite her daughter's death. ’She didn't die in vain. We need to complete what we started, and I'm with the president that this war is for a good cause,’ Time says. Looking at her daughter's photographs, and wiping her eyes, she adds, ‘I miss her, she was a good girl.’"
An old lady on remote Aunu’u Island told me: “Many people want to serve in the U.S. navy or army. They want to make money but they also want to join the army to escape boredom – to experience adventure that they are being promised. Many people are very poor, working for three dollars an hour. We have over 400 inhabitants here on the island, but every week someone leaves for the United States. To some it doesn’t matter what they are going to do on the mainland: whether they wash dishes or go to the military barracks.”
Samoa and American Samoa: one nation divided into two countries. One is ruled by an ancient and oppressive feudal culture. The other, a “protectorate” of a far-flung empire, remains shockingly poor. The gap between the two is growing. There is no movement on either side promoting unification. In a few years, the two Samoas may become too different to call themselves one nation.
Andre Vltchek is a novelist, journalist, filmmaker, and playwright, editorial director of Asiana Press Agency (www.asiana-press-agency.com), co-founder of Mainstay Press (www.mainstaypress.org), and a senior Fellow at The Oakland Institute. A contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org), he is presently living and working in Asia and South Pacific and can be reached at: andre-wcn@usa.net
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Published by Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a project of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS, online at www.ips-dc.org). Copyright © 2008, Institute for Policy Studies.
Recommended citation:
Andre Vltchek, "A Tale of Two Samoas" (Washington, DC: Foreign Policy In Focus, May 23, 2008).
Web location:
http://fpif.org/fpiftxt/5242
Production Information:
Author(s): Andre Vltchek
Editor(s): John Feffer
Production: John Feffer |
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Latest Comments & Conversation Area
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| Name: |
Will |
Date: May 24, 2008 |
| I beg to differ on the notion that the Samoa's will not be known as one nation in the future. The core fundamentals of all the islands of Samoa share Fa'a Samoa and will not and should not change. Why should a culture that has outlasted many "civilized" cultures give up its essence because of what the "white" man considers to be wealth. We Samoan's need to find a way to better the islands but not to conform to foreign ways. |
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| Name: |
Junior a Samoan |
Date: May 25, 2008 |
| Mr andre are you Samoan reason I ask is you seem to know so much about being one? I was born in Samoa brought up in Samoa. you say we are oppressive? we are controlled by religious organizations? really. You are not the first foreigner to (claim to) know more about us than we know ourselves. What you claim can be said about 200 other nations around the world. the USA has the highest rates of mental illnesses, during founding of the USA RIGHT INTO THE 1960S could you not say the USA oppressed its own people, a land of contrasts, I can come to your land and speak of freedom and equality (Vietnam War) but hahahah I won't allow it in my own land. we know. lets be honest, the Americans are the most hypocritical nation on Earth. I can say one thing but will not do. Granted Samoa has problems, who doesn't but at least we aint fighting other nations, destroying the lives of our young in dead end Wars that bring no benefit. Mr andre respect to you and your work, no doubt you must be very good in what you do but please sir do not paint my nation as a corrupt oppressive regime with all to offer its pople is despair I leave that to the Americans.
I can sit here all day and talk about the extreme poverty so apparent in your rich problem free democratic powerful American nation land of the free and the brave dont make me laugh Andre please, sort your nation out first before you go conquering the rest. You paint a unrealistic picture of my homeland how dare you, you should be thanking our people for wasting their precious lives in your nations corrupt wars, how do you know what makes people happy, lets take the American view individualism self importance money money. yes thats why every single American is happy no sad people in my rich powerful American nation.
Andre my People arrived in the Pacific while yours were still wondering whether they'll fall over the edge of the earth if they sailed too far.
our culture shows love for others, hospitality, taking care of ones family. poverty there is in samoa but to the point where poverty is in the states andre Samoa doesnt even come close. Look Andre you must be a nice guy but Andre what limits you is not your intelligence but the fact
your american. thats why your so bad at foreign policy, LOOK PEACE LOVE AND FREEDOM, LET ME KNOW WHEN YOU GET IT IN AMERICA . |
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| Name: |
Lovely Hula Hands |
Date: May 26, 2008 |
| Mr. Vltchek:
Some of your opinions are factual, but I can not agree on your claims that all Samoans would like to unify. Our language has never change and our culture has grown to adapt a western lifestyle that is uniquely samoan.
When foreigners and missionaries came to the islands they tried to change our language and custom to fit western ideals, but we fought on and hold true to our beliefs and love of our language and our lands. Both Samoas are unique and carry on what is best for both nations, and I congratulate both governments on doing just that. Your article seems very vague on your point that both Samoas will do better economically and socially if they unite as one, but you forgot one fact, both Samoas are united by family ties and culture the basic fundamentals of "FaaSamoa". So when you write your next article try focusing on what it is to be a samoan, "a person looking out, not in," and you will probably have a better understanding of our culture and us as a people.
peace and alofa! |
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| Name: |
Veritas Vincit |
Date: May 29, 2008 |
| Over half a century ago, a minor article in Readers Digest (America's Shame in the South Pacific) shamed a government into a massive investment in a place called Pago Pago. For nearly ten years thereafter, millions of dollars and hundreds of experts poured into the small territory.
But something happened in 1971 when Richard Nixon appointed John Hayden Governor of the Territory. A slow transfer of authority from the traditional Matai system to that of stateside educated Samoan bureaucrats began to occur.
By the mid-1970s American Samoa had slid into what was the beginning of a long decline in educational standards, culture and economic growth. And by the mid-1990s the local college was in danger of losing its accreditation and the regional medical center could not keep its pharmacy stocked with simple medicines. The Pago Pago Intercontinental Hotel, once the jewel of the South Pacific was cynically referred to as "the Pain-Maker" (by then under local government ownership).
What happened? That can best be answered by something (then) US Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt said during a "wink and a nod" inspection visit to Pago; "... what we have here, is the finest example I know, of the blending of the best of two cultures, American and Samoan."
For weeks after the visit, many comments were made over a bottle of Vailima that the right quote should have been, "Pago is the blending of the worst of American and Samoan cultures."
For indeed, since the introduction of local American style governance, when combined with the strict Fa'Samoa Matai system corrupted through a welfare state mentality bureaucracy (Samoans love bureaucracy) has indeed yielded the worst of two cultures.
Can American Samoa ever recover the culture as practiced in Independent Samoa? That is highly doubtful as long as millions upon millions of US dollars continue to be flushed down the pipes of the Government of American Samoa and no one is held accountable.
Fa'Samoa still lives, but it lives 87 miles west of Pago Pago. |
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| Name: |
Channel Old Boys Assn. member |
Date: May 31, 2008 |
| Will, in AS you have already conformed to foreign ways. You did it over 100 years ago when the high chiefs of Upolu decided in only three days to adopt Christianity and take the religion of the Europeans.
Junior, Too many Samoans are already fighting a foreign war in Iraq for the Imperial United States. They volunteer by the dozens. Don't take the moral high ground, Samoans love uniforms and fighting - and you know it.
Will, There will *never* be a unified Samoa period. As long as Western Samoans move to Pago to work in federally funded government jobs and send the money back to their aiga in Apia. Samoans in Apia do not want the 'culture' of Pago, they only want the money from Washington that comes via the ASG.
American Samoa is the only place on the planet where they celebrate being completely dependent on some one else; its called Flag Day. In Apia they celebrate Independence Day. Western Samoa will never give up their independence and American Samoa will never give up the US dollar.
Veritas gives a good history lesson here. |
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| Name: |
A Palagi Friend of Samoa |
Date: Jul 27, 2008 |
| Samoa is a mirror: I find that what foreigners see in Samoa often reflects their own internal state. Some visitors find an archipelago of incredible beauty, a loving and peaceful people whose demeanor is based on hospitality, and an intact and magnificent culture that has continued more than 2,000 years.
Mr. Vitchek focuses on negative issues. Yes, there are some teen suicides, there cases of child abuse, yes there are obese people, yes there are young people who are caught between cultures. These problems are real and need solutions. But what Mr. Vitchek fails to point out is that all of these problems also are abundant where he lives in Amsterdam. In Amsterdam pornography and its degradation of women is broadcast 24/7 on the public television, there are major rings promoting child pornography, drugs of all kinds are sold on the street, poor women from eastern block countries are displayed in street front windows for prostitution more or less as sex slaves, women who write about moslim issues are targeted for death and are murdered, Molluccan immigrants are impoverished and treated as second class citizens, to gain citizenship, you have to pass an exam which proves that you are properly Dutch in your social attitudes including acceptance of public nudity, violent bicycle gangs beat up rivals -- well you get the picture. Does Mr. Vitchek really want to argue that his home in Amsterdam is superior to Samoa?
And yet Amsterdam, like Samoa, is actually a very lovely place if you approach it in the right way. Past the McDonalds and the cathedral which was built with funds "extracted" from the locals is beautiful canal, where you can ride a boat for a small fee. The window boxes in the apartments are filled with flowers, and you can pedal your bike down to the museum to see some of the world's most beautiful paintings. The town is filled with gardens, and the people are very friendly and always willing to help a visitor. It is a terrific place to visit, if you go with the right attitude.
I have travelled the entire world, and have never found a people as loving and kind as the Samoans. They will feed you, house you, and give you the shirt off their back with no expectation of return. The villages are peaceful, with violence rarely occurring. The Samoa culture is beautiful, and the chiefs -- who are chosen by their families -- are usually very wise in their leadership. And the Samoans are a genuinely religious people who trust in God, rather than an army, to guard their freedom.
If you look for ugliness, you can find it almost anywhere in the world, but if you look for beauty, you can find that almost anywhere as well. And in Samoa, the most beautiful thing of all, is the Samoan people. |
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