From Mensagenda - November 2004

Coming of Age in Samoa II

by Shirley Barry

From 1926 to 1928, Margaret Mead lived among the villagers in Tau, one of the smaller islands in the American Samoa (A.S.) island group; she published Coming of Age in Samoa in 1928. Mead wrote much about village life in A.S. in the 1920s, which I am comparing to my unscientific observations of life in A.S. in 2003.

The Samoan household, in Mead’s day, included "all the individuals who live for any length of time under the authority and protection of a common matai [headman]." This could mean the biological family only, or up to twenty people related to the matai or his wife by blood, marriage, or adoption, but not necessarily to each other. Married couples could live with the relatives of either one. Households were strictly local units, excluding relatives who permanently lived in other villages.

People of the same household did not necessarily share the same fale (open air hut); often three or four fales of a village made up one household. That is not to say, however, that each fale was for a single biological family—loosely related household members shared fales. The open design of the fales leaves little room for privacy. Mead noted, "Privacy of possessions is virtually impossible." Someone’s possessions might be given away during a temporary absence. Similarly, "all of an individual’s acts are public property." Thus gossip ran rampant, which was compensated for by a "violent gloomy secretiveness."

The matai had absolute authority ("the power of life and death") over all members of the household, even his own parents. He also managed the land, which was communally owned by the household. Members of the household were obligated to work on the plantation as directed by the matai; in return, the matai doled out food and other necessities to everyone under his authority.

The matai system remains in place today, albeit somewhat modified to adapt to European ideas. For one thing, although "household" is similarly defined (but includes more than three or four residences), it has lost the strict geographic definition it once had. Many Samoans who now live off-island (mainly in Hawaii or California) still derive benefit from and incur obligations to the household and its matai.

Nowadays, most Samoans live in western-style houses that have walls and biological families have separate homes on the household’s land. They have, then, more privacy of both possessions and acts. Sharing, though, is still very much a part of their culture. For example, household members have an umu (a feast similar to a Hawaiian luau) every Sunday, from which people sometimes take enough leftovers home to feed their nuclear family for most of the week. With the tradition of sharing and caring for members of the household, homelessness and hunger are virtually unheard of in A.S.

One thing that has not changed is that land is still communally owned by the household. Land is neither bought nor sold by the households — the same household groups own the same land now as they did when Margaret Mead was there. Land used by a government agency, church, or business is under a long-term lease agreement with the matai. (Even American Samoa National Park is under a 55-year lease by the U.S. Park Service—it is the only national park land the federal government does not own.) The permanent ownership of land has led to a Samoan custom that seemed odd to us: each family buries its dead in the yard in front of their house. The family who lived behind us had two (three, by the time we left) graves in their yard.

Since Samoans reap the benefits of living on land owned by the household (one obvious benefit being no mortgage), they are also obligated to the household. Thus many Samoans do not have "jobs" as westerners define them; instead they have family roles. For example, we rented an apartment owned by a prominent household in A.S. The role of our landlord, Nick, was to manage the household’s property; the role of Nick’s cousin, Mike, was to help with repair and maintenance of the property. Several other cousins and aunts were assigned the role of working at the grocery stores the household owned.

The matai system, intertwined as it is with the system of government, merits—I think—more space than I can give it this month. Also, in later editions of the book, Mead herself wrote about life in A.S. in the 1950s (when she revisited A.S.) and in the 1970s compared to her expectations for the future when she wrote the book in 1928. These topics will be the fodder for a future column or two.

All quotes are from Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead; copyrighted 1928, 1955, 1961.