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Samoan Language in the US

by Desirae Thomaier

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Final Research Paper: Samoan in the United States
Omai faatasi: to come together around family, homeland, or a way of life. An ancient
way of life, in fact, and one that many Samoans in the United States are struggling to reconcile
with their new, urban surroundings. Omai faatasi, is Samoan for unite or come together,
and has been a defining phrase among expatriated Samoans trying to maintain a sense of
community, especially in the fast-paced metropolis which contrasts so starkly with the tranquil,
more rural island lifestyles they left behind. Betty Patu, Seattle School Board Chair for District
VII (21 schools) and community activist of Samoan descent, would content that the biggest
challenge to Samoan immigrants in the US is figuring out how things work here, and balancing
traditional Samoan values with American expectations (Patu, 2015). Over the course of this
research, through personal interviews, scholarly research, and analysis of demographic and
statistical data, all of these sources would indicate that while Samoans in the US face all the
traditional challenges of a newly immigrated minority group, they also contend with some
surprising difficulties fairly unique to their group. By traditional challenges I mean those
common to almost all new immigrant demographics, including poverty, high dropout rates,
unemployment, and a lack of representation. In addition, some very unique detrimental factors
that Samoans have to contend with include particularly antagonistic stereotypes, an unreceptive
greater populace (perhaps due to lack of understanding), and lack of the extremely integral
community structure that almost defines a Samoan identity. This, along with the fact that there
are so few Samoans in the US, may sound like the recipe for an insurmountable framework of
incompatibility. Nonetheless, activists and optimists like Betty Patu and Samoan UW student
Taupule Atafua remain confident that the Samoan community in cities like Seattle will grow and
perhaps even flourish within and throughout the American monolith. I would argue that this is

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not only a heartening sentiment, but the beginnings of a movement. Enterprising Samoan
immigrants continue to enter the United States, and scholars like Rochelle Fonoti, Connie So,
and Betty Patu continue to spread awareness about the value and importance of the Pacific
Islander community in America. While many Samoans in America are still trying to find a
balance between their heritage and adopted identities, support system are beginning to form, and
in future years increasing awareness compiled with a vibrant, growing demographic promises a
greater, more culturally-sensitive community both within and without the American Samoan
populace.
Previously I had approached the topic of Samoan American relations from a fairly
symptom-based approach, describing the statistics and the realities as relatively separate
phenomena. Realistically, while the root of problems such as identity and cross-cultural
stereotypes are difficult to pinpoint and also to address, I have found great perspective and
growth in even just identifying and understanding some of them. For example, Samoans are
probably the proudest and oldest of Polynesian cultures. They have a long and rich history of
shared traditions and values, all of which are deeply rooted in the idea that one is part of a greater
whole, specifically an extended family unit that often puts the good of the community and the
family before that of the individual (Patu, 2015). Some of these values, of course, may seem
foreign to or in conflict with the norms of a greater homogenous Western society, such as the
first nation to have a representative study of the Samoan culture - the UK, via the first
anthropologist Margaret Mead. Mead travelled to American Samoa in 1925 to study the
adolescence of young girls on the island nation in the early 1920s. In 1928, she published her
book, Coming of Age in Samoa, which was really the only exposure many Westerners had to
Samoan culture and people for quite a long time. It was very influential, but according to many,

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not for the right reasons. Not only was the book about Samoan people but only available in
English, the language of the outsider, but was, according to many Samoans who have
commented on it, very culturally inaccurate and offensive in its portrayal of young Samoan girls
(Margaret). Rochelle Fonoti, a graduate student in anthropology at the University of
Washington studying the Samoan diaspora, and originally from Samoa herself, cited that she
(Margaret Mead) made some very broad generalizations about Samoans which have been very
harmful. I think a lot of Samoans have hated the scholarship of people like Margaret Mead. Its
created a lot of stigmas and stereotypes that people have about our people. One of them is that
women, Samoan adolescent girls, are sexually promiscuous. [This literature] has shaped what
people think about Samoans, (Fonoti, 2015). These misinformed, sweeping generalizations
about a people is a huge consideration when it comes to professional or academic opportunity
among these groups, and can be detrimental to both these aspects and also a personal sense of
acceptance or belonging.
This scholarship was very well known among academics and perhaps passively amongst
the mainstream, but it wasnt until the early 1950s that Americans had any real exposure to
Samoan immigrants to the US. Previously I described the Great Migration following World
War II, and since then, Rochelle Fonoti explained some of the demographics of those who
immigrated. The Samoan military personnel who were given the opportunity to relocate by the
US department of the interior were called the fita fita guard, and were a proud, well-respected
Samoan unit of the US Navy (Fonoti, 2015). This is the reason that newly immigrated Samoans
were often clustered around military bases, and continue to do so in order to have a pre-existing
Samoan community upon moving to the States. This may also contribute to some of the ethnic
stereotypes in places where there are significant Samoan populations, especially areas like

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Hawaii and Southern California where many early immigrants gravitated towards (Burns
McGrath, pg308, 2002). The Samoan immigrants that these communities have had contact with
have not historically been intellectuals, refugees, or professionals. They have been soldiers, and
workers, who are already out of place in a more fast-paced, anonymous environment compared
to the familiarity of Samoa.
At every turn in my research and interviews, I have come across numerous examples of
negative generalizations surrounding those Samoans, and evidence of the many repercussions,
both direct and indirect, that result from these fairly detrimental oversimplifications. For
example, Taupule, upon moving to Hawaii from American Samoa, personally found that there
was quite a lot of discrimination toward Samoan students. In fact, she described how on her first
day of American school, she was automatically placed in an ELL class, despite the fact that
school is taught in English in Samoa and she was perfectly fluent in English from a young age.
She placed out of that class on the very first day, and says that regardless her teachers continued
to speak to her differently (she describes them talking slowly and loudly to her) for quite a while
still (Atafua, 2015). This issue, of educators showing less priority for certain minority groups, is
something that is a huge topic for educator and activist Betty Patu, who spoke about this both
during our interview and also in an article about her contributions in the New York Times. In the
Times, she describes an incident when she first began teaching in Seattle, at Rainier Beach High
School which had quite a few Samoan students at the time, some of whom were involved in
gangs and crime. She says that she knew that the school system had given up on these students
when, she said, a fellow teacher advised her to "forget about them," adding, "They're better left
outside," (Wilson, 1992). When I talked to her Betty Patu described this approach as the very
worst way to counteract the problem. Now she is in her fifth year on the Seattle school board as

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chair for District VII, and she says that lack of faith in these students begins on an institutional
level. Poor funding, leftover teachers, and sub-par academics give the message that weve
given up on them, which only leaves students to turn to different forms of success, those often
being gangs (Patu, 2015). So this is a toxic cycle, and the outcome is that Samoan students are
neglected and disregarded as violent and not academically inclined. This means that in order to
fit in or be successful by the American definition Samoan youth have to distance themselves
from this image and, consequentially, publically identifying or being proud of their heritage. This
is not universal, but still a trend that is easily observable, and was really a breakthrough for me in
understanding the struggle of balancing these identities. Samoan language, values, and traditions
are left for church, home, and family, while academic, individualistic pursuits are more suitable
for school and work. This is neither good nor bad, but certainly the apparent result of two fairly
contrasting cultures when they come into daily contact.
This conflict, most apparent in the younger generation navigating two equally prominent
cultures in their lives, is central to how Betty Patu addresses the problem of dropouts and gangs
in high schools. In Samoa, the most important unit in your life is the extended family, referred to
as the iga, or relatives (Berry, pg136, 2002). Patu described how, for the most part, Samoan
immigrant parents are uneducated, and seldom propose or encourage a college education to their
children, which means that in the family most Samoan youth dont have a particular emphasis on
academic success (Patu, 2015). This means that the responsibility of teaching not only subject
material, but the importance and value of education is left to the teacher and administrators. And,
in a counterintuitive twist of funding, schools with higher dropout rates, crime rates, and
minority and ELL needs are often given the least financial support from those who decide how to
allocate funds, teachers, and equipment. This is the issue that Betty Patu has taken upon herself

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to champion, and she has done so from all walks of involvement during her teaching and
administrative career. Samoan students usually speak English now, to varying degrees, but it is
also necessary for most of them to have additional education to bring them up to a marketable
level in the US. This, compiled with the isolating stigma of simply being Samoan in many areas
leads to an environment that is almost the antithesis of the Samoan-speaking, community
oriented environment they are used to at home. So Betty Patu, around 1990, began the South
Pacific Drop-Out Prevention Program (Wilson, 1992). She describes how she brought Samoan
community elders in the class to keep students accountable for coming, and to talk about the
importance of education, culture, and of knowing who you are, and your definition of success
(Patu, 2015). They provided what Mrs. Patu described as a cultural setting in which they talked
about how it works here, meaning aspects of American culture that may seem foreign but
students have to familiarize themselves with in order to succeed, and how to navigate the most
salient differences between their upbringings and the highly competitive nature of American
schools and jobs. This was, she said, a bridge to gap these two cultures, and I would imagine that
it was much more successful than those educators involved could have known. Not only did they
have all 140 students they started the program with graduate that very year, but one could say
that this program gave Samoan students the opportunity to be proud of their heritage, and have
their family be proud of them (Patu, 2015). In many ways this program provided depth and
meaning to their experiences balancing these identities, and helped to expose the Samoan
community to the broader community that is Seattle.
Comparing the many immigrant groups throughout the US, and especially Seattle, was
something I came across fairly often in my scholarly research, but it was only when I compared
my investigation to those of my peers that we could discuss these specifically. For example,

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much like Lushootseed and Somali, Samoan is a language mostly learned through family and
while there are some support systems in place for native speakers, it would be very hard for a
non-native, not-ethnically-affiliated person to learn the language without a specific personal
connection to a native speaker. That said, Samoan is also comparable to Hebrew and Burmese in
that these languages have close connections to the religion of speakers, and the church is a
valuable place for language learning and maintenance for these communities. And, like almost
all of the languages discussed by my peers, including Somali, Lushootseed, Burmese, Mandarin,
Bengali, and Spanish, Samoan is a language of family. It is one of community, of shared heritage
and a long history, and a way for the young and old to bond because they safeguard a language
that may be very uncommon in the United States, or perhaps reminds them of the homes they left
seeking a better future.
Regardless of how long they have been here, or how well they speak our language, I
think that we as a country are equally responsible for those who come to the United States in
search of success. Ours is a nation of immigrants, and we should try and look at the lives of our
grandparents, or our great-grandparents, and treat those new to this country as you wish they had
been treated. Betty Patu immigrated to the United States in 1972 from Samoa the child of
missionaries, with thirteen brothers and sisters. Now, she is one of the most respected educators
and public figures in Seattle. She won with 89% of the vote in her first election. In her second,
she ran unopposed. Out of her fourteen siblings only her and her sister completed college
degrees, and now, out of Mrs. Patus five children, all of them graduated from college and now
have gone on to be community activists.
Right now, we may not have the vocabulary or the cultural knowledge to discuss Samoan
identities in the United States. We dont know who were looking for, what they do, or really

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where they come from, besides stereotypes that remove the individuals and nuance from the
realities of identity. That said, were also making progress. There is talk of a Samoan community
and language center (courtesy of Betty Patu), and expanding the Polynesian Student Alliance on
campus with new events and outreach. There may not be a large population of Samoans in the
United States, but as this vibrant culture expands along our shores, we as a country will grow
with them.

Works Cited

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Atafua, Taupule. "Samoan-Americans in Seattle." Personal interview. 21 Apr. 2015.
Berry, Kate A., and Martha L. Henderson. "The Samoan Archipelago in Urban America."
Geographical Identities of Ethnic America: Race, Space, and Place. Reno: U of
Nevada, 2002. 130-46. Print.
Burns McGrath, Barbara. "Seattle "Fa'a Smoa"" The Contemporary Pacific 14.2 (2002): 30740. JSTOR [JSTOR]. Web. 28 May 2015.
Fonoti, Rochelle. "Samoans in Seattle." Telephone interview. 09 May 2015.
"Margaret Mead: Human Nature and the Power of CultureSamoa: The Adolescent Girl." Samoa:
The Adolescent Girl. Library of Congress, n.d. Web. 22 May 2015.
Patu, Betty. "Samoans in America." Personal interview. 2 June 2015.
Wilson, Doug. "Helping Samoan Students Beat the Odds." The New York Times 29 July 1992: n.
pag. Print.