For Vaiaso o le Gagana Samoa - Samoan Language Week we take a closer look at O le Sulu Samoa, one of the oldest and longest-running news periodicals in the Pacific.
ʻSulu’ means ʻtorch’ or ‘light’ in Samoan. Published primarily in the Samoan language by the London Missionary Society from 1839, early issues of the Sulu are rare and difficult to access today with holdings largely held in archives outside Samoa.
In this blog, our guest contributors Litara Ieremia-Allan, Wanda Ieremia-Allan and Rev Dr Featunaʻi Liuaʻana reveal myriad ways the Sulu continues to shine its light, and the intellectual inheritance this measina (treasure) continues to bestow upon present and future generations.
Learn more about our authors' visit to the Research Library. Keep scrolling to read the in-depth blog.
Tala Faʻafāgogo
Storytelling in the Samoan culture is a communal affair. In the dim light of the
hurricane lamp, under the watchful surveillance of elders, amidst the company of
fidgeting and shrill laughing cousins, we would anticipate the ebbs and flows of
the fāgogo. The teller wielded stories which excited, angered, comforted, tickled
and heightened all sensibilities before the climactic turn of events tempered to a
concluding lull and a bemused aunty broke out in song to expel any residual
excitement.
The stories shift in both form and function, as they are skilfully harnessed by the
storyteller to either celebrate or restore balance into family order. Fāgogo would
heal relationships with humor, awaken historical consciences through the
remembrance of contested pasts, and invoke memories of loved ones through
moving and melodic metaphors. Since time immemorial, Samoan storytellers have
formed, shared, and stored such stories in Indigenous archives such as pese
(songs), solo (poems), lauga (oratory), tala faʻasolopito (histories), siva (dance),
tatau (tattoo), vavane (carvings), and fale afolau (architecture). Together, with
their respective audiences, these archives are both spaces and places where people and ideas come together (Te Punga Somerville, 2017).
Background image:O le Sulu Samoa, Iuni, 1909 front cover. AWMM BV3680.S3 SUL
Body Image: Guest contributors Wanda Ieremia-Allan, Reverend Dr Fetunaʻi Liuaʻana, and Litara Ieremia-Allan. Photographer: Richard Ng.
Historical Samoan language newspapers are important cultural artefacts.
Not only do they capture a kaleidoscope of historical events within their pages, they also point to the transnational circuits and networks forged by its Indigenous writers. The Samoan language newspaper O le Sulu Samoa (Sulu) is a particularly significant newspaper because of these many factors. Founded in 1839 and in circulation today, this monthly London Missionary Society (LMS) periodical is one of the oldest and longest-running newspapers in the Pacific.1
1.At present O le Sulu Samoa is published under the auspices of the Indigenised LMS church - Ekalesia Faʻapotopotoga Kerisiano Samoa (EFKS) in Tamaligi, Apia.
Historically, the Sulu is the inaugural home of the earliest grassroots Samoan and Pacific writers and printers from the multiple LMS South Seas missionary stations and village pastorates positioned throughout the Pacific. Since 1844, these Pacific men and women had been instructed in English, German, and Samoan languages in the missionary schools in Samoa, including the South Seas Seminary at Malua.
Collectively, these writers produced an exhaustive Sulu archive which included: travel writing; local and international news; ethnographic accounts; translated western literature from the English canon; obituaries; passenger manifestos; missionary ship routes, transnational movements, fāgogo, lauga, pese, solo and the like. Examples in the Sulu of first-hand witness accounts include: the 1906-1911 Mt Matāvanu volcano eruptions in Savaiʻi; the 1909 political exile of Mau a Pule movement leader Lauaki Namulauʻulu Māmoe and fellow orators to Saipan; the 1943 removal of Banabans/Ocean Islanders by the British Phosphate Commission to Nauru; Japanese World War 2 genocide attempts on the Banaba population; and the 1946 bombing of Bikini Atoll.
Not only are these historical records heart wrenching, but they also shed a light on the different ways histories are written and privileged.
Figure 2 (below): O Tala Eseese (O le Sulu Samoa, Iuni, 1909 opened to page 83). AWMM BV3680.S3 SUL
Exile to Saipan
In the June 1909 news section titled O le faafolauina o alii Samoa, the Sulu’s LMS missionary editor Reverend Newell captures the perfunctory and the precise nature of reporting by the European missionaries (see image at left). Its title, which translates as The Sailing of the Samoan Chiefs, specifically refers to the April 1909 political exile of the antagonizing anti-colonial German, pro-independence Mau a Pule chiefs from Savaiʻi, Samoa (image below).
The English missionary Rev. Newell’s article lists the date of departure, the names of the political prisoners, their villages, the warship and the German colony of Saipan where these Mau leaders were to be retained. The second part of the report attests to the LMS church’s colonial entanglements of the time. In this section, Rev. Newell reports the executive decision by the directors of the LMS church, at the behest of the German colonial administrators, to appoint the Faifeʻau Samoa (pastor) Uria and the tiakono (deacon) Arieta as ministering escorts to the political party, who were also members of the LMS church at Fusi Safotulafai. Lauaki Namulauʻulu Māmoe was also a leading deacon in the church during this time.
In contrast, Faifeʻau Uria’s account of a following voyage titled 'O Sina tala mai Saipan', published six months later, focuses on Indigenous protocols relating to malaga (journey). Instead of the provision of a passenger manifesto, Uria primarily writes enthusiastically in Samoan-specific ways, about relationality and proximity.
The range of written genres within the Sulu reflected the LMS Samoa Church commitment to the holistic education of all Samoan people under its umbrella. This is further highlighted by the curriculum being printed on the inside of the back cover of every Sulu issue prior to the inauguration of government and state schools. The broad curriculum and the introduction of literature from the English canon introduced new words to the Samoan vocabulary. It also resulted in the innovative merging of literary and oral traditions.
Ultimately, engaging with Samoan language texts affirm our Faʻasinomaga (Identity) and Faʻalupega (Heritage). Historical documents written in our Gagana (language) awaken and reclaim our histories.Engaging with Samoan heritage documents such as the Sulu provides avenues to reconcile and contest the historical representations of Samoa and Pacific people written by others. They are an intellectual inheritance gifted to us by our ancestors.
Leone Samu Tui (Associate Curator, Documentary Heritage Pacific) looks on as our three guest contributors Wanda Ieremia-Allan, Reverend Dr Fetunaʻi Liuaʻana, and Litara Ieremia-Allan are captured on film discussing the significance and legacy of the Sulu. Photographer: Richard Ng.
The Auckland War Memorial Museum Research Library has several issues of O le Sulu Samoa, dated from the early twentieth century, available to access in our Reading room on level 2. Please see Collections Online for more details, including a digitised version of Iuni/June 1909 issue of the Sulu.
About the authors
Sapapaliʻi, Fusi Sāfotulafai, Sāoluafata, Matautu Falealili, Lalomanu
Wanda is a PhD candidate in the Pacific and Indigenous Studies programme at the University of Waikato. Her archival research traces the intergenerational intellectual gafa / lineage of Indigenous Samoan writing of the early twentieth century in the former London Missionary Society newspaper O le Sulu Samoa. The key strand of her work investigates the ideological, cultural and gendered tensions inherent in the writing, including the application of Samoan epistemological paradigms to the reading of colonial texts.
Safua, Lalomalava, Iva, Salelologa, Faʻatoia, Fasitoʻouta, Vaieʻe, Malaela
Born in the village of Safua, Savaiʻi and migrated to NZ in 1969. Educated in Wellington’s Newtown School, South Wellington Intermediate, and Rongotai College. Member of the NZ Police, 1979 – 1984. Educated at Malua Theological College (MTC) Samoa, 1985-1988. Graduated with M.Th. from Pacific Theological College (PTC Fiji) 1993. Graduated with a Ph.D. from Australia National University (ANU Canberra) 2001. Taught at MTC, 1998 – 2009 and Vice Principal, 2006-2009. Research major in Pacific Church History, World Religion, and Primal Religion. Published author and contributor to books, Encyclopaedias, World Religion Atlas, and Journals. Currently Community member in Alliance Health Plus advisor for HVAZ, MFAT Pacific Advisor Panel, Church Ministers Advisory Group for Pacific Covid Vaccination, MOE ‘High Needs’ Advisory Group, MPP Pacific Language Strategy Review Group. Secretary EFKSNZ Trust since 2015. Church Minister of EFKS Sandringham Auckland since 2009.
Sapapaliʻi, Fusi Sāfotulafai,Sāoluafata, Matautu Falealili, Lalomanu, Pietermaritzburg, Raasay
Litara is a student in the Pacific Studies and Samoan Studies programme at Victoria University of Wellington. She is a scholarship recipient of the Teresia Teaiwa scholarship and has previously undertaken museum internships at the Auckland Art Gallery and the Wellington Museum. With a passion for writing and Siva Samoa, Litara’s performance piece ‘Tinā’ featured in the 2021 Pacific Dance New Zealand Festival. She is also a contributing author in the soon to be released book ‘Lāuga: Understanding Samoan Oratory’ by Dr. Sadat Muaiava.
Wanda's story
Wanda's childhood curiosity of the Samoan newspaper O le Sulu Samoa (Sulu) was forged from watching elderly relatives in the rural villages in Samoa poring over its contents in the dim light of the hurricane lamps, besieged by moths and requests from the neighbouring household. As Pastor’s children, she and her siblings would deliver the paper, alongside the ta’ita’i - meaai (food) for the elderly who were unable to traverse the mountain climb in Fasitootai, A’ana for the Sunday evening service.
Her curiosity led to her own determined search for rare extant copies in museum archives, library collections, and personal family records many years later as part of Marsden project ‘Writing the New World: Indigenous Texts 1900-1975’5 conducted by Professor Alice Te Punga Somerville.
Due to the exhaustive nature of locating rare surviving copies, O le Sulu Samoa research project became its own research project. An engagement with this newspaper suggests that archival work with the Sulu perhaps will never be complete as new meanings, new insights and new challenges emerge upon every reading. It is in many ways, consistent with the translation and the function to which it was envisioned: the Sulu indeed shines a light, to not just produce ‘sons of the gospel’, although this may occur, but also and more significantly, to connect and repatriate this intellectual inheritance to the Samoan and the Pacific people for whom it was initially intended.
For more information, please contact wi5@students.waikato.ac.nz
Further reading
References
Hau'ofa, Epeli. 2017. Our sea of islands. In Peoples of the Pacific (pp. 429-442). Routledge
Te Punga Somerville, Alice. 2017. ‘I do still have a letter’: Our sea of archives. In C. Anderson, & J. M. O’Brien (Eds.), Sources and Methods in Indigenous Studies (pp. 121-127). Routledge
Research Library visit video co-produced by Wanda Ieremia-Allan and Auckland War Memorial Museum. Special thanks to Richard Ng, for videography and photography.