Whispers and Vanities in Samoan Indigenous Religious Culture

forums I hope to generate a culture of informed pride about our indigenous religious
beliefs whereby contemporary custodians can impart to those eager to learn the best of
what our forefathers had to offer.
Before I delve into the basic tenets of our Samoan indigenous religious culture, let me
explain what I mean here by the culture of whispers.
A culture of whispers
A culture of whispers can include those whispers that are life-affirming, loveaffirming
and faith-affirming, such as a mother talking in loving whispers to her
unborn child or an audience whispering in awe at the majesty of the Sistine chapel.
The elements of love and awe that motivate and define these whispers are implicit in
tala tuumumusu, i.e. in the culture of whispers engaged by Samoan custodians when
passing on sacred knowledge. The culture of whispers I wish to dwell on in this paper
suggests a continuum where tala tuumumusu lies at one end and a more disturbing
kind of whisper, those of tala taumusumusu, lies at the other. Unlike tala tuumumusu,
tala taumusumusu are comments usually motivated by arrogance, jealousy and/or
spite.
Sister Vitolia Mo’a draws a useful distinction between tala tuumumusu and tala
taumusumusu. 2 She suggests that one is sacred and profound and the other dismissive
and pejorative. Tala tuumumusu imbues in the whisper a reverence for the knowledge
imparted and its tapu or sacred qualities. Tala taumusumusu is by definition
irreverent. The word tau in taumusumusu refers not to the imparting of knowledge
through a process that bespeaks awe (as implied in the term tuu, meaning to give
lovingly), but to the making of pejorative throwaway comments that are meant to pass
on prejudice and dislike. Sister Vitolia expresses the difference like so: “Tala
tuumumusu clearly exposes [tala] taumusumusu as a murky, half light activity, more
childish than mature, less informed, insecure and suffering from entrenched
hypocrisy” 3 .
The culture of whispers that surrounds the Samoan indigenous religion today sits in
between tala tuumumusu and tala taumusumusu and involves a sliding scale of
whispers whereby tala tuumumusu are the ideal and tala taumusumusu are the least
ideal. Whether the act of whispering is more tala tuumumusu than tala taumusumusu
or vice versa depends on [a] the nature of the knowledge or information passed on, [b]
the motivation for passing it on, and [c] the degree of guilt or shame felt when passing
it on. For example, it is not uncommon in today’s context for a family custodian of
indigenous knowledge to also be a staunch leader of a Christian church. When
passing on his knowledge about the origins of his chiefly titles and lands to a
designated receiver or nainai, it is possible that he would do so with minimum or no
guilt. This is because one can talk about what titles and lands belong to whom and
why in quite a perfunctory manner. However, when this custodian begins to talk of or
is probed further for the meanings and nuances of his chiefly titles, the names and
2
Personal communication by email, 16 November 2009. I am grateful to Sister Vitolia Mo’a
for her willingness to respond to my request for feedback on a draft version of my thoughts on the
concepts of a ‘culture of whispers’ and the ‘vanity of vanities’.
3
Ibid.
2