Whispers and Vanities in Samoan Indigenous Religious Culture

of God. The Samoan indigenous concept of tofa saili 43 pleads for a similar thing. It
pleads for the wisdom to search with humility in contemplation with our gods and
ancestors for that which is good and true; for that which matters.
In interrogating the culture of whispers that surround the Samoan indigenous religious
culture I not only seek to bring to light the vanities of those who dismissed it in
arrogance, but also my own vanities and arrogance for wanting to expose them. In
undertaking this work I am constantly searching the depths of my soul for meaning
and purpose. Although we as humans can never know and should never presume to
know the full mysteries of God’s knowledge and power, there is also something
redeeming about knowing that in the ultimate all that is human is vanity. But in
searching for truth in our religious cultures I find it impossible to believe that the
religions of my forebears during pre-Christian times were not invested with the
wisdom and divinity of a loving God. I can not bring myself to believe also that my
Christian God, a loving God, didn’t speak or connect with my people for all those
3000-odd years before Christianity. It seems a gratuitous insult to both God and my
forebears to assume that there was a disconnect between them for all that time.
In pleading for an open examination of the culture of whispers that surround our
Samoan indigenous religion I query not the relevance of the Christian Church to
contemporary Samoan life and culture, but our collective refusal to engage in a debate
where the dualities of our religious lives could be meaningfully reflected on and
debated. My query is with the idea that as a Samoan nation we can’t seem to bring
ourselves to admit that there might be something worthwhile in the old religious
culture that we could learn from and take pride in today and in the future. I plead
from worry that we may lose the opportunity to hold onto something special,
something that was and still is an endowment from a loving and wise God, something
especially for us as Samoans and for our children.
My friend Brother Stephen Filipo, principal of St Joseph’s College in Lotopa, Samoa,
at a seminar for the National University of Samoa and in conversation with myself,
Rev. Iosefa Tiata and friends, spoke of an epiphany he received when he took a
sabbatical trip to Israel in 2008. 44 During this trip he met and spoke with a couple of
Jewish professors about his search for a place for his Samoan indigenous religion
alongside his Christian beliefs. In conversation with the Jewish professors he came to
realise that the Christian religion he believed in and upheld was written about through
the cultural lens of another indigenous culture, the Jewish culture. Whilst in
Jerusalem he visited the remains of the temple of Solomon, otherwise known as the
“wailing wall”. When he returned to Samoa he paid a visit to the top of the volcanic
mountain called Mataolemu 45 in Savaii. The two experiences were so spiritually
different that he began to wonder at the disconnect.
In 2005 Monsignor Etuale Lealofi of American Samoa, a participant of the Pacific
Regional Interreligious Colloquium on Indigenous, Cultural and Religious Concepts
43
Tofa meaning ‘wisdom’; saili meaning ‘to search for’.
44
I am grateful to Brother Stephen for sharing his story and insights with our group. I am also
grateful to Reverend Iosefa Tiata for accepting the invitation to dialogue with us as part of my
preparation for this paper.
45
This is translated as ‘eye of the volcanic eruption’.
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