There’s no such thing as a bullshit Pe’a : Samoans achieving cultural identity in New Zealand

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Master’s Thesis for

Cultural Anthropology at the

Graduate School of Social Sciences

University of Amsterdam

“There’s no such thing as a bullshit Pe’a

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Samoans achieving cultural identity in New Zealand

Iris Boering 0246786

iris.boering@gmail.com Amsterdam, 20-03-2017 Supervisor: Y. M. van Ede

Co-readers: V. de Rooij, R. van Ginkel

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Declaration on Plagiarism and Fraud

I have read and understood the University of Amsterdam plagiarism and policy [http://student.uva.nl/binaries/content/assets/studenten sites/uva-studentensite/nl/a-z/regelingen-en-reglementen/fraude- en-plagiaatregeling-2010.pdf?1283201371000]. I declare that this assignment is entirely my own work, all sources have been properly acknowledged, and that I have not previously submitted this work, or any version of it, for assessment in any other paper.

Date: Amsterdam, 21-03-2017

Name: Iris Boering

Signature:

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This thesis based ethnographic research focuses on the complex process of negotiating cultural identity that second generation Samoans go through, while growing up in New Zealand. Being second generation migrant comes with a series of difficulties, in addition to the effects of New Zealand’s highly charged field of identity politics. The traditional Samoan tattoo (tatau) is growing more popular among the second generation, a development that is a frequently debated topic: all Samoans have their opinion about it, good or bad. For the people who consider having a tattoo, it is a big undertaking and real statement of cultural identity. To start the outline of this work, I present Tanu’s account. He, like many others with him, is considering the tattoo as part of his search to establish what it means to be Samoan. He has more questions than answers about who he is, making him feel lost and in internal conflict about his identity.

Tanu (28, postgraduate, currently studying to become documentary maker) about his plans to get a Samoan tattoo:

15th of March 2009, Auckland, New Zealand

So...I can’t explain it to my mother, she can’t understand why it’s important. She said it’s a bad idea to put that on my body, all of a sudden she’s like an expert, she’s like ‘oh, I don’t think you are allowed to, bad things will happen2_{’. I feel like it’s important because....I feel}

that it will help me figure out my place in the world. I just....I feel really

2_{The statement that ‘bad things will happen’ can refer to several meanings. The most likely explanation has to} do with spirit beliefs (see Macpherson and Macpherson: 1987). Samoans have strong spirit beliefs next to being Christian, and know that if a person gets tattooed, s(h)e has to go under taboo (tapu in Samoan). The taboo has to be kept by following a specific set of rules, for instance it is not allowed to let the person be alone at any moment for the entire period (this usually is a period of several weeks). The taboo is to protect against evil spirits, as Samoans believe that a person who gets tattooed is very vulnerable to them. ‘Bad things’ in this case would refer to for instance a person ‘getting lured in to the bush’ by an evil spirit. If someone passes away unexpectedly, this is an acceptable explanation. Other ‘bad things’ may refer to a fear of physical injury that can happen during the tattooing, like infection, or otherwise it may refer to the person being unable to finish the tattoo, which is considered very shameful for the entire family. In general, especially among older first generation Samoans, the tattoo is considered something bad, negative, backward, ugly, smelly, or otherwise something to avoid. In this case, stating that ‘bad things will happen’ is a socially acceptable way to express such dislike about the tattoo without having to say anything negative about it, which is most likely what Tanu’s mother was trying to do. I will discuss the reason why many first generation Samoans don’t like the tattoo in chapter two.

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lost most of the time, like there is so much uncertainty, like I don’t know what I am doing. I think that a lot comes from not knowing things, from all these questions that I have. I figure that, maybe if I start, I can start organizing my life. I could say that I am proud to be Samoan, extremely proud, but I could not tell you what it means. I wouldn’t be able to put it...like....I couldn’t define it, and...I want to. I can’t say that I can talk about myself or my culture from a place of authenticity, or even from a place of experience.

Now that I am an adult, and I get to choose for myself, I feel like I lean more toward the traditions that I know, that are familiar. I’ve seen photos of myself, over the last few years, and I am always wearing a skirt. Sometimes I feel like I am overcompensating, like, I have to say loudly, and in an obvious kind of way, that I am a Pacific person, and then I’m like...what is that shit about? But it feels like it’s the only way I know how to express it, how to make a statement. I figure that if I learn all that stuff, it will settle the internal conflict, and it won’t be....coming out. I have to key it up though, because at the moment I feel so lost. I want to get to a place where I feel like I deserve it, I want to get to a place where I feel, despite everything, as a person of Samoan descent. I want to be able to define for myself, [what it means] for me to be a Samoan person, a Samoan man.

12th of April 2009.

Whatever it is, personally I feel really superficial about it at the moment. It feels like I am constantly trying to figure it out myself, what it means to be indigenous, and if I qualify or not. I feel like I am forcing it, does that make any sense? Because if there is a criteria somewhere, of what it means to be indigenous, then I’d really like to see what the list is, and just mark things that apply to me (laughter). It’s like a justification, it feels like a means of defining yourself, as opposed to... uhm... not by your own personal characteristics, but by...

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predetermined characteristics, that belong to a culture, or this idea of culture....I don’t know if this makes any sense. My indigenous culture is this constant... it’s like question, after question, after question.... because the only information I can get is from textbooks or films, or like....second-hand, from like going to Pacifica [festival]. I almost feel like a tourist, you know, like, I was at that [Samoan] nightclub last night, and I said to my friend: ‘I wish I could understand what these men are talking about’. Cause they were talking in Samoan. She can understand, and she was saying to me: ‘Oh, they are talking about themselves’. And I just said: ‘Oh, I wish I could just... hear.... and simply....

I feel like there is a lot of pride in this country, to be a Pacific islander, be Samoan. It feels like it’s all superficial, it feels really fake, like overcompensation for not actually being back in Samoa. So....you have to wear your culture and you have to stress the point to almost everyone. Even though it’s really obvious that you are a Pacific person, despite all that it feels like a competition. You have to acknowledge at every point of your everyday life that you are proud to be Samoan. It’s like....when you see all those....Pacific asses, who are just constantly going on about being Pacific, despite being born in New Zealand. But....the fucked up part is that I feel like I am going that way. It’s like...you should always be a representative of your culture...or respect....or be an advocate. And then you see the ones that really bind to it, and you see them getting competitive, not only with everyone else, but with each other, like, who can come up with the strongest statement of their culture. But with everything it’s like: fuck, man....it feels like a contradiction all the time. I’ll probably commit my life to figure it out.

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Tanu: No, I don’t have to, but I am totally prepared to! And I think to myself: some day I’ll just disappear to Samoa and stay there for a really long time, I mean, getting like a more intuitive.... cause at the moment it feels like my culture is just in my brain. It does not feel intuitive or natural to me. I feel like I have to wear [it].... it feels really separate from who I am as a person. I feel like I am trying to intellectualize it, and make it real for myself by putting things on my body and eating specific, you know, foods, and...all the clichés of....of.... like all the fucking clichés of what it is....of what is perceived as a Pacific island Samoan person in New Zealand. It feels right....even though it....just....doesn’t feel right, even though it feels fake, superficial. It’s really conflicting, because....I’d be in a room full of Pakeha3_{people, and}

I will feel so....Samoan. And then I’ll be in a room full of Samoans, and I will feel so white, and like....plastic (laughing)

I: Ah, really...huh…

T: Haha, yup! And it fucking sucks, cause I can never be in a room full of Samoans and actually feel Samoan, I feel....inadequate. I feel like those aweful plastic tickies that you get from those tacky tourist shops, I feel like one of those, whatever the Samoan equivalent would be. I kind of feel like that, in a room full of Samoans, because....it feels like, whatever the culture is, it’s inside them, and...it’s happening without them thinking about it, it’s just like a state of being, and I feel like I’m pretending, or....trying to...catch up with everybody, like....oh, okay, so that’s what it means.

‘Islanderness’

Since Samoans started migrating to New Zealand in the 1960’s and 1970’s (Gershon 2012: 10), they have been negotiating a position in society. First generation Samoan

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migrants have worked hard to meet western standards by trying to get rid of their ‘islanderness’, taking great effort in removing everything that looked or sounded or felt ‘indigenous’ from the public space. They dressed in what was considered modern clothing and taught their children to speak English, supported by the idea that this would give them a better chance in life. In contrast, second generation Samoans do not want to be cleared of their cultural identity. They strive for the opposite of what their parents sought: they openly and expressively claim their indigenousness, they claim a public expression of their identity. They want to be acknowledged and accepted as people of Samoan descent, they want to be proud of their heritage openly. They eat Samoan foods, they wear characteristic Samoan clothes4_{, they try to learn the Samoan language. Some want to get tattooed, like} Tanu does. The tattoo is for serious candidates who are courageous enough to go through the harsh ritual, which is not for the weak of heart, the person has to be willing to withstand a lot of physical pain to get through it, as well as many judgments and opinions by others. For the ones who do, it is a genuine statement of identity and commitment.

All this takes place in New Zealand, where identity politics are a forefront topic in public life. Politics are literally engrained in the talk of the day. Maori people set the stage with their strong voice about cultural rights, entitlement to their heritage and reclaiming of ancestral land. The presence of the ongoing political debate is not only palpable in conversation, but also in government policies, museums, national sports and the tourist industry. The current discussion predominantly is about a need for recognition and justification, to correct the losses that Maori people suffered during the western settlement. Today it is actively under discussion whether white people should call themselves Pakeha or not, as Maori people are the indigenous people of New Zealand, and white people should adapt themselves to Maori house rules. Tanu:

It’s weird, we have a policy in this country, written specifically...or engineered specifically for indigenous protocol, like the treaty of

4_{The most popular item of Samoan clothing is the lavalava, a wraparound skirt made out of a straight piece of} fabric, often with Hibiscus flower prints in bright colours

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Waitangi, you can’t do anything without.... any kind of academic qualification in this country has a compulsory treaty of waitangi compartment, built into it, doesn’t matter what your practice is, you have to do a compulsory....you have to acknowledge the treaty between the Maori and the European settlers, and it’s just like....it feels irrelevant to me. I’m just like: this paper is bullshit. But if I don’t do it, I fail my degree, cause it’s compulsory. You have to do a Marae sit, which is great, but I think like.... oh god.... I feel like I am being forced to do it.... like social policy, that’s being brought in to serve indigenous Maori, because they were.... they got the short end of the stick by the European settlers, and they’re still paying, you know.

The already intense situation complicates the position for Samoans: they need to find their way in a struggle between white people and Maori that already leaves very little room. Samoans sometimes perceive their position as an ungrateful one, having less cultural rights than Maori people, despite the fact that Samoans are distant kin of Maori, and despite the fact that Samoans have been settling in New Zealand for over fifty years now (Macpherson 2002). Tanu:

And so everyone else has to kind of accommodate for [the Maori]....and there are Maori people that would say to me that that statement is completely ignorant, and that I’m a racist, and...I think that’s not fair. See this is where I am proud to be Samoan, I am advocating for Samoan issues, and I think to myself, why wouldn’t you have the same thing for other cultures? If you are going to make allowances for one culture, by the simple fact that they got here first? So when I think of the indigenous people of New Zealand, the indigenous Maori, who basically have their culture written into the national culture, or the dominant culture of New Zealand, I think....wow you guys, do you have anything to complain about? This is really ignorant....I think: yeah, you’re not the only ones, you know.

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Nonetheless, despite receiving political recognition on many levels, Maori people struggle in very similar ways with questions of identity and belonging (van Meijl 2006). Young Maori also complain about feeling lost, and are trying to figure out their cultural identity just like Samoans are. Returning to second generation Samoans, my research has been focusing on how their reclaiming of cultural identity gets constructed within New Zealand’s context. Through this project I aim to point out how, on the one hand, being second generation migrant leads people to reach out for achievement and overcompensation in their cultural identity, on the other how New Zealand identity politics, predominantly focused on Maori people, play out in achievement and overcompensation for Samoans as well - two overlapping and interconnected fields of information that affect people on a personal level.

Rosenblatt points out that in our effort to analyze “culture movements” (Rosenblatt 2011: 411) like the ongoing revival of the Maori, anthropologists have been occupied analyzing these types of movements as characteristic or even symptomatic of the “the contemporary world and the discourses about ‘modernity’ that accompany them” (ibid.: 412). Although these analyses are valid and necessary, he thinks that our concern with context has “seemingly precluded concern with content” (ibid.: 412), a valid point that indicates a need to “focus on a ‘native’s point of view’ that originates in an indigenous world view” (ibid.: 411). Whether we have focused too much on context or not, I started this research because I had become fascinated with New Zealand Samoan’s ‘native’s point of view’, and wanted to find out how this point of view was constructed. I became fascinated when my partner and I spent about seven weeks with a Samoan family on Manono Island, Samoa, in 2006. I wanted to go through the tattoo ritual for personal reasons, but before going through it, I wanted to be sure that this plan was ethically correct to the people I was with, even though it did not feel correct to me: it felt like stealing their heritage. After talking to many people, asking them many questions, I could find no red flags. There appeared to be no problem for Samoans that I wanted to get their tattoo. In fact, they were proud rather than envious that there was a white person who travelled all this way to get their traditional marks. So we went through with it, despite doubts in the back of my mind. Later on, on Manono, there was only one

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moment of discussion with a New Zealand Samoan chief who had flown in to attend a political ceremony. He stated quite fiercely that he did not like to see the tattoo on white people, and I was worried that we had done something very unethical after all. But the family we stayed with reassured me that there really was nothing to worry about, as this person was from New Zealand, which made all the difference. The chief even got laughed at a little behind his back, as the family I was with found that he must have ‘issues’. They said: he must feel very naked next to you, because does not even have a tattoo himself. I felt reassured that everything was okay. But when we arrived in New Zealand a few months later it was like the air had changed completely. A Samoan girl approached us in a spa in Hanmer Springs, when she saw our tattoos. She publicly confronted us, she wanted an explanation: “what are you doing with those marks on your body?” After these tense moments I became fascinated with the topic: how could it be that the point of view on this tattoo was so different in New Zealand, only a three hour plane ride away from Samoa?

In 2009, I set out to do my MA-research in New Zealand, interviewing second generation Samoans who wanted to get tattooed or who had been tattooed already, to find out how they thought and felt about the process, what it meant to them and what motivated them. Some of the people I interviewed became friends, who helped me gain insight into their search for their Samoan identity. The fact that I had the tattoo either ‘made’ or ‘broke’ the connections I had with people. Some steered away from me, they clearly did not like me because of it, others connected more than they would have if I would not have had it. People like Sandra and Tanu loved talking to me about it because I had gone through the experience. During the research I was struck with the complexity of their experiences, as Tanu’s account shows. It appeared to me that dynamics of migration are intertwined with identity politics in New Zealand’s highly charged public discourse on culture, that clearly manifests in people’s personal, daily lives. The goal of this research is to create clarity in some of the different dynamics that lead people to want to establish a cultural identity with so much determination.

The tatau is an ultimate cultural undertaking for all Samoans, whether they live in the islands or on the ‘main land’, and whether they love it or hate it. Samoans value

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their tattooing being performed in the traditional way, with a tapping method done with handmade tools made from bore’s tusk. This ‘traditional heritage’ gives them a quite unique position compared to other Polynesians: tattooing was practiced throughout the South Pacific, but waned under pressure of Christian missionaries, in most places the traditional methods got lost (Gell 1993: 44). Therefore, their position is kind of privileged, compared to what Maori people and other Pacific people ‘have left’. Undergoing this ritual is a challenging personal test, and also has spiritual and social significance. There are rules, taboos and requirements, and a sense of pride, respect and value surround this ritual practice. For all Samoans it is a clear and definite statement of identity, a matter that has become of great importance in New Zealand. Consider this statement by New Zealand Samoan Anthropologist M. Anae:

It is not merely enough to say that one is Samoan because of blood quantum. Those with secured identities realize that ‘to be Samoan’ must be a political statement in which commitment to the fa’asamoa5 is established by active participation in and commitment to

fa’alavelave6_{, church and aiga activities, by taking on Matai titles}7_and associated aiga responsibilities, and by full Samoan language acquisition. (Anae 2001a: 116)

This statement so clearly illustrates the pressure to achieve a fully established and expressed Samoan identity. What struck me about what Tanu said about his process was this very present and very powerful sense of achievement, of having to achieve his cultural identity, even though he states that he ‘really wants to’ when I asked him if he felt like he ‘has to’.

5_{Fa’a Samoa translates as the Samoan way, which most people will describe as being respectful of the family} and being respectful of the culture and care for the land.

6_{Fa’alavelave are ceremonial events where money is collected from the entire extended family, everyone is} expected to participate. Samoans collectively pay for weddings, funerals, and church building activities, and for tattooing rituals as well. The Matai determine how much each family member has to pay.

7_{Matai titles are Samoan chief’s titles, which are part of the complicated and layered Samoan political system.} This title system is based on the Samoan extended family (aiga).

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Precariously suspended8

In order to explain this powerfully present sense of achievement that people have, I will discuss three main concepts. The first concept is that of second generation migrants, meaning the children who are born in the country that their parents settled in a few decades ago, who are adults by now. They are in a specific position that enhances the pressure to achieve culturally. In his work on Southall, London, Baumann wonders about second generation migrants, in particular about how they are often depicted as “precariously suspended between two cultures” (Baumann 1996: 1). He states that he cannot work out why they should be seen as “suspended between, rather than be seen as to reach across, two cultures” (ibid.: 2). Even though Baumann’s questions about the idea of people being suspended is justified, in this case the suspended-ness has a clear form of existence in New Zealand. Tanu, as well as many others, refers to a feeling of being suspended by stating that he feels “so lost...because...I’d be in a room full of Pakeha people, and I will feel so....Samoan. And then I’ll be in a room full of Samoans, and I will feel so white”. To further research the notion of second generation migrants as either people who are suspended in between cultures, or as people who are reaching across cultures, Silverstein’s writings on migration proved insightful. In his article of 2005 Silverstein sketches an outline of the history of the different views on migrants within academic thought through time. He departs from “colonial times” when migrants were being studied and conceptualized as nomads, seeing nomadism as a “mark of different cultural evolution” as opposed to sedentarism, civilisation being a sedentarising force (Silverstein 2005: 369). By the 1930’s the focus in academic literature started to shift towards understanding migration in relation to economic factors, analysing the phenomenon through a sort of economic push-pull hypothesis, migration being the “’un-coerced’ movement of peoples across international borders” (ibid.: 372). Migrants were seen as rational individuals looking for economic opportunities, moving towards wherever economic opportunities were most beneficial. About forty years later, in the 1970’s, an in many ways opposite genre of literature came up.

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Western scholars were inspired by “political economy and practice approaches” (ibid.: 372). Together they formed a Marxist critique of ‘the West’, rejecting the classical economical push-pull hypothesis to be applied to people. Migrants were no longer perceived as calculating and rational individuals. Rather, their relocation “represented the ultimate violence of capitalist accumulation inflicted upon the poorest populations ‘uprooted’ from their lifestyles and displaced from their homes” (ibid. 372). Migrants came to be seen as the victims of ‘western’ money making systems, rather than people who were beneficiaries that were seizing an opportunity to join in the wealth and development of the ‘modern world’. This perception, that migration was supposed to be an opportunity to evolve, however, that in reality it turned out that people were the victims of capitalist forces, resurfaces in Tanu’s views:

This whole migration idea....like, this whole romantic notion that....that our people were going to....evolve....our culture is going to evolve cause we are going to be educated, and better opportunities and raararaa, and...it never happened. Pfff, it was bullshit, they got here, and they were basically free labour or cheap labour, up until a point that....they weren’t needed any more, and then they were blamed...or were scapegoats for like political agendas.

The notion of the migrant as uprooted victim of the unfair dynamics of capitalism also resurfaces in Tanu’s views: people were taken advantage of, exploited, and they did not get to enjoy how everything got better. First generation Samoans tried to build a new life, but they had an extremely challenging time. Most people worked two or three jobs in unskilled and poorly paid occupations. I would like to propose that second generation migrants’ feelings of being suspended between cultures has grown from their parents feeling suspended between Samoa and New Zealand in the first place. People did not get the chance to grow proper roots in New Zealand, the attractive promise of modernity turned out to be just an idea. In the interview Tanu continues that ‘it [the promise of a better life] never happened. ...it’s only happening now, in our generation. It feels like....the generations before us, they did all the work, you know.’ Here some of the threads are starting to show that have led

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to a set of values that invite second generation migrants to overachieve in their identity, to overcompensate, as they are the ones that can now finally enjoy the better life that was once a beautiful promise to their parents, but never happened for them. The dynamics between first generation and second generation Samoans are a determining factor. This puzzle I will work out further in chapter two.

Excellent hybrids

Second generation Samoans experience high expectations, as they do not have the cultural setbacks that their parents had, they have learned the cultural capital of the country they were born in to from early childhood. This western cultural capital mixed with a Samoan upbringing would make them the perfect group to build bridges, reach across cultures, to be the hybrids that can overcome the cultural in-between-ness. But being a hybrid seems an impossible task. After Baumann wondered why second generation migrants are not depicted as “reaching across cultures” more often (Baumann 1996: 1), Silverstein stated that after establishing the migrant as uprooted victim in the 1970’s, the academic focus of this time has increasingly shifted towards migration in terms of hybridity, sharply noting that this is “the postmodern celebration of the migrant as the cosmopolitan hybrid par excellence” (Silverstein 2005: 368). It would be too simplistic to say that Tanu is or is not a hybrid, or that he would not have the cultural competence to perform as one: he has as much palagi9 capital as he would ever need, he speaks perfect English, he will have a university degree soon, he is a New Zealander in every aspect. And even though he feels like it takes him every effort in the world to win some Samoan cultural capital, he is very Samoan in his ways. He has optimum capacities to reach across cultures, but if it comes to how he can conceptualize his identity, he cannot easily frame this notion as fluid or hybrid. His in-between-feeling as a person leaves him caught in doubt and uncertainty: he keeps saying that he feels “so lost”. I suggest that strongly reified notions of culture make realising a culturally hybrid identity nearly impossible. At the same time, applying reified, ‘listable’ notions of

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culture in order to determine cultural identity seems like the only solution to resolve this tension, to Samoans as well as Maori people.

Tanu’s list

In order to find some understanding of why specifically cultural identity is a topic that seems so unsuitable for hybridity, I found Baumann’s discussion of culture to be helpful. With his notion of “dominant discourse”, Baumann refers to people’s typical reified, bounded notion of culture that was “first invented by Herder and then perfected by Boas” (Baumann 1999: 25). Many anthropologists have counter-advocated reified notions of culture (e.g. Vertovec 2011), but Baumann resolves the urgency of this discussion by pointing out that, while there are good reasons to want to do away with reified notions of culture within our discipline, people will be using these notions nonetheless, “subscribing to this useful fiction when they see fit” (Baumann 1996: 13). Reified notions simply are part of the realities that we study as social scientists (Baumann 1999: 90). Baumann refers to the reified version of culture that many people will list when they try to describe what their culture is as “dominant discourse” on culture or the “essentialist view” (ibid: 24), comprehending culture as “the collective heritage of a group, that is, a catalogue of ideas and

practices that shape both the collective and the individual lives and thoughts of all

members. Culture thus appears as a mould that shapes lives or, to put it somewhat polemically, as a giant photocopy machine that keeps turning out identical copies” (ibid.: 25; my emphasis). If Tanu could find a photocopy machine that would help him to be photocopied into a Samoan, my guess would be that he would opt for it immediately, as he was so stuck in the question mark of his ‘indigenous culture’ in 2009. The way he is looking for his Samoan identity resembles trying to find the idea of a catalogue that Baumann is describing in his reference to the reified, dominant discourse on culture. Tanu says: “If there is a criteria somewhere, of what it means to be indigenous, then I’d really like to see what the list is, and just mark things that apply to me”. But at the same time he is painfully aware that this photocopy idea (or

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catalogue version of culture) will not work, as this is not what it will take for him to be able to feel authentic.

Tanu knows that the ‘list’ version of Samoaness is not real, and he makes fun of himself for thinking this way, he knows that culture is not something you can figure out, and complains that he is trying to intellectualise it. On this note Baumann quotes Berger and Luckmann, who wrote in 1967 that “reification is the apprehension of human phenomena as if they were things .... It must be emphasized that reification is a modality of consciousness, more precisely, a modality of man’s objectification of the human world” (Berger and Luckmann in Baumann 1996: 13). Tanu states that he feels like “my culture is in my brain” and that this feels fake to him. He keeps referring to how it does not “feel natural” and it does not “feel intuitive”. In Baumann’s terms Tanu would be referring to a demotic discourse, “(lit. ‘of the people’)” (ibid.: 10) of Samoan culture, a version of culture that feels he has no access to, because his father is not around to talk to. He states that he wants to “learn all that stuff” and he is aware that it is not factual knowledge that he is missing. The only real solution he sees is to “just disappear to Samoa and stay there for a really long time, I mean, getting like a more intuitive....”. Baumann points at this perception as a processual understanding of culture, more like a “historically improvised jam session” that “only exists in the act of being performed” (Baumann 1999: 26). In comparison to Baumann’s lines of thought, Barth (1969) states that:

Boundaries are .... maintained between ethnic units, and consequently it is possible to specify the nature of continuity and persistence of such units. ....ethnic boundaries are maintained ....by a limited set of

cultural features’ (Barth 1969: 38 my italics). .... ‘However, most of the

cultural matter that at any time is associated with a human population is not constrained by this boundary; it can vary, be learnt, and change without any critical relation to the boundary maintenance of the ethnic group (ibid.: 38 original italics).

What I found remarkable about Barth’s statement is how his idea of a limited set of cultural differentiae, and next to that, “most of the cultural matter” that is not

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reified, and instead can change and grow, compares to Baumann’s point of a dominant, reified notion of culture versus the demotic, changing, lived version of culture. If there are these two discourses, or versions of culture, and Tanu is referring to the limited set, or dominant discourse, to define his identity, then still the question remains: why do people determine their identity by way of such strongly reified notions?10 I will return to this question in chapter three, to discuss how reified notions of culture have grown through New Zealand’s settlement history.

Raising self-esteem

The political process that Maori people have initiated to gain institutional power has lead to remarkable results (van Meijl 1993). Maori people are fighting for recognition as a group, a process that reinforces structures of inequality in New Zealand society, leading to an on-going social elbowing on what piece of social space will be culturally owned by whom, and who gets to speak loudest in the public debate. Rothschild describes this process as “ethnopolitics”, “mobilizing ethnicity from a psychological or cultural datum into political leverage for the purpose of altering or reinforcing... systems of structured inequality between and among ethnic

10_{When I was planning to travel to Samoa in 2006, I felt that it would be beautiful and respectful to make notes} of all the little symbols in the tattoo, and try to understand their meaning. I bought a beautiful notebook to keep track of what I learned. After spending some days with the tattooist and his family, I sat down with him and asked if he would go through the symbols with me and explain to me what they meant. At first he did not understand what I wanted with my book and my pencil, and so he asked his oldest daughter to translate. When she explained my wish, he and his oldest son started laughing. Apparently it was quite hilarious that I wanted to grasp and write down the meaning of every symbol. In the next few days he and his son took great joy in giving me a different explanation of the symbols every time: a ‘box’ (square shape in the men’s tattoo) could be the connection point between the roof of the house and it’s poles, but it could also be the box that they use to catch fish. It could also mean a pillow. Every time they would study my facial expression to see what my response would be, and start laughing. I felt made fun of a little and consulted the mother of the family, the tattooist’s wife, if they were just trying to tease, or that the symbols really had different meanings. She replied to me that a box can most definitely mean all these things, depending on the context, but mostly she shrugged her shoulders at my ‘problem’, because she did not understand why I was investing my energy into figuring it out. It appeared to me that it is not that Samoans do not ascribe (symbolic) meaning to things, but rather, these meanings are not so ‘set’. Samoans don’t seem to take matters like these very seriously, and tend to laugh at the people that do. What matters more to them is the meaning of the tattoo in terms of being mature, worthy and responsible as a person in society. When people ask me: ‘What does your tattoo mean?’ I tend to have trouble answering this question. When I say that it stands for worthiness and responsibility in Samoan culture, people tend to respond with: Ah, yes. Okay. But what does it all mean? I learned to simply respond with: ‘it’s a traditional tattoo from Samoa, and it’s very symbolic’.

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categories” (Rothschild in Baumann 1999: 60, original italics). Tanu addresses an unfairness in these systems of structured inequality: “social policy, that’s being brought in to serve indigenous Maori, and so everyone else has to kind of accommodate for [the Maori]....I think that’s not fair”. Ethnopolitics and fighting for rights is engrained in Auckland’s daily life. Ethniticity and ethnopolitics are not terms that are used in daily conversation in Auckland. Instead, people use less politically charged terms such as ‘my culture’ and ‘my heritage’. The unfairness of the institutionalised inequality pushes people to want to achieve their own position within the qualifying means of justification: indigenousness. To be indigenous provides entitlement to status, demeanour, and a voice in the public debate. Tanu clearly refers to this dynamic by having to “stress the point [of my cultural identity] to almost everyone. Even though it’s really obvious that you are a Pacific person”. The effect of people overcompensating in their identity to qualify as a ‘Pacific person’ becomes clearer when he continues: “...despite all that it feels like a competition. You see them getting competitive, not only with everyone else, but with each other, like, who can come up with the strongest statement of their culture”. I will take this discussion further in chapter three, where I will explain how New Zealand identity politics have reinforced a set of beliefs that encourages cultural identity achievement through culture appropriation policies that were employed throughout New Zealand in the 1970’s and 1980’s. These policies were focused on “raising Maori self-esteem”, teaching young children to be proud of their cultural identity in school. The culture appropriation policies were focused on young Maori, but as Samoans and Maori grew up side by side in the same classrooms, Samoans were taught to establish their cultural identity through the same set of values. Just like Maori, Samoans express a feeling of need and pressure to acquire their cultural identity.

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Chapter summary

In chapter two I will explore different dynamics within the Samoan community in New Zealand that encourage second generation Samoans to feel determined to achieve higher standards of both social success and cultural identity.

In chapter three I will explore how notions of culture became static in New Zealand’s colonisation history, and were consolidated further through the culture appropriation policies that were applied throughout New Zealand in the 1970’s and 1980’s. These policies encouraged Maori to be proud of their cultural identity and ‘stand tall’ after decades of institutionalised repression. Second generation Samoans were taught the same philosophies and rhetoric of cultural pride.

In chapter four I will discuss how Samoans try to find solutions for the problems that they encounter, and how this results in getting tattooed, or not getting tattooed. I will discuss Sandra’s solution. After she had her tattoo, she realised she will never be accepted as a full or a real Samoan and gave up fighting for this status. To be able to do so, she stopped caring what other people think, and claimed her cultural identity for herself.

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Chapter 2. Two generations

Second generation Samoans are in a process of trying to achieve a clearly pronounced cultural identity. They report feeling suspended between Samoaness and ‘whiteness’. Tanu, like many others, states feeling lost, meaning he does not feel like he has established for himself what it means to be Samoan. He hopes that going through the tattooing ritual will help him resolve his inner conflict about who he is. This ‘inner conflict’, as he expresses it, forms a reflection of several antagonising power dynamics in the world around him, that make him feel inferior as a Samoan person and make him feel insecure about who he is. Samoans from Samoa are believed to have their judgments about New Zealand Samoans, and first generation Samoans have their judgments about second generation Samoans as well.

The desire to attain a solidly and fully established cultural identity is a recurring topic among Maori people too, a co-occurrence that I will explain further in chapter three, where I will focus on the influences of identity politics in New Zealand in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Second generation Samoans’ tendencies to want to achieve a cultural identity appear to have been encouraged by these policies, but they are affected by migration dynamics as well, in particular by disparities in perception between the first and the second generation. There is a difference between first and second generation Samoans’ values on cultural identity: first generation Samoans tried to get rid of their ‘islanderness’, second generation Samoans try to reclaim it. Beliefs held by first generation Samoan migrants, about what it means to be a good or a real Samoan, motivate and complicate the search for second generation Samoans, a process that contributes to their drive to achieve higher standards of cultural excellence.

In chapter one I proposed Baumann’s suggestion to see second generation migrants as people who are able to “reach across cultures” and Silverstein’s perspective on them as “cultural hybrids par excellence” (Baumann 1996: 1; Silverstein 2005: 368). In everyday practice the tension of being suspended between cultures versus functioning as cultural hybrids is there, however, suspension and hybridity do not

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hold as opposites. Rather, they form different layers: second generation migrants are doing well with their skills to function as cultural hybrids (Gershon 2012), yet despite these achievements they feel suspended between cultures nonetheless. Hybridity appears to undermine the authenticity of cultural identity, as it is not easy to conceptualise in hybrid form.

As performing cultural hybrids, second generation migrants would theoretically make the perfect group to build bridges. They could tread in the footsteps of their hardworking parents and help the Samoan community move forward. They do not have the cultural setbacks that their parents had, learned English in primary school and to function in a western society from early childhood. They could therefore be the perfect group to help to resolve some of the societal problems that the Samoan community has been encountering: Samoans have become another ethnic group in New Zealand’s “coffee-coloured underclass” (Anae 2004: 99). Therefore, expectations on young successful second generation Samoans to achieve success are high, the hopes for the future of the Samoan community are focused on them. Anae writes:

Finally, New Zealand-born/raised Pacific peoples who have completed their identity journeys and have secured their identities are the future navigators for our Pacific peoples in New Zealand. They have learnt to maximize their New Zealand-cosmopolitan and Pacific identities. Using the Papalagi11 education, knowledge and skills they have acquired to

serve their Pacific peoples – guided by the advice and knowledge of their elders and participating in their own ethnic persistent identity systems - they can work to raise the socio-economic conditions of their peoples in New Zealand. For it is this group that has the opportunities, the vision (traditional and virtual) and, the entrepreneurial and leadership skills and the best equipped in this information age. (2001a: 119, 120)

11_{Samoan for ‘white people’}

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In Anae’s words the idea of achieving a strong cultural identity is coupled with the concept of achieving success in society. A strong cultural identity and successful social achievement are connected associations, whereas comparatively, for the first generation, cultural identity had been something to be removed in order to achieve success. The children who achieve higher levels of education often are the ones that are interested in achieving a high level of cultural performance as well. The people I met that were interested in getting tattooed, or who had gone through the ritual already, had reached university levels of education, be it in finance, law or in art, or had achieved high levels of success in their careers as local television celebrities or documentary makers. It seems that many second generation Samoans who have a high expectation of themselves to reach success in society, also have a high drive to achieve a strong cultural identity.

The first ones were the good ones: success

For many first generation Samoans, achieving excellence in social performance has been a main priority to migrate. ‘Samoaness’ was considered something to get rid of, so how and why has the value of ‘cultural identity’ changed? And why do second generation Samoans feel the need to reclaim their identity? To understand this contradiction, I will explain the ideological starting point of many first generation Samoans. For first generation Samoans, the drive to achieve success has been a main goal and priority to migrate:

The first people who migrated were principally young adults - promising students who had won scholarships or promising workers who would likely send money home. (Gershon 2012: 84)

In 2009, I met an ambitious first generation New Zealand Samoan, her name is Iuni. She is the second daughter in her family, has become the most successful child: she studied to become a lawyer and started her own law-firm in South Auckland, where she has bought a beautiful house together with her husband. Together they earn a good income, and all their children are in university. I met her when I visited the

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Hidden Garden in Apia, Samoa, a small guesthouse hosted by her brother and sister. The guesthouse is based on an inviting concept: you stay in Samoan fales (traditional Samoan open houses) that are built in a beautiful garden full of lush fruit trees. Breakfast fruits are freshly plucked from the garden every morning, served on a banana leaf. Iuni flies over three to four times a year. This time she had brought her 26 year old daughter Josie, who has finished her degree as a lawyer and is working full time in her mother’s law firm.

In 2006, I had been in Apia for the first time, and I had wondered about the Hidden Garden, that seemed rather affordable for its standards. When I returned in 2009, many improvements had taken place: new fales were being built, the kitchen had been redone, the place looked great. Two months later, at lunch with Iuni somewhere in South Auckland, I learned that she was financing the operation in Samoa, with the income she generated in New Zealand. She said: “you know, I am the one who has come up with that idea, of having a guest house in a garden, and use the trees to serve breakfast. And I am the one who is paying for it all. After my parents died I had to come up with something, because it is my family’s land, and I want it to thrive”. When I asked her how she paid for it all, she smiled and said: “You know, my father always said: ‘we need a doctor and a lawyer in the family!’ And so I went to New Zealand in my early twenties, I became a lawyer, and I married a doctor (laughing)”.

This theme of achieving success for your family is a returning rhetoric amongst Samoans, in New Zealand as well as in Samoa. Parameters include reaching an academic level of education, making enough money to buy a house that is big enough for family and guests, as well as the ability to sustain a lifestyle that allows to afford luxury products, like high-end supermarket foods, brand clothing, laptops and smart phones. Another key parameter is to have a profession that people will generally respect, such as being a doctor or a lawyer, or having a job in finance. The drive for success resonates for second generation Samoans as pressure to do really well in society. The expectation on the children is so high because the parents had to sacrifice their lives in Samoa to make the transition to New Zealand. They

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had to work hard to build a new life, while they had to support their family in Samoa, but also had to make sure to provide a good life for their children.

The promise that never happened

In the first chapter I discussed how academic views shifted in the 1970’s, from envisioning migrants as rational individuals looking for opportunities, to seeing migrants as the victims of capitalist forces, as people that were being exploited. The first idea that resembles an economical approach to migration sees migrants as opportunistic beings who were taking clever action by moving to places where they could benefit from industrialization in ‘the West’. It included the idea of them having chances of getting a better life, a life that would be comfortable, ‘developed’ and educated. Along with this shift in academic views, many Samoans were hoping to migrate for this ‘better life’, but now acknowledge that it turned out that this life was not as promising or easy as people had hoped. Despite all aspirations to work hard, make money, and achieve for the family, Samoans became part of New Zealand’s ‘underclass’. More - mainly second generation - Samoans have enrolled in higher levels of education than ever before, but still, “the achievements of few are counterbalanced by poor socio-economic indicators for the majority of Pacific people” (Teaiwa and Mallon 2005: 207). Samoans initially came in to “fill a shortage of blue collar labor” (Besnier 2012: 49412) a branch that suffered massive job losses (Anae 2001a: 102). Next to facing financial struggles and being part of lower class New Zealand together with Maori and other Pacific islanders, Samoans faced racism, stereotypes and negative judgments that were, and still are, pervasive throughout society. There is an ‘overarching negativity of questionable media representation’ (Anae 2001a: 104), pacific islanders get characterised as lazy,13 undisciplined (Teaiwa and Mallon 2005, Besnier 2012), and criminal, a palpable public opinion that hardly anyone ever speaks aloud. Only once, one of my white New Zealand housemates mentioned after quite a few drinks: “honestly, I hate to

12_{Besnier makes this statement about Tongans, however the migration process of Samoans is comparable} 13_{Teaiwa and Mallon (2005: 212) state how the first Samoan rugby team, despite it’s quality in players, could not} get support by Oakland clubs because of Pacific Islander player’s reputation for poor discipline. Besnier (2012: 503) also points out that Tongan rugby is seen as undisciplined and good for socialising only.

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say it, but the Samoans we have working in our company, they really are good for nothing”.

The better life: it can only happen now

With all these complicating circumstances that the first generation had to conquer, the ‘better life’ only now is starting to get a chance to develop. Tanu already clarified that it feels like the first generation has done “all the work”, and that New Zealand as a land of opportunity can only start happening now for Samoan people. “All the work” has been characterized by Anae as the “needs and aspirations of a vast majority of Pacific people… quite simply, they are that their children become educated and successful” (2001b: 119), so that Samoans will not forever remain “an impoverished, jobless under-class in New Zealand” (Anae 2001b: 102). All these factors enhance the hope and expectation on the second generation to do really well and finally realize the long-set goal of having a better life. A first priority has been to achieve high levels of education, preferably university. Parents often choose the education for their children. Iuni firmly stated, laughing: “I put all my children through law school”. Popular disciplines are law, medicine, and economics, rather than arts (Anae 2001a: 107). Children are expected to do great, to reap the fruit of all the hard work of the first generation, to be the ones who get to enjoy all the good possibilities that were created for them.

The curious change: ugly to beautiful

Along with the change in perception of cultural identity as something to be proud of, perceptions of the tattoo have changed completely. Older people state that they consider, or used to consider, the tattoo as ugly and backward:

Pussy (78), Makarita’s mother, has moved to New Zealand over 40 years ago with her husband. He is very old and ill now, but he still holds his Chief’s title in Samoa. In his younger days even more so than now, all chiefs were expected to get tattooed,

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but he never did, because Pussy had told him: “If you get tattooed, I will find another man to be with!” She does not like needles, she does not like tattooing, and if she thinks of the Pe’a,14 she thinks of the moaning and crying of the men, and of the smell of the fruit bat. “People used to say that the fruit bat stinks, as it stinks in your armpits, dirty Pe’a…..all this suffering”. Her son wants one, but she rather not see him have it. Pussy has not changed her views along with the younger generation, although at a later moment, when I came over to interview her son, she did say she finds the tattoo beautiful, as long as it is not mixed with other tattooing styles.

Iuni, the lady who has her own law firm in South Auckland, is now in her fifties. She has gone through many of the societal changes, and therefore she has a different perspective than Pussy. At first right after we met, she stated several times that she always would have loved to have the tattoo when she was younger, but that she had never gotten around to it, and that she feels she is too old now, because her legs are not beautiful enough anymore. But months later, after we had met a few times, she explained that she in fact used to hate the tattoo, that she felt that it was so dirty and ugly and backward. She explained that later on, somehow, she had come to find it beautiful, but she did not understand why. She had come to feel that she should be proud, in fact, that all Samoans should be proud, and that all Samoans should have the tattoo and show it! Now, she is trying to convince her 27 year old daughter Josie to have the tattoo, and run the marathon in shorts, showing it to everyone with pride.

Sandra [second generation Samoan, 27 years old, BA in English and in Samoan, postgraduate in cultural studies. She had her Malu15 at 25], said:

It was sort of over time, when uhm, oh, when I was younger I never wanted one, I used to always wonder, like: ‘oh my gosh, how could you get that, how could you get that’ …..but when I grew older I developed a real love for my culture, like a passion, you know? So I started dancing, just…Samoan dancing, traditional. People are always asking,

14_{The male version of the Samoan tatau (tattoo), named after the large fruit bats that fly all around Samoa} 15_{Female version of the tatau}

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like, ‘why did you get it, why did you get it?’ And so it’s like…..I really wanted one, just for myself, it’s not for anybody else.

Intergenerational issues

The question why many Samoans have come to see the tattoo as beautiful, as something to be proud of, and why having a strong cultural identity has become a key part of people’s lives can be explained by the dynamics between the first and the second generation. A first issue that second generation Samoans encounter is they do not tend to get valued as fully. Sandra states that:

I always get questions from people from Samoa. So, there’s a difference. We…we consider ourselves New Zealand Samoans, whereas they are Samoans from back home. So yeah, they sort of separate us, where they see us as…..Samoan, but not as Samoan as them, you know what I mean? They always question us because they are very….uhm….they are trying to belittle, sort of, in ways, the New Zealanders. It’s always there.

Second generation Samoans are seen as less Samoan, sometimes they state that they feel judged for not being Samoan at all by Samoan Samoans. They dread getting characterised as being ‘brown on the outside, white on the inside’. Arguably, for this reason they aim at a fully expressed cultural identity. Even if they do not get acknowledged after achieving it, at least they have it for themselves.

More or less cultural

Typical stigmatisations of second generation Samoans children are categorized in terms of being more or less cultural. ‘More cultural’ or ‘very cultural’ could be describing a person who shows approvable behaviour according to Samoan cultural standards, which in this equation is a synonym for being ‘good’. Less cultural means ‘bad’, and for instance can be used to describe children that are considered as too

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disobedient, children that are asking questions inappropriately, or children that are not obeying their parent’s direct orders, or they insist on dating (Gershon 2012: 161). How cultural someone is, - or in the negative, how far a person has drifted from Samoan culture, - is a type of measurement for how good or bad someone is doing, and also it is a parameter for how a person gets judged in terms of how ‘Samoan’ they are. Certain behaviours of second generation Samoans get judged as being ‘bad’, because they are considered too ‘western’, or fia palagi. So in this comparison ‘being good’ is considered in terms of ‘being cultural’. Since the tattoo serves as a statement of being cultural, it can help second generation Samoans gain approval. However getting tattooed can also make matters worse if the person is considered not knowledgeable enough about Samoan culture, leading to more disapproval.

Children getting ‘lost’

First generation Samoans tend to worry that young people miss out on being raised properly, which would be the way people are raised in Samoa. Many people express a fear that the children will ‘get lost’. Part of this fear is realistic, as many young children do get lost: there is a high level of drug use and criminality in high schools among Pacific children, young kids they tend to get bad friends and display behaviour that is hard to manage (Anae 2001b: 23). Tanu has gone through his own phases of being hard to handle, and says about himself: “I really was a little shit”. He recalls coming home to his mother with stories of classmates that were on drugs while they were in the classroom. New Zealand is considered a space of too much freedom and too little social control, and all this is to blame on ‘western culture’. The solution to these problems would be to make sure that children are raised ‘more cultural’. Church ministers warn teenagers in their congregation that if they do not respect their parents they risk losing their culture (McGrath 2002: 325). Second generation Samoans are characterised as having “neither the cultural capital nor the inclination to participate in the forms of social organization that were the bases of their parents’ sense of cohesion” (Macpherson 2002: 86). Samoans express

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fear that young people no longer need the fa’a Samoa in the current world they grow up in, that they will abandon their culture, that they will not stay committed and that Samoan culture may even get lost. For second generation Samoans, having a powerful and clearly communicated cultural identity is a statement of being one of those children that do not forsake their culture, who are not getting lost in western values, who have respect their culture and their parents.

Too selfish, not enough discipline, and the expectation to fail

Another way that second generation children are considered ‘not cultural enough’ is through the judgment of seeing them as being too selfish, which is seen as a result of growing up in New Zealand. They get blamed for being too focused on themselves, Anae quotes one of her informants saying that “all they care about is themselves” (Anae 2001a: 114) . Macpherson names “young people’s predisposition to … look for freedom and self-gratification” (Macpherson 1996: 72). In relation, young people are judged for having a lack of self-discipline (ibid.: 72). In general, all these traits are characterized as being fia palagi16, from a Samoan point of view a

set of behaviours that are considered arrogant and disrespectful (McGrath 2002: 316). For instance this would include wanting to make choices for themselves, not participating in family matters or household chores, but also wanting money to buy things for themselves. The solution in this narrative again is that being ‘more cultural’ will save children from all these pitfalls. These judgments echo the perception of many first generation Samoans that see their children grow up in a much freer and less disciplined environment than they once did. From this point of view, to a degree the children are expected to fail. There is a common narrative among Samoan people that many young Samoans are leaving church, that they fail to respect their culture and they fail to respect their parents, they fail to be able to speak Samoan and to fail in school (Gerson 2012: 139).

Because of all these complicating and judging circumstances within the Samoan community, it is hard for second generation children to establish for themselves

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when they will be considered a true or full value Samoan. Notions of Samoaness and whiteness polarise in these comparisons, that seem to return to whether second generation Samoans are to be considered Samoan enough or not. These judgments reinforce the feeling of being suspended between Samoaness and whiteness even more, and it arguably motivates them to clarify at least for themselves what it means to be Samoan.

Commitment

For people who are motivated to establish a clear cultural identity, the tattoo is particularly appealing as it is a powerful statement of commitment to Samoan culture. Even though many Samoan Samoans are said to discredit the value of personal commitment when New Zealand Samoans have the tattoo, among New Zealand Samoans it is a recognised statement of commitment that will be taken seriously. Commitment is valuable as it opposes notions of being too fia palagi, which is considered too individualised and self-centred. Commitment has a symbolic meaning for Samoans migrants as their communities were built on loyalty and reliability from the moment people started migrating.

The first ones were the good ones: reliability/loyalty

Only a few people were able to climb the economic ladder like Iuni did. Most Samoans who migrated in the 1960’s and 1970’s worked the rest of their careers in minimum wage labour (Besnier 201217), often holding two or three jobs at a time to make ends meet (Gershon 2012: 10). Reliability and commitment to the family and to Samoan culture were key factors for families to select who would be sent overseas to make money. Gerson states that people would be selected if they would make “good workers”, based on whether they would be likely to send money home (ibid.: 84). Similar to Gershon, Macpherson (2002) also describes how, for the benefit of the entire family, it was most interesting to send reliable remitters

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overseas. Whatever career paths people got, they tended to share the same goal: to make money and send it home to Samoa, to make a better life for their Samoan families, and to provide an education for their own children, so that they were contributing to providing for a better future for their own families in New Zealand. Macpherson argues that “Families were controlled by the ones that are believed to be thoroughly committed to fa’a Samoa”(Macpherson 2002: 81). Households were run by people who were believed to keep others on track (ibid.: 82), people that were expected to be beneficial for social and financial security for the family that stayed behind in Samoa.

Taking responsibility in the community is a real and pressing issue. Gershon (2012), Macpherson (2002), McGrath (2002) and Goldsmith (2003) all write in detail about the extensiveness of - and high expectations in - Samoan networks. People talk of a strong sense of obligation and affection for their family; it is all about love and responsibility (Gerson 2012: 57). McGrath (2002: 333) states about the Samoan community in Seattle: “the sense of connectedness is strong, obligations are real”. McGrath, Gershon, Goldsmith and Macpherson all describe how Samoans tend to have a highly developed sense of community and mutual obligation. Gershon states that “love and responsibility, obligation and affection are connected” (2012: 57). People have strong feelings about ‘staying committed’. Modell writes that “conditions permitting the creation of [urban Pacific] communities also predict the nature of the ensuing solidarity” (Modell 2002: 8).

‘Commitment’ and ‘staying committed’ are returning themes among second generation Samoans. When you ask them about their wish to get tattooed they will often tell you that they want to do it, but not until they are ready to be more committed to their culture, and that they want to take more responsibility in the community. For instance, my Samoan dance instructor had some tattoo marks on the dorsal of her foot, but when I asked her if she wanted to have a Malu she said she most definitely wanted to do it, but probably not until she was a bit older, when she would settle down, and would be ready to take more responsibility in the community. When I asked her what this means, she said that she would go to church every week, care for the family, and care for the land in Samoa. ‘Taking

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responsibility’ refers to being available as an asset for the family network. This can mean that the person will structurally spend more time with parents and grandparents, or help out with practical issues such as taking care of children or grocery shopping. It can also mean that the person will focus on a more stable career so s(h)e can provide structural financial support to the family.

Expectation: cultural excellence

Next to ‘showing commitment’ as a key that encourages creating a strong cultural identity, another factor that motivates people to try to reach cultural excellence is the expectation for them to know how to do a good cultural performance. A good cultural performance includes being able to speak Samoan, knowing how to perform traditional Samoan dance, knowing how to act in a respectful way towards an elder, and knowing how to behave respectfully in general. It can be very challenging for second generation Samoans to know how to act correctly, as parents tend to expect their children to “know what to do automatically” (Gershon 2012: 122), having “implicit and rigid expectations that their parent’s generation seemed to grasp intuitively and expect them to do as well” (ibid.: 122). This expectation is another factor that puts second generation Samoans in a vulnerable position, because they may know or feel what is expected of them, but they did not grow up in an environment where they learned enough or were trained enough to be able to perform. Someone like Tanu is extremely keen to learn, but he does not even know where to begin. Not knowing how to act or how to behave in social situations will devaluate whether someone is considered a true Samoan. Children raised outside Samoa are “constantly being criticized for revealing the effort they put into trying to be something that they should just be” (ibid.: 147). Every failure risks family or community disapproval of not being truly Samoan, and “the point is never how well-intentioned someone might be. Either they succeed or they don’t” (ibid.: 146). A solution for this problem would be to try to learn whatever possible to ‘know enough’. People like Sandra have gone to great lengths to learn whatever they can. Arguably this pressure to be able perform, and the chance to be devaluated as