Weaving Lineage in Sāmoa

Edited by Aaron Michael Ullrey

The following Research Reflection is part of an ongoing series spotlighting the academic study of religions.

There is a saying in Sāmoa: E iloa le Samoa i lana tu, savali ma tautala. “You know a Sāmoan by the way they stand, walk, and talk.” When a Sāmoan steps out into the world, it is understood she represents her family, living and deceased; she is her full lineage. I am an early-career Catholic theologian with Sāmoan and Palagi (New Zealand European) heritage, and I am developing a Sāmoan diaspora theology of mental well-being that foregrounds the role of ancestors in individual and communal flourishing. We flourish through harmonious relationships with family, cultural traditions, land, and our physical bodies, and these harmonious relationships, structured by lineage, are our very identities.

Young Pacific Islanders grapple with how missionization changed their cosmologies. Indigenous Christian identity has often been reduced to coercive influence rather than recognizing the persistence of Indigeneity in Christian-inflected Sāmoa. Oral histories of female matriarch deities are linked to the lineages of contemporary Sāmoans. Genealogical lines are honored through women who create finely woven ceremonial mats. And women’s roles in funeral practices reveal lineage-based negotiations between Indigeneity and Christianity for the spiritual well-being of ancestors.

In Pacific nations, ocean underworlds are associated with ancient matriarchs who continue to legitimize lineages, even as Sāmoan Christians have relegated belief in female deities to “a time of darkness.” In pre-Christian Sāmoa, the souls of the deceased were believed to descend to Pulotu, a realm ruled by a part-male and part-eel deity named Saveasi’uleo. His daughter was Nafanua, the esteemed goddess of war, renowned for guiding warriors to victory, credited with prophesying the coming of Christianity to Sāmoa. Nafanua was born prematurely, and her human mother buried “the blood clot,” but Saveasi’uleo dug her up, and she became a war leader and an esteemed Ali’i (paramount chief), holding multiple chiefly titles from around Sāmoa and, thereby, developing the matai (chiefly) system. Even if she is forgotten, those who hold titles legitimized by Nafanua still trace their prestige from Nafanua.

Women’s crucial position in Sāmoan material culture is demonstrated by the continued creation, gifting, wearing, and ceremonial use of finely woven pandanus-leaf mats, decorated with red feathers, called ‘ie tōga. Some stories describe ‘ie tōga brought from Pulotu to the human world. Stories from Tonga, a neighboring country, say that the red feathers that decorate ‘ie tōga are themselves sourced from Pulotu and traded with Sāmoans. For both men and women, to be gifted an ‘ie tōga or to wear one in ceremonies or dance is one of the highest honors. ‘Ie tōga are not for individual ownership but display collective genealogical identity and the family from which they originate, as signified by a mat’s weave, name, and family.  

The ‘ie tōga mats have a key place in Sāmoan oratory tradition, a cornerstone of fa’aSāmoa, “the Sāmoan way.” At community events where different families and chiefs gather—such as weddings, funerals, or church events—tulāfale (orator chiefs who speak for their high chief) perform lāuga (formal speech) on behalf of their families during reciprocal gift exchange, especially exchanging ‘ie tōga. Through these speeches, tulāfale preserve and publicly express genealogical history and familial prestige, often weaving in biblical passages and cultural proverbs. Matai (chiefs) today are predominantly male, but these reciprocal gift exchanges cannot not happen without women creating ‘ie tōga to be exchanged.  

Women play a role in appropriately caring for ancestors’ physical remains after funerals conclude and according to their lineages. It is the norm for family members to be buried next to family homes rather than at a cemetery. Literally translated as “changing one’s sleeping place,” in liutofaga, a rare practice performed only in Sāmoa, ancestors’ remains are exhumed and moved to a new gravesite when a recent death prompts the family to want all their relatives buried closer together. Women “wash” the bones with coconut oil, wrapping them in siapo, a cloth made from the bark of the paper mulberry tree, to prepare them for their new location.  

Liutofaga keeps families physically and spiritually together, maintaining the very structures of lineage and spiritual well-being for ancestors. Christian prayer and song commonly permeate this very old practice today, regardless of whether the family holds Christian views of heaven and hell rather than of the underworld, Pulotu. Ancestor veneration might not look as it did in pre-Christian Sāmoa, but ancestors and living family members, especially matriarch deities and the material practices of women, continue to guide life decisions and pathways and to organize lineages and social interactions.

Christianity has not erased Indigenous Sāmoa. Traditional notions of lineage and lineage-associated practices show that Sāmoans deliberately and creatively negotiate tensions between Indigeneity and Christian belief.