Your Language Connects You to Your Identity and Super (Samoan) Power.
Your Language Connects You to Your Identity and Super (Samoan) Power.
Manuia Le Vaiaso O Le Gagana Samoa!
Talofa reader,
Happy Samoan Language Week (here in NZ)!
‘Mitamita i lau gagana, maua’a lou fa’asinomaga’ which means ‘Be proud of your language and grounded in your identity’.
I love the theme for this year's Samoan Language Week, specifically the part about being "grounded in your identity."
Because growing up Samoan in New Zealand was a whole-ass identity crisis for New Zealand-born Samoans in the 90s and 2000s.
I remember many a youth group and church conversation (yes, church, the bedrock of the Pasifika community) wrestling with the topic of our identity because we were not Samoan enough for family born and raised in Samoa, and obviously too brown to be mistaken for "everyday Kiwis."
It didn't matter that my first language is Samoan, and I can speak, read, and understand it, and can get by on most of the cultural traditions - obviously not the chiefly ones, more the running errands and lifting heavy things traditions.
In my experience, I didn’t count because I didn't have the lived experience of my Samoan family back on the islands. I didn't grow up working the plantation, riding the bus to the market with produce to sell, or cutting the grass with a machete (they have weed whackers now) and I don't remember the struggle of learning English because I was immersed in it at the age of 5 in a Dunedin primary school.
This is the kind of experience that starts to separate you from who you are: you speak your language less because you feel ashamed it's not up to a certain standard, and before you know it, you've all but repressed it down to only be used in short bursts and only around family who won't make fun of you.
The danger of repressing your language and not using it here in New Zealand is that there's already not a lot of opportunities to use it, and the less you use it, the less connected you are.
The less you're connected, the less you identify.
The less you identify, the less grounded and more lost you become.
There's a reason the disenfranchised get radicalised and picked up by extremist groups and gangs. They don't know who they are; they're looking for somewhere to belong and something they can identify with.
If the language they learn there is violence and hate, then they've learned the language of that identity.
That's not really a "culture" I want to see growing out of the space left behind by people not having a healthy sense of identity, whatever that may be.
I'm not saying that being Samoan is my whole identity. I'm a lot of things, but I'm also very much Samoan.
To separate myself from that, to not feel like I can identify with what I see in the mirror, the stories, values, and principles of my parents, my grandparents, and my ancestors back on the Islands - that's a lot to take away from a person and think they can just carry on like there's not this massive void in their person they can't seem to fill with anything else.
I've been there; I've wandered those streets trying to figure out who I was, where I belonged and why there was always something missing from the different answers I found.
I had to take it "back to first principles": I’m Samoan.
I grew up around Irish and Scottish friends, most of them born here, who celebrated their language, saints' holidays, foods, dances, and sports. They were proud of their heritage, and to see them with their kilts, playing bagpipes, sword dancing, and eating haggis, just doing their thing, gave me a sense of pride for them.
Even though when we were in the same uniform at school, they were just another group of white guys - when they were standing, grounded in their cultural identity, it just hit different; they just seemed (for lack of a better word) - deeper.
And it's the same when I attended an Indian friend's wedding or my wife's Niuean friend's wedding. During Diwali, the whole of Aotea Square is packed with the Indian community, throwing a badass party where everyone is dancing and having a great time. The same with the Chinese Lantern Festival, we all marvel at the amazingly and skilfully crafted lanterns while smashing all the delicious foods.
An identity doesn't make you better or worse than anyone (no supremacies here, thank you); it's something that gives you a base, a foundation of strengths to work from that supports you as you navigate your life.
It's like having your own superpower.
You're going to have enough doubts and shit-talkers in your life; at least have your identity be one of the things that gives you something solid to stand on and not a void in your soul that has you always asking a question with no answers.
If you can speak a language, it gives you insights into that culture; it connects you to and unlocks for you the ideas, perspectives, and values found within.
To make a geeky analogy for just a second, understanding a programming language—knowing how it's written, how it functions within an operating system, its syntax and style, strengths and weaknesses—equips you with a deep cultural connection with that code and program (right PHP and Perl programmers!?! haha kidding).
The same concept applies to most things: business, hospitality, economics - if you speak any of those fluently, there aren't too many places within those topics you wouldn't stand with a lot of confidence and authority.
You're not the "boss," but you definitely know who you are when it comes to those topics.
Learn your language, speak and be proud of your language, and stand grounded in your identity it brings.
I'll leave you with this, from the Ministry of Pacific Peoples website:
"If you are strong in your Samoan language, you never have to question who you are as a Samoan because you understand what it means to be Samoan."
Thanks for reading - see you in the next one.
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Learning
Things I’m actively studying or learning this week…
Studying for the ‘AWS Certified Security - Speciality’ certificate - 91% through the course: ELB Architecture.
Building
Things I’m building or working on this week…
Samoan Language Bot powered by GPT— done.
Interesting Reads
Articles or other writing that stood out to me this week…
Another slow week on the reading… need to do less stuff.
Community
Other projects in community I’m working on…
Pasifika Tech Education Charity - Providing Tech Learning Opportunities for the Pasifika Community.
Pasifika Tech Network - A Network for Pasifika Tech Professionals & Learners.