American Samoa

The Samoan islands were settled around three thousand years ago and are a cultural heartland of western Polynesia. Samoans resisted European encroachment into the nineteenth century, when rivalry between Germany, Britain, and the United States over the islands culminated in the 1899 Tripartite Convention: Germany took the western islands (now independent Samoa), the United States took the eastern ones, and Britain was compensated elsewhere.

The high chiefs of Tutuila and Aunu'u formally ceded their islands to the United States in 1900, and those of the Manu'a group in 1904 — the Deeds of Cession that remain the legal foundation of the territory. The US Navy administered American Samoa until 1951, when it passed to the Department of the Interior, and the territory adopted its own constitution and, from 1977, began electing its governor. It sends a non-voting delegate to Congress.

American Samoa's status is distinctive. People born there are US nationals but not US citizens by birth — a matter now being litigated — though they can serve in the US military, which they do at the highest rate of any US state or territory. Land is roughly 90 per cent communally owned under the matai (chief) title system and is protected: outsiders essentially cannot buy it. These protections, and the wish to keep them, are a main reason American Samoa has not sought a closer constitutional relationship with the US. The economy has long depended on tuna canning, and emigration to Hawaii, California, Washington, and Utah has left far more American Samoans living stateside than in the islands.

Life is governed by fa'a Samoa, "the Samoan way": the aiga (extended family), the matai who holds the family's chiefly title and represents it in the village council (fono), and a dense web of obligation, respect, and ceremonial exchange. The matai system is not folklore — it is the working structure of land, dispute resolution, and local governance.

Christianity is central; the territory is overwhelmingly church-going, mostly Congregationalist, Catholic, Methodist, and Latter-day Saint. Most villages observe sa, a short evening curfew for family prayer, during which visitors passing through should stop and wait quietly. Sunday is for church and rest, and little is open.

Formal occasions involve the 'ava (kava) ceremony, oratory, and the presentation of fine mats ('ie toga), and events such as Flag Day feature fautasi longboat races and siva dancing. Modesty in dress, removing shoes before entering a fale (house), and deference to elders and matai are expected.

About 50,000 people live in American Samoa, the great majority on Tutuila, mostly around Pago Pago Harbor and the villages strung along the coast road; the Manu'a Islands hold only a few hundred people. The population has been declining as young people leave for the US.

The economy rests heavily on the StarKist tuna cannery at Pago Pago — by far the largest private employer, so that the territory's fortunes track the cannery's — along with US federal funding and the government payroll. A special lower federal minimum wage, phased upward over time, is meant to keep the canneries viable and is a long-running point of debate.

Daily life is village-centred, church-centred, and communal, organised around the aiga, the plantation plot, the sea, and the fortnightly or monthly rhythm of remittances and visits between the islands and the mainland diaspora.

American Samoan food is Samoan food: taro, breadfruit, green banana, and yam as the starches, with palusami or lu'au — young taro leaves baked in coconut cream, sometimes with corned beef (pisupo) — as the classic dish. The Sunday to'ona'i, cooked in an umu (above-ground earth oven) after church, is the week's main feast.

Oka (raw fish marinated in coconut cream, lime, onion, and chilli), sapasui (a Samoan chop suey), fa'apapa (a dense coconut bread), and koko alaisa (cocoa rice) are everyday favourites. Tinned corned beef, Spam, turkey tails, and mutton flaps — cheap imported meats — feature heavily, a diet linked to high rates of diet-related illness.

Kava ('ava) is drunk ceremonially rather than socially, and koko Samoa (a thick local cocoa drink), coconut water, and imported soft drinks are the everyday beverages. Almost everything not grown locally is shipped in.

Pago Pago Harbor, a flooded volcanic crater ringed by steep green peaks, is one of the best natural harbours in the Pacific and the scenic heart of Tutuila. Rainmaker Mountain (Mount Pioa) looms over it, snagging the clouds that make the harbour so wet, and a trail climbs Mount Alava on the opposite ridge, past the rusting towers of a long-closed cable car.

The National Park of American Samoa — the only US national park south of the equator — is spread across three islands. On Tutuila it protects the rainforest, flying-fox colonies, and coast of the Amalau valley and the dramatic Pola Island sea cliffs at Vatia. On Ofu, in the Manu'a group, it takes in a reef-fringed white beach beneath jagged peaks, one of the most beautiful and least-visited in the Pacific. On Ta'u it climbs to Lata Mountain, the territory's highest point.

Other sights include the little island of Aunu'u off Tutuila's east end, with its red-taro swamp, quicksand, and crater lake; the "flowerpot" sea stacks of Fatu ma Futi near the airport; Two Dollar Beach; and the Jean P. Haydon Museum in Fagatogo, in a former Navy commissary. Rose Atoll, far to the east, is a marine national monument closed to visitors.