The first Religious missionaries arrived in Samoa from inside the 1830, nearly a great century before Margaret Mead attempted to study the latest people of your countries. By the point she showed up, the newest church was actually a main element of Samoan existence having generations.
Inside occurrence, co-servers Doris Tulifau examines just how Christianity and colonization complicate Mead’s-and her critic anthropologist Derek Freeman’s-conclusions and you will still contour Samoan title today.
This occurrence is included for the Seasons six of the SAPIENS podcast, which was made possible from the an offer in the National Endowment into the Humanities.
Sia Figiel: It was a college off reputation you to only the daughters of large chiefs attended. It wasn’t good democracy, that anyone can look it over. Zero.
Doris Tulifau: We have been standing exterior Atauloma Girls University which have Sia Figiel, a great Samoan novelist, poet, and you may playwright … and you may my pal. Atauloma is the university anthropologist erican Samoa since the a beneficial Ph.D. pupil. The new London Missionary People depending the college when you look at the 1900, and it stayed unlock until 1970. It actually was just after an excellent stately, well-manicured, two-facts strengthening. Today it’s crumbling apart. The forest is reclaiming it, vines and you may plants twisting certainly its bones.
To Sia, the institution means a shift inside Samoan term. When she thinks back again to the young Samoan women that resided throughout these isles in advance of Atauloma, until the missionaries arrived-