American Samoans in Alaska and around the world ...

Photo credit: Pixabay

This week I had the pleasant opportunity of meeting an educator from Alaska who was on a research trip to New Zealand with an interest in Pasifika resources for school libraries in Alaska.

She had contacted me with a particular interest in our books in the ancient Samoan stories series and with our new Samoan historical series.

Having been a teacher librarian in a high school library many, many years ago, I remembered how I had tried to make the library more user-friendly for Maori and Pasifika students and how it was important to get books, CDs, posters, magazines and other resources that were relevant and appropriate for them to use in having been a high user of libraries growing up.

This reminds me of the fulfilment of a wish to share our indigenous Samoan stories with our next generations in remembering how privileged I'd felt when I first learnt about these stories outside my compulsory education years and now sharing them with our current generation to pass these important stories on.

And as a diaspora (having being brought up away from the motherland) Samoan, I know how difficult it is to find Samoan language or even English resources about Samoa. Therefore, it has become important for us to consider the important stories that we are able to share and then to print resources and send them out.

In my travels, I've found Samoans in:

• USA: Seattle, California (Compton, San Francisco, Los Angeles) etc.
• Hawaii: Oahu (Laie) etc.
• American Samoa
• Samoa
• Australia: (Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane) etc.
• New Zealand: (Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch) etc.

Although I know that Samoans lived all around the world having met my husband who's lived in India, Asia and Indonesia and with family in Europe, Germany, etc. wherever we go, we take a part of our culture with us.

And as a teacher and educator, I can't but help to share some of the knowledge that I have gained from our fa'aSamoa so that others can have a deeper appreciation of that 'measina a Samoa' the treasures or things of beauty of Samoa to encourage our contemporary generations to pass it on...