The main purpose for writing, especially the ancient Samoan stories series or tala o le vavau (stories of the ancient times) or tala mai anamua (stories from ancient times), was about passing those important stories and knowledge onto the next generations so that they would learn about the culture of their ancestors as I had as a Samoan growing up in Aotearoa, NZ.
When I visited our local Samoan bilingual Early childhood centre, it was neat to see a write up of the event that I was honoured to read to them the story of "Sina and the Tuna" and "The footprint of Moso".
From one of the teachers, I was able to get feedback that the stories excited the students and that they were able to re-tell the stories in their own words back to the class and their teacher.
I've since gifted the whole 7 book series to the centre in order to support their childrens' learnings and to give the teacher resources to support the good works that are happening there. I definitely have more books to come in the series of historical and ancient stories but with my current studies underway, there will be a delay before publishing.
Still, it gives me a great feeling of hope and honour to be able to share these stories that were shared so easily with me back with my studies in the late 1980s in Samoa and then continued as I delved in to indigenously research the stories of my ancestral culture.
To see our next generations learning and being excited about these stories, gives me hope that the important knowledge contained within will continued to be shared and that gives impetus to work on more to come...
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