When people ask me where I’m from, what they want to hear me speak of is how my indigenous land is only a place where they can lay their feet in the sand and have my people at their beck and call. Where they relax and my people slave for their wishes. Where they think they drink coconuts and swim in ancient water. Where they can just push aside the fact that my people’s land is spiritual and sacred.

 

When people ask me where I’m from, they don’t believe me when I say that I am apart of the people from the village Olosega; where they worship the land. Where it’s surrounded by water, surrounded by native plants, and surrounded by the spirits of my ancestors.

 

They can not see beyond the “Noble Savage” to know the beauty’s and significance of my Samoa. They live in hate of the difference in beliefs. What they do not know is what you do in the name of hatred will not survive, but what you do in the name of name of love will live forever.

 

Colonization strangles, It makes you beg for air. Germans, the gun that shot my ancestors. John Williams,  the London missionary on a mission to destroy. What they don’t know is what you do in the name of hatred will not survive, but what you do in the name of the name of love will live forever.

 

My hair is the wavy resemblance of the waves that surround my homeland. It symbolizes the never ending  wisdom from my ancestors. It is  the vines that swing to the melody of the wind. Its roots are the grounded stem of my people. And the everlasting growth is the never ending of Samoa.