The Spinoff’s fake Samoan editor explains the latest poly drama.
There is no debate as well-trodden or tired as the one that begins: can you be a “real” Samoan if you don’t [insert pretty much anything here]?
The correct and normal answer is of course yes. If you’re Samoan, you’re Samoan. Blood quantum as an idea is old and boring. Language as a requisite for identity is so last century. Skin colour as a judge of authenticity is, well, actually kind of racist. But there are so many Samoans who would say actually no, there are rules to this whole “being Samoan because my parent is Samoan” thing, and lots of us are failing.
The debate kicks off in the New Zealand Samoan community every few months (we love to be online!) and is almost always started by someone quite young and very bots. The latest saviour is Hana Schmidt, host of the Breaking Waves podcast which, until recently, served a modest audience on Youtube and Instagram. This week, Schmidt delivered a hot take on the show with the tagline “SAMOANS IN NZ NEED TO BE HUMBLED“.
Schmidt ironically does a very un-Samoan thing by getting straight to the point.
“I feel that the Samoans in New Zealand need to be humbled. Majorly humbled,” she begins. “When it comes to their culture, they’re too entitled about what they should be gifted from culture and how they can express themselves culturally in other spaces. And having the [thinking] that ‘I’m Samoan enough because of my blood’. I don’t agree with that. What truly makes you samoan is how you serve your family and how you serve your village.”
If the clip was just that, it still would’ve got the diaspora raging. But Schmidt is just getting started. She specifies the target of her hot take as being those that speak in public about certain topics while ignoring their own family and community. Then gets to who she really means.
“No offence to afakasi but [it’s] mostly afakasi in high positions that make decisions.” Ding! Ding! Ding!
“They can get into those rooms cos they know how to code switch, but they don’t represent the people who truly need that help.”
Schmidt is right about the first part. Historically, it has been a lot easier for fair-skinned Samoans with European names to get a look in when it comes to “career” opportunities in New Zealand. There’s a reason virtually every one of my first cousins (and I) have white first names, named by our Samoan parents newly arrived from the village and already battling with terrible pronunciations of their quite basic names.
The second part is where her real feelings come in. If Samoans in New Zealand don’t represent Samoans, then who do they represent?
Look, I know afakasi are annoying. I am one and I’m also a writer so you can bet your faalavelave that I’ve written an earnest essay about not being all of one thing or all of another, but lost in the middle. It’s embarrassing! I get it! We love to talk about ourselves! But unfortunately for the Schmidts of the world, I’m still Samoan and so are thousands of others here in New Zealand, and sometimes we can even be an asset to the Samoan community.
Schmidt goes on to suggest that the best way for New Zealand Samoans to be humbled is to be “sent back home” to Samoa or for someone to do a cultural workshop so we can learn about the ways of the village. I’m sorry but suggesting a cultural workshop is about the whitest thing you could possibly do.
The video goes on and is kinda boring (“You’ll only get offended if you know it’s you” – I just know Judith Collins was watching, nodding knowingly) but it quickly found its audience. Where other podcast clips from Breaking Waves have one or two comments, Schmidts hot take a day after being posted has 3,722 comments. She has inadvertently performed a community service by uniting thousands of Samoans in gleefully dunking on her. The response is unanimous: why? Why even bother with this take? All it’s done is cement Samoans as the pick-mes of the Pacific. Embarrassing!
So here I am, an afakasi in a high position that makes decisions, ready to serve my community by offering my time and resource where I have seen a true need. If any Samoan podcast hosts would like to participate in a cultural workshop on how to articulate a thought without alienating an entire population, let me know. Let’s all be humbled together.
For Niue Language Week resources, see here.