When we talk about disaster response, we’re usually either thinking of the top-down plans of big organizations like FEMA or ad hoc efforts of neighbors helping neighbors. But, as researchers Andrew Rumbach and Dolores Foley found when they spoke with residents of American Samoa after a devastating 2009 tsunami, Indigenous institutions in that territory offer a different path.
The population of American Samoa is concentrated in low-lying coastal land on this island of Tutuila. People mostly live in villages that range in size from hundreds to thousands of people. Within each village, people live in extended families known as aiga. Each of them is headed by a matai—typically a man but sometimes a woman. Together, the matai from all the families form a fono, which governs the village. Meanwhile, aumaga, men without titles—often young and unmarried—who are known as the “hands and feet” to the matai’s “brains,” provide protection and other services for the villages. Aualuma, a parallel association of women, runs community projects and organizes social events.
The pulen’u is a relatively new addition to the village’s governance system, first introduced by the German colonial authority in Western Samoa. Today, the role also exists in American Samoa, providing a link between the village and outside authorities such as the territorial and federal governments.
When the tsunami hit the island on September 29, 2009, it happened to be just weeks after the island’s pulenu’u had attended a training on recognizing the warning signs of a tsunami. So when earthquakes hit, many were aware that a tsunami might come next and immediately began evacuating people to higher ground. In two villages where the pulenu’u failed to do so, their communities subsequently fired them and noted that they had brought shame on their families. Rumbach and Foley point out that this represents a kind of direct accountability that’s only possible because they are members of the village.
After the tsunami came, killing and injuring people in many villages and wrecking roads and buildings, the matai sprang into action. They called together the aumaga and assigned them jobs rescuing survivors and clearing debris from roads. Meanwhile, the aualuma provided first aid, food, and water to victims and cared for children and elderly people. These amateur first responders’ local knowledge, and their ability to act without instructions from outside the village, allowed them to react quickly and effectively.
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Rumbach and Foley stress the need for federal and territorial disaster response efforts to coordinate with the village-level institutions, as in the case of the tsunami response training provided to the pulenu’u. Training aumaga in CPR and aualuma in emergency elder care, for example, could help them more effectively provide the services they are already positioned to offer.
They write that the unique Samoan institutions will remain crucial since, unlike typical disaster response, they “are an integral part of daily life, practiced, tested, and reinforced across a diverse range of social interactions and a variety of contexts.”
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