Tapu Misa: There's a place for lafo and it's not an MP's pocket

Some time ago, after I'd given one of those speeches about what it was like being the lone brown face in an all-Palagi organisation, and what it meant to be seen as a representative of Pacific people, two people approached me to say they liked the speech.

Both added, cheekily, that they couldn't help thinking, as I spoke, that I wasn't really, well, that brown. One of them actually rolled up her sleeve and compared her darker arm to mine.

They'd missed the point. Surely they weren't measuring my Samoan-ness by the depth of my tan? Couldn't they see I was talking about my cultural roots that distinguished me from the mainstream?

Clearly not. That's the thing about being a transplanted Samoan who has adapted perhaps too well to the ways of her adopted country. There's always someone prepared to challenge your authenticity.

Perhaps that's what Samoan academic Dr Malama Meleisea, the director of Unesco's Kabul office, meant when he said there has been an objectification, for want of a better word, of Samoan-ness, with Samoans forming little islands of Samoan-ness in seas of Palagi society around the world.

According to some Samoans there's really only one definition of faaSamoa and Samoan-ness. Theirs.

Meleisea once wrote a paper for Unesco on corruption in Samoa and the decline of leadership, which is relevant given the debate concerning Taito Phillip Field, and whether or not the acceptance by MPs of cash gifts as mea alofa, lafo or koha is acceptable.

Field and his friends, including former rugby star Pita Fatialofa, say yes, and refusal is culturally wrong. And Maori Party MPs Hone Harawira and Pita Sharples say it is their right as Maori to receive koha.

But many Samoans - including Massey University lecturer Pau Tafa Mulitalo, Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia, and Labour Party List MP Shane Jones - take the opposite view, that there's a place for mea alofa and koha but that place is not an MP's pocket.

Are we confused? I don't think so. Most Maori and Pacific people have no trouble identifying the proper place for koha and mea alofa.

I am not an expert on faaSamoa, but my father is. The real faaSamoa, he says, is about service to others, reciprocity, hospitality and responsibility. It is complicated, not least because Samoans don't have one word for koha, but several, depending on who's giving and who's receiving. But what often passes for faaSamoa these days is a corruption of that.

That is why, when my mother died, my father insisted that the notice we put in the paper should say, respectfully, that there be no faaSamoa. He wasn't rejecting traditional faaSamoa, he was rejecting what it had become.

My father had his reasons. We have friends who were left with a $30,000 bill after their mother's funeral. FaaSamoa demands gifts of fine mats be reciprocated with money, corned beef and chickens; and visitors who bring them must be fed before leaving. It also meant a great many people would come to pay their respects to him, as a chief. And many of them, my father had no doubt, would have come just for what they could get.

Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, who last week lamented the way some Samoans were keeping themselves poor for the sake of cultural obligations, would have been proud that we were more concerned with paying our bills than keeping up with the Joneses.

My father is a traditionalist and judges the character of his golfing mates by their honesty on the course. He says politicians have no business taking money for performing their duty.

When one of my aunties slipped me an envelope full of cash as she headed back to Wellington after my mother's funeral earlier this year, he made sure I returned it. A polite note said: You have no money. I know you're doing this out of love, but I don't want to take your money. I have plenty of money.

He doesn't actually, but he has seven children he knows will always look after him. This is the Samoan way, the faaSamoa that he's proud of.

My father points out that it is illegal in Samoa for candidates to give gifts during an election. In one case, a former government minister, Mulitalo Siafausa Vui, lost his seat after being found guilty of bribery.

That probably won't stop politicians playing the cultural card to justify their behaviour.

Dr Meleisea says anthropologists are interested in the way Pacific leaders have invoked culture and tradition as a means of justifying their behaviour, and that the politics of tradition has some of its roots in colonial intervention.

For example, some of the institutions which we have been asked to revere because of their traditional nature -such as the Samoan matai system - were colonial compromises between tradition and modern government.

Meleisea says part of the problem is the disconnection between two worlds. When Samoa gained independence from New Zealand in 1962, it adopted a constitution which, it hoped, would give us the best of Samoan and Western political institutions. It gave us two systems of legitimacy: one was the Samoan system of chiefly authority, based on the idea that titleholders would represent the interests of the extended families who gave them their titles; the other was more vaguely defined as a set of Western liberal principles such as individual rights, religious freedom and equality under the law.

Meleisea suggests that we are living in two worlds, a situation which is breeding a kind of moral confusion.

It is not that there are contradictions between new and old principles, but that these two sets of principles can be selectively invoked to justify our actions as it suits us.

For example, our cultural principles disapprove of challenging or criticising our chiefs, and by extension our government. At the same time, we learn that in today's world prestige and power come from the possession of money, and to obtain it we must be determined individualists.