The most pressing issue for Samoa

Dear Editor,

The fight by a group of chiefs in Samoa for customary land is perhaps the most crucial of matters facing the nation. 

Do we want to be dispossessed of our lands to become secondary citizens working for foreigners? 

Wake up Samoa! This is another form of colonialism but more insidious. 

Look at what’s happening in Tahiti, Vanuatu, Hawaii, and other Pacific Island states, long term licences and leases under the Torrens System effectively guarantees that the very basis of our identity, sovereignty and independence is compromised. 

I’ve seen the dispossessed, once proud, living in apartment blocks in Paradise, unable to gather from the forest, swim in the rivers of their ancestors or be as one with the land...

 

Auimatagi R.



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