When I was younger and new to the world, I took my parents' Fa’aSamoa (the Samoan way) for granted, thinking I could always return to it when I was ready. I am now in my early fifties, and many of the people who were our family's pillars and the guardians of our culture, including our parents, have passed on. As a result, I have come to understand the need to maintain connections with the elders in our family, especially as Samoans, where the family sits at the core of our identity. Our family ties are the way many of us maintain our cultural connections to islands many of us in the diaspora may know but have never grown up on.
At the beginning of 2024, I visited our uncle Danny at his family home, a rental property in Manurewa, South Auckland. Danny is our cousin by marriage; his late wife, Maima, was the daughter of our father's older sister. They were much older than us, closer to our parents' age, so by default, they became Aunty and Uncle.
Danny Mosogau at his home on Churchill Ave, 2024.
It had been nearly three years since I had visited, not since our cousin Jenna, his youngest daughter, had passed away. He greeted me as he has always done with a huge smile and a hug; it was good to see him and talanoa (chat) and fill in the gaps of what had happened since I last saw him. A man of few words, Danny has always been a practical man, and it was a character trait that our late father appreciated when it came to helping with projects at our family home.
He showed me around the property, and at first, I thought not much had changed, but that was quickly dispelled as we got to the back of his property. His ma’umaga (taro plantation), it was a lush and wild space! He proudly showed me this space that he had carefully nurtured for over two decades and beamed as he detailed the work he had put into it over the years. I had to get a photo of him, a portrait among the elephant ear-sized leaves of his taro plants. It was opulent, plentiful and ready to provide for his aiga (family). Next to this was his shed, no longer a garage but a meticulously curated work and repair space filled with parts of machinery, carefully stored extension cables of all lengths and every type of nail, screw and bolt you could need—the evidence of his resilience and tenacity to adapt to life in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
Danny amoung his taro plants, 2024.
A man and his safe space, 2024.
Like many of the Samoans of his generation, Uncle Danny migrated to Aotearoa during the 1960s and 1970s to work and support aiga back in the islands. He and his family initially set roots down in Wellington and then moved to Tamaki Makaurau, Auckland in the 1980s. This was when we met and knew them as part of our wider Sagapolutele and Saoluafata (our fathers’ village in Samoa) family.
Their home on Churchill testified to their ability to reshape, reconstitute, and thrive in a new environment, another part of our nu’u or village in Aotearoa. This generation adapted to change and moulded itself to the environments it occupied, and resilience was both characteristic and a necessity.
This resilience would be tested again not long after that visit as a change was coming, and Danny and his family were relocating, a significant change after living nearly thirty years at their previous property.
On my next visit to see Danny, I will see them at their new home, a five-minute drive from the old. I found him designing a bespoke set of shelves for the kitchen of their new home, adapting and moulding again. He greeted me with that big smile and a bear hug; for a man in his 70s, he was still as strong as ever. I was given a tour of the new home and property and shown the young ma’umaga he had planted with tiapula (young taro) from the old one. It is a metaphor for him and his family, new roots down on new land and his slowly evolving workspace in the shed.
It had been two months since I had visited their former property, and it was good to see that change hadn’t diminished Danny’s enthusiasm for improvements and projects around the home. I had spoken to his son before visiting, and he had told me that his father was philosophical about the move. In his words, ‘as long as he has his family, he’s happy; everything else is just stuff’. This was good to hear. I had also been to see the old home, a shadow of the house I had seen earlier. Vandals had smashed windows, copper had been stripped, and the ma’umaga had been pillaged with only a few young plants remaining.
I didn’t want to share any of the images of the old place with the family; chatting with them at their new home was a great way to see that the alofa (love) and fa’aaloalo (respect) that were key Samoan family dynamics connected and supported them through this time of change. My aiga would later assure me that they don’t have an issue with sharing and discussing these post-movement images.
It can be tempting to hold onto the nostalgia, the warmth of memories of good times gone by, but this would only make the adjustment to new change harder. The shadows and whispers of the past add no substance to moving forward, and our parent's generation, Danny’s generation, took that lesson to heart. Leaving the warmth and security of certainty back on their home islands to create a legacy and foundation for those of us in the diaspora to follow and build upon.
Talanoa and ipu ki with Danny at the new home, 2024.
‘E sui Faiga ae tumau faavae’ is a Samoan proverb that refers to the concept that our practices may change but our foundations remain. Our aiga, family, for many of us, form the foundation of who we are, I see it in the relationships we maintain here in Aotearoa. A beautiful echo of our parent's lives in Samoa, reminders of the strength we are lucky to call upon when change comes calling.
Recording and holding the memories of our family, as part of our Samoan diaspora, adds to the Fa’aSamoa that has evolved here in Aotearoa. It builds on our oratory practices as an addition to the traditional and an evolution of the introduced Western technical process of photography.