Educators, a statistician, NGO workers, a doctor, a lawyer, government workers, and consultants discuss formal and informal aspects of education, employment, health, law, and religion. Their analysis of economic participation includes labour and remuneration through the factory, field, mill, and village. Their examination of people’s welfare encompasses adolescence, reproduction, life-style diseases, traditional medicine, AIDS, old age, and suicide. Their review of education covers gender statistics, enrollments, examination rates, participation by women in the education workforce, distance education, the legal profession, theological education, and networking. This volume presents new, rich data on Samoan society by its most up-and-coming workforce, its women. Contemporary Samoan society cannot be analysed without this book.
O a Latou Tala – In Samoan Language.
The fa’a-Samoa is not just a system of beliefs, ideas, values, and practices: it is also a process. It is situated in many different countries and communities simultaneously, and it is strong among migrant communities. It is not immutable, for it is ever subject to change both in Samoa and in receiving countries. Saili Matagi is an exploration of the practice of fa’a-Samoa among migrants, of the nature of the politics of tradition within their communities, and of the search for opportunities in new environments. Saili Matagi is set in contexts of not only of Samoan history and social organization, but also international migration. The Christian church and the fa’a-Samoa have become inseparably linked; thus, Va’a explores the history and role of the Lotu, establishment and characteristics of Samoan churches in Sydney and membership in the Canterbury-Bankstown church.
Apem Moa (Pijin for ‘raise the bar’, say the authors) has been written by two education faculty academics, one a Solomon Islander now living in New Zealand and the other a Canadian. Sanga, a former director of the Solomon Islands College of Higher Education, recently completed his PhD under Walker, a leadership specialist. Their book is a leadership education course text suited to group training or self-teaching. Its chapters run through a comprehensive range of leadership topics: current challenges, authority and influence, ethical principles and constraints, conscience, convictions, leadership development and responsibilities. The book’s introduction points to a crisis in leadership as a root cause of the Solomons crisis of 1998–2003 and frames the book as a practical answer to ‘the need to mobilise leadership at all levels.
This book is particularly aimed for young people who will have to take the responsibility choosing between different ways of development in the different regions of Vanuatu. It is common in the pacific to compare tradition and custom with modern ways. But what does custom in Vanuatu represent.
This book is a chronicle of colonial treachery of how the Indians (mostly from North India) were promised a pleasant life in the Pacific and were transported to work in the sugar cane plantations in Fiji. The Indentured Labour System – invented and enforced by the British Administration was a trickery agreement that recruited approximately 60500 Indians between 1879 – 1920, their last arrival, to be slaved in a promised paradise. Their living and working conditions were so atrocious with the long hours of work, assaults, social breakdowns and even worse – the ill-treatment of women that tore their hearts apart. The testimony of Narayan is an awakening call to all, especially the descendants of the “Girmitiyas” and the coming generations to recapture the sight of the Indian Diaspora and their heritage.