A Voice for His People : Samoan Chief Tries to Bridge Gap Between Island Tradition and Mainland Reality

Pele Faletogo is drawing heavily on a cigarette, deriding the extravagance of traditional Samoan funeral rites in a way that he is certain will rankle many in the community.

“I am Samoan and I respect Samoan culture, but if there is one thing I would want to cut, it is the funeral expenses,” he says, his voice a deep baritone. Ceremonies sometimes cost more than $40,000.

The words of the chief, a status that marks him as a wise elder in the Samoan community, flow with admiration for the ancient practices--the bestowing of gifts of beef and fish and ornamental fine mats to mourners and funeral-goers alike--and scorn for the costs that poor families already must bear.

“It’s fine culturally,” Faletogo says, explaining that the exchange of gifts symbolizes the community’s unity. “But I don’t think this is the place to do it.”

This is vintage Faletogo: wrestling with the desire to maintain some semblance of Samoan culture, yet keenly aware that members of his community must adapt to some mainland ways if they are to survive.

It is the running theme in his life as he seeks to promote the Samoan community, which includes nearly 12,000 people concentrated in Carson, Compton and Long Beach.

Faletogo, 49, preaches his cause from many soap boxes. He heads the Carson-based Samoan Federation, a grass-roots service organization that provides counseling, immigration referrals and government surplus food distribution to Samoans, Filipinos and others.

He also is host of the only Samoan-language radio show in Los Angeles, the “South Pacific Variety Show” on Redondo Beach’s KFOX-FM (93.5). The program is broadcast Wednesday and Saturday nights.

And someday, he vows, he will take a seat on the Carson City Council.

On top of all that, he is one of more than three dozen local chiefs, a ceremonial title with roots in the tribal era of American and Western Samoa, the South Pacific islands that are the real or ancestral homelands for the region’s Samoans.

But being a chief on the islands is one thing; being one on the mainland quite another.

In American Samoa, a South Pacific island that is a U.S. territory, families live on communal land with one or more chiefs usually in control of the property. Disobey the chief, who is chosen by his clan for his intellect and knack for mediating disputes, and you’re off the land.

Because the chiefs are so highly regarded, Samoans reserve their most grand ceremonies for the initiations of the matais, as the chiefs are known.

In a ceremony Faletogo likens to a coronation, the high chiefs of the village place their hands on the head and shoulders of the new chief and offer a blessing and declaration: The leadership of the family will now be on your shoulders. Then the ceremony dissolves into a great feast, replete with cases of beef and hoards of tropical fruit.

Such was Faletogo’s initiation rite more than 20 years ago.

But in America, to which Samoans immigrated in droves about 40 years ago to take jobs with the military, families are more scattered, with relatives renting apartments and owning their own homes and property. As in other immigrant groups, generational and cultural conflicts abound. The chiefs’ leverage just isn’t the same.

Their main role is to preside “at weddings, funerals, those kinds of ceremonies,” said Pat H. Luce-Aoelua, executive director of the Carson-based National Office of Samoan Affairs, a private, nonprofit social service and advocacy group that is regarded as the most powerful Samoan organization in the state.

Faletogo recognizes the diminished role of the chiefs, especially among younger Samoans who often don’t recognize their culture’s most basic customs.

“There is a certain way you walk when you pass a chief,” Faletogo said, easing his stocky frame out of a chair and demonstrating a slow, careful amble. “Before you pass the chief you say tulou, excuse me,” Faletogo said, bowing. “You don’t just walk by a chief or an elder. That is disrespectful.”

Rather than accept their diminished role, the chiefs should evolve into advocates for the community, Faletogo believes. And on that score, he has sought to lead by example.

When two Samoan brothers, Pouvi and Itali Tualaulelei, died in a rain of bullets fired by a Compton police officer responding to a domestic dispute in February, 1991, it was the Samoan Council of Chiefs, then led by Faletogo, that organized community protests.

After a Superior Court jury deadlocked on voluntary manslaughter charges last summer against the officer, Alfred Skiles Jr., Faletogo led the call for a retrial. He insisted that Skiles, who has since resigned from the force, was influenced by the stereotype of Samoans as big and fierce.

The district attorney’s office refused to press the case. The resentment in the Samoan community lingers.

For Samoans, the case typified what they view as the mainstream’s disregard for their community, which is generally poorer and less educated than other groups.

The median annual family income for Samoans stands at $14,242, well under the U.S average of $19,917 and the overall Asian/Pacific Islander average of $22,713, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Samoans also lag in education, with 61% of the population graduating from high school compared to 66% for the total U.S. population and 75% of all Asians and Pacific Islanders.

“We are struggling so hard to get some recognition and respect, but sometimes I feel like we are like Rodney Dangerfield,” Faletogo said. “Everybody thinks we are big-body people and can beat everybody up. But under the Samoan, under his 6-foot 5-inch, 280-pound body, is the heart of a lamb. He would give away his last dime to whoever needs it . . . But don’t (anger) him either.”

So Faletogo’s search for ways to advance the community has taken him into the radio studio, into news conferences denouncing police brutality, and even into living rooms, where he and other newly trained counselors hear the Angst of older Samoans adjusting to life 4,000 miles from the islands of American and Western Samoa.

Last fall, Julie Fienberg of Senior Health and Peer Counseling, a Santa Monica-based private, nonprofit organization, approached Faletogo about tutoring other Samoans to counsel unnerved senior citizens in the community. He jumped at the chance.

In American Samoa, he had worked as a teacher and principal before enlisting in the Army, figuring it was his best chance at one day getting to medical school, his dream. In the Army, he was trained as a physician’s assistant, serving at bases throughout the country. But illness sidetracked his plans for further medical training. He retired in 1984, and eventually settled near other family members in Carson in 1987.

His desire to do something for his people still nagged at him, he said, so he volunteered with the Samoan Federation.

Now, being a mental health counselor offers some solace that he never became a doctor.

“I really wanted to be a healer,” he said.

Under a federal grant, the seniors health group trained 20 Samoans--with Faletogo interpreting English into Samoan--on how to counsel the senior citizens about their anxiety and concerns.

Faletogo now supervises the Samoan counselors, acting “as the glue that holds the program together,” said Fienberg.

“We have very strong, close-knit families,” Faletogo says after listening to a counselor comfort a woman whose husband left her shortly after last spring’s riots burned out his employer. “But when they come to the U.S., they lose their self-esteem and faith because they thought the streets were flowing with milk and honey. But they are not. Life is hard here.

“So what we are trying to do is restore that self-esteem in people,” Faletogo said.

It sounds a little like what he tells his radio listeners.

On his radio program, he and his wife, Saili, give their listeners a mix of Samoan news, traditional and modern songs (a recent lineup included the Beatles’ “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” sung in Samoan by an island group), and cultural commentary while offering immigration tips and explanations of American and local current events.

The commentary tends to the conservative, with Saili admonishing women to “deeply respect the husband” and Pele wondering aloud about food-stamp abuse.

Faletogo spends his free time at the sparse offices of the Samoan Federation on Carson Street. It is a small agency with just a $10,000 budget, maintained through private contributions and fund raisers.

Faletogo concedes that the organization lacks the sophistication of the better-known Office of Samoan Affairs. And he thinks that is a plus.

Unlike the Office of Samoan Affairs, Faletogo sees the federation as a potentially strong grassroots political and civic group, if only the factious Samoan community would unite.

The Office of Samoan Affairs is not ready to formalize ties with the federation, to Faletogo’s chagrin.

June Pouesi, Samoan Affairs’ deputy director, said she believes there’s room for more than one social service organization.

“There is not just one black community group. There is not just one Latino group. It’s important that we have more than one group so that people can gravitate to the one they feel most comfortable with,” said Pouesi.

What she would like to see more of is Samoan political leaders. She lost a bid for City Council in 1984, but supports Faletogo’s aspirations.

Carson Councilman Pete Fajardo, who appointed Faletogo to the Planning Commission three weeks ago, also has encouraged Faletogo to run. But he added, “I hope it’s not against me.”

No rush, Faletogo says. Ultimately, he hopes to capitalize on voter-registration drives under way in the community, figuring he can’t win without a Samoan voting bloc.

In the meantime, he is still a chief.

“I don’t reap any fruit from being a chief,” he says. “I probably give away more than I get. But it’s a position of leadership. You are to band the families together, the community together. The fiber of Samoan life is the family. That is the fabric of our survival. If that goes, there goes our identity.”

American Samoa Community

California is home to the largest concentration of Samoans on the mainland United States. Many of the new immigrants, largely driven from the U.S. territory by poverty, have settled in Carson, Compton and Long Beach. The transition has not been smooth, as Samoan community leaders are grappling to understand youth gang problems and local politics.

1990 SAMOAN % CHANGE AREA POPULATION FROM 1980 Carson 2,262 +24% Compton 1,198 +18% Long Beach 3,199 +153% Los Angeles County 11,934 +48% California 31,917 +59%

Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

Facts About American Samoa: * The country consists of a group of islands 2,600 miles southwest of Honolulu, Hawaii. * It has an area of 76 square miles. * Its currrent population is 46, 773 * The country became a U.S. territory by treaty with the United Kingdom and Germany in 1899. * It is the most southerly of lands under U.S. ownership. * Its chief exports include fish products, handicrafts, coconuts, pineapples and bananas. * American Samoans are U.S. nationals but do not have the right to vote in U.S. elections. Source: The World Almanac.