This book is a celebration of His Highness Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Ta’isi Efi’s intellectual and cultural legacy to Samoa, providing Tui Atua’s writings and thoughts on Samoan indigenous knowledge. It was first compiled and published as a festschrift in commemoration of his seventieth birthday.

Tui Atua is Samoa’s Head of State and is currently the only holder of one of Samoa’s four pāpā (aristocratic chiefly) titles – Tui Atua. The book also contains responses from fourteen of Samoa’s leading and emerging scholars (including two Rhodes Scholars), based within and outside Samoa. The book searches for the best of what His Highness terms ‘the Samoan indigenous reference’ and enlarges our contemporary understandings of indigenous knowledge.

564 pages

First published July 6, 2018

About the Authors

His Highness Tui Atua Tamasese Ta'isi Efi s Samoa’s former Head of State and held this position 2007 to 2017. He was a former Prime Minister of Samoa, Leader of the, then, Opposition Party (Samoa Democratic United Party) and a Member of the Samoa Parliament from 1966‒2004. He holds nationally recognised traditional chiefly titles and is seen across Samoa to be one of the leading custodians of Samoa’s indigenous knowledge. He is recognised internationally for his work on, what he describes as, Samoa’s indigenous reference.

Tamasailau Suaalii-Sauni is a Samoan academic in sociology/criminology at the School of Social Sciences, University of Auckland. Her academic work draws on and contributes to the building of Pacific indigenous knowledges, especially Samoan. She specialises in Pacific jurisprudence theory and is currently engaged in indigenous criminological research.

Among a long list of associations, Tamasailau is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Samoan Studies at the National University of Samoa and the Otago International Health Research Network.