Cultivating Connection: Fanua and Environmental Stewardship in the Samoan Child

• In Event: Decolonial Perspectives on Environmental and Sustainability Education

Proposal

Introduction
This study explores environmental education in Samoan youth through the lens of the concept of fanua. Fanua can be simply defined as land, but the term more deeply encompasses the inherent and reciprocal connection between Samoans and their natural environment.
A growing body of research provides ample evidence that a strong connection with the natural world has numerous benefits for children including improved mood, cognition, and physical health. Further, a deep relationship with the environment from a young age promotes environmental stewardship throughout life, an essential quality for the generation that will face the most detrimental effects of climate change in history. Despite this, technological advances, urbanization, and capitalism have caused youth across the globe to be increasingly disconnected from their natural environment.
In Samoa, citizens have been able to preserve a deep relationship with the natural world in spite of the weighty presence of globalization. This preservation is likely bolstered by fanua. Climate resilience is of increasing importance in Samoa, given the nation's high ecological vulnerability to natural disasters and anthropogenic change. Research shows that children, when aware of climate change impacts, are significant drivers of community climate resilience.
Previous research and Pacific perspectives have shown that due to the western style formal schooling system, many Pacific students struggle to simultaneously experience their indigenous and academic identities. With a strong cultural emphasis on Traditional Ecological Knowledge and western education’s recent inclusion of environmental studies into general curricula, it is unclear where one's connection with fanua fits into this struggle. Overall, published research surrounding Samoan environment education leaves many opportunities for further investigation. Specifically, children’s perception of fanua has yet to be documented.
Theoretical Framework and Methods
Drawing on components from the Pacific research frameworks, the Talanoa Method and the Talatalaga Framework, this study looks at the family, the formal schooling system, and other lived experiences of Samoan youth as mechanisms through which fanua is taught and learned. Talatalaga research centers Pacific people and their wisdom in every step of the research process. The Talanoa Method, used for qualitative data collection, requires both the researcher and the participants to be emotionally vulnerable and open to sharing their wisdom and experiences. Eleven talanoa sessions were conducted with teachers, parents, and Samoan youth over the age of 18 regarding fanua. Many participants fell into more than one category (i.e a young mother or a teacher who is also a mother) and were able to discuss the dynamics of the two identities. Observations at a rural village preschool were included, as well as a case study of a Department of Education and Culture environmental education program that incorporates formal classroom learning with indigenous knowledge.
Findings
The study found that cultivation of fanua is characterized by familial oral transmission of environmental knowledge and traditions, unstructured playtime in nature, and a strong connection between land and ancestry as a result of Samoa’s customary land system. However, tensions between familial knowledge and formal schooling were also found, especially in the case study. At its core, this project’s purpose was to uplift Samoan voices and stories, and thus this paper contains many perspectives detailing unique connections to fanua that, like the definition of fanua itself, can not be simply summarized. However, the idea of nature as a sacred teacher and fanua as an avenue to build upon that student-teacher relationship was found to be an overarching theme across interviews and observations.
Conclusions/Impact
The cultivation of fanua in Samoan children is an act of cultural preservation. It is vital that fanua, and other forms of Samoan Traditional Ecological Knowledge, are passed on through generations. Fanua is a concept that has great cultural specificity and importance in Samoa and other Pacific Islands. However, its tenets are something that we can all embody and pass onto our children. In fact, that might be our only hope if we are to win the battle against climate change and imperial violence. Thus, it is important that we continue to study fanua for the generational protection of Pacific Traditional Ecological Knowledge and to start to untangle fanua’s relationality with the land and people of other nations.

Author

• Julia E Stern, Swarthmore College