Workbook
For Samoan (American) Families
A Workbook on Fa'a Sāmoa, Family Obligation, and Finding Yourself Within the Collective
Name what Fa'a Sāmoa means in your life.
Samoan American families — from American Samoa, Independent Samoa, and the Samoan diaspora — navigating the beauty and weight of fa'a Sāmoa (the Samoan way) and what it means to raise children inside a collective identity guide in a country built around individualism.
The Name It First Experience
Fa'a Sāmoa — the Samoan way — is not a set of rules. It is a way of being in the world: with your family, your community, your church, and your land. It carries love and obligation, honor and sacrifice, collective identity and individual belonging. Raising children inside it, in a country that prizes individualism, is one of the most complex things a Samoan American family navigates. This workbook does not ask your family to choose between fa'a Sāmoa and life here. It asks you to name — together and on paper — what fa'a Sāmoa means in your specific household, what you are choosing to carry forward, and how each person in your family finds themselves within the collective. Grounded in Racial Identity Development theory (Cross, Helms), Acculturation Theory (Berry), Intersectionality (Crenshaw), diasporic identity scholarship (Brah, Hall), and research on Samoan American family and identity, this workbook gives your ʻaiga a structure for the conversation. The work is yours to do together. This is where you write it down. You leave with The Samoan (American) Families Agreement.
You can opt into 30-, 60-, and 90-day check-ins from your account. We recommend you do — the point is to see what changed.
Sample questions
- What has your Samoan American aiga given you — the fa'a Sāmoa, the collective, the sense of belonging and obligation that came through your family and clan?
- What is the tension between the collective identity your family lives by and the individual life you are trying to build — where does fa'a Sāmoa feel like strength and where does it feel like pressure?
- What would The Samoan American Family Record say — from your actual experience — about what the aiga has given you, what it has asked of you, and who you are within and beyond the collective?
Research basis
Cross (1971, 1991) Nigrescence Model adapted for Pacific Islander identity / Helms (1990) racial identity statuses / Berry (1997) acculturation strategies applied to Pacific Islander context / Crenshaw (1989, 1991) intersectionality / Brah (1996) Cartographies of Diaspora applied to Samoan diaspora / Hall (1990) Cultural Identity and Diaspora / Shore (1982) Sala'ilua: A Samoan Mystery on Samoan cultural identity / Meleisea (1987) The Making of Modern Samoa / cultural frameworks of fa'a Sāmoa, ʻaiga (extended family), fono (community council), and the role of the Congregational and Catholic churches in Samoan American communities / Anae (2010) on Samoan diasporic identity / Pacific Islander identity in the US (Spickard, Rondilla & Wright, 2002) / American Samoa vs. Independent Samoa identity distinctions / fa'afafine (third gender) within Samoan identity.
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