Lagimalie And The Challenge Of Pacific Leadership In The 21st Century (Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Taisi Efi, Future Leaders of tile Pacific Conference, us Pacific Territories, East- West Centre, held in Apia, Samoa, 29 August 2014) Last year I came to this challenge of Pacific leadership through the metaphor of the so of au. There I suggested that in todays world there is a need to learn how to seamlessly join together old and new know ledges, like the joining together of fau timber, literally captured in the word soofau. This word is located in the vocabulary and art of Samoa,s traditional house-building guild and the wisdom of their spiritual culture. This year I wish to share with you some of my reflections on the Samoan concept lagimalie and how its orientation and philosophy might help towards building the new vocabulary and grammar that some of the worlds greatest minds suggest are necessary in order for us to address our biggest crisis to date - the problem of climate change. Our region holds a large number of the worlds low-lying coral island countries, all of which are considered the most vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change. As the recently passed Palau Declaration on The Ocean states the Ocean is both the lifeblood of our economies and societies and crucial to global climatic and environmental stability. Dealing effectively with this reality means that we as Pacific leaders, young and old, need to be actively engaged in the conversation that is driving the search for solutions. This means that we need to be informed, that we need to be prepared to do the homework necessary, and that we need to come to the discussion table willing to share and to listen to different points of view without prejudice. It is here at this table that I contend the importance of the principle of lagimalie becomes most pronounced. Lagimalie is a word not often used in Samoa today. It is, I am told, more commonly used in Tongan. In Samoan the word generally means to be in harmony. In the Tagaloa tradition it is a word that originates from the context of its funeral chant. That is, after reciting the salutation for each of the nine heavens, if the tulafale or orator of the party making an official ritual presentation gets each salutation right then the official mourners in the fale osilagi (i.e. the house where the corpse and official mourners reside) will respond by saying after each salutation, Iagimalie or malie. This indicates that the listeners are pleased by what they have heard; that they are pleased because the recitation is right; and that they are pleased because his version is in line or in harmony with theirs. If the orator gets a salutation wrong, however, he then has to run for his life because according to ancient beliefs he imperils by his mistake the journeying of the deceaseds soul through the heavens. Therefore, before he even starts the orator must for his own safety identify the fale tapu, i.e. the villages designated sacred house, because it is only in the fale tapu that he will find sanctuary. Lagimalie can thus be understood for our purposes as relating to the fact of having harmony or a sacred balance between two or more references. Implicit in lagimalie are ancient Samoan beliefs in the four harmonies, also described as tapu or sa. That is, the harmony, tapu or sa between man and God, between man and fellow men, between man and cosmos, and man and the environment. These harmonies or tapu are central to Samoan indigenous ideas of tuaoi (or sacred boundaries), va tapuia (or sacred space), and even ideas about the ocean itself, for traditionally the Samoan word for ocean was vasa, literally meaning the space (or va) that is sacred (or sa). These harmonies or tapu are present across the Pacific and are implicit in the late Bernard Narokobis writings about Melanesian beliefs in natures orderliness, where he notes that through this orderliness come even-handedness, balance and harmony. They are implicit also in Palauan rituals performed before the felling of trees for making canoes, and in Maori rituals performed before the picking of certain leaves or plants for medicinal purposes. In these understandings of tapu or sacred balance there exists a continuing belief in the view that man does not own the environment. Rather man and environment are family. They descend from the same creator God, a God that is an ancestor and thus always in close proximity to man. In this sense man and environment exist and live as equals in this life-world. They share a divinity with God because they are both issues of God, but are limited in this divinity because unlike God their knowledge and life presence is finite. In this equation man respects through tapu the environment (the land, sea, animals, plants) and the cosmos (the atmosphere, stars, sun, etc.) because they share the same origins and the same fate. In this sense the vocabulary of having dominion or rule over the environment is not within the ancient Samoan indigenous reference. In this reference man lives in equivalence with the environment. That is, in his everyday treatment of the environment he would treat it as he would want to be treated. In other words, he views the environment - the trees, the ocean, the fish, the plants - as living, breathing members of his family, worthy of respect and deference, not for exploitation or destruction. This notion of tapu or sacred balance forms part of our common Pacific heritage. It is part of what Hans Kung might describe as the necessary minimum of common values, standards and basic attitudes that could inform an ethic for the region and the globe. It is interesting to juxtapose this indigenous understanding of sacred balance, harmony or lagimalie between man and environment with that suggested by Christian scholars and the Bible. Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, in a powerful and passionate address to the Joint Workshop of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, titled Sustainable Humanity, Sustainable Nature: Our Responsibility, held in May this year, believes that we as a human race have lost our humility. He argues that when we deified ourselves as owners of the planet and turned our backs on our role as Gods stewards on Earth, we lost our humility. This notion of stewardship over the earth is taken from Genesis I: 26, which reads: Then God said, Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground (NIV). Maradiaga states that man has taken this responsibility and exploited it, becoming the despotic ruler of Creation, rather than the elder brother of all of its fellow creatures. He writes: Harmony - or the lack of it - between man and Nature will depend on whether man treats Nature from a purely utilitarian standpoint, or whether he interprets it as a space for life that is not to be reduced to a mere instrument or an object for his whim .... Nature is neither separate from man, nor against man; rather, it exists with man .... Only through universal unitedness between men, animals, plants and things will we be able to push aside the conceit of our race - which has come to think of itself as the despotic ruler of Creation - and turn it into the elder brother of all of its fellow creatures. Here Maradiagas words resonate with the basic indigenous view that man and the environment share a common origin and destiny and that because of this man has a duty to respect the environment to ensure their mutual survival. In the Samoan story of Creation there is no Adam and Eve, there is no Eden, there is no fig leaf or tempting snake like there is in the Hebrew story. In the Samoan story of Creation God is God Progenitor not God Creator; man is born from bacteria (ilo) not from a discrete creative act of God. In the Samoan story, life evolved from the separation of heaven and ealth much like the Big Bang theory of evolutionary science. In the Samoan story, heaven and earth, known as Lagi and Eleele, were said to be a couple. The humanisation of these natural entities point to a philosophy and theology that orients the mind and heart to a way of thinking that privileges the explicit existence of a respectful relationship - a va tapuia - not only between man and God, and man and fellow men, but also between man and the environment, and man and the cosmos. This was meant to embed in the everyday life of Samoans the value of respecting the environment by only taking what was needed. If one took from the environment then one was to give back. [f one wanted respect from the environment, then one was give due respect. This culture of respect is best illustrated by the chants of fishermen who throughout the fishing process up until the time when the fish is killed and eaten, would talk to and treat the fish as if they were human. The words used to refer to the fish were words usually reserved for chiefs. This was to underline the point about tapu, about humility, deference and respect. As quoted elsewhere, in Asau when fishing for mackerel, the tautai or traditional lead fishermen would, for example, chant: Afio maia oe le manaia (Welcome to you the manaia, the head of the untitled mens guild) Afio maia oe le tausala (Welcome to you the tausala, the village belle) O lea ua talisoa le aiga o Tautaifau ma le au taliuta (The dignity of Asau await you) Afio mai oe le tamasoaalii (We welcome you the tamasoaalii - the man who is the aide of the chief) Whatever the number of fish received, all the fish that have given themselves over to the fisherman are shown respect from the time they are courted into the net to the time they are cooked, eaten and/or put back into the sea or earth. Everything of their gift is recognised and used in some useful way so that nothing was left unrecognised; nothing was left to waste. In this context fish are not considered mere food items that humans can do with at their pleasure. They were not commodities to be sold for profit that benefitted only a few. They were gifts from God and so were treated with the highest respect in terms of language and hospitality protocols. This developed a consciousness, a real awareness, or orientation, of the tapu between man and the environment. This in turn ensured that nature retained the sacred balance and orderliness needed for her to replenish herself and to continue to provide for man and all other living beings in healthy and sustainable ways. All of this can contribute to what Maradiaga also describes as an authentic education. I draw hope from Maradiagas reference to human beings as the elder brother of the environment that perhaps at long last we are beginning to see real possibilities for an accommodation of multiple perspectives, including our own indigenous perspectives, in the global conversation on what to do about our environmental crisis. One of the ironies of our modern times is that given the technical feats we have achieved, the technology necessary to bring us together and to develop this lexicon now costs us very little and is literally at our finger tips. What seems harder to achieve, despite actually costing very little - at least financially, is the right attitude or orientation to make it all happen. This seems to underscore the paradox implicit in Maradiagas poignant statement that man is both a technical giant and ethical child. To conclude I note a legitimate worry that a dear friend of mine, Raymond Pelly, an Anglican priest who lives in Wellington, raised with me after he read my account of our Samoan rituals of paying deference to the fish before catching and eating them. He asks: For all the exquisite courtesy to the shark shown by the hunter-fisherman, it is the shark that is caught, killed and eaten, not the fisherman. Or, is the practical message that the survival of humankind depends on a limited killing of sharks, not the kind of exploitative, commercially driven factory fishing that recklessly destroys the fish stocks of the ocean without regard to the future? Isnt there nevertheless a hidden idea of hierarchy and domination in the assumption that sharks are a food-source for humankind, not the other way round? The answer to Raymonds question will depend on ones interpretation of language and attitude. The fact that he still had to ask the question after reading a deliberate explanation in English about the tradition and its ethical and cultural orientation says a lot in itself. The challenge of future leadership in the Pacific will become more and more the challenge of how best to deal with questions such as these.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Nov 2014 04:36:00 +0000