Mau movement
The Mau was a non-violent movement for Samoan independence from colonial rule during the first half of the 20th century. Mau means 'resolute' or 'resolved' in the sense of 'opinion', 'unwavering', 'to be decided', or 'testimony'; also denoting 'firm strength' in Samoan. The motto for the Mau were the words Samoa mo Samoa. Similarly in Hawaiian Mau means to strive or persevere, and is often linked with Hawaiian poetry relating to independence and sovereignty struggles.
The movement had its beginnings on the island of Savai'i with the Mau a Pule resistance in the early 1900s with widespread support throughout the country by the late 1920s. As the movement grew, leadership came under the country's chiefly elite, the customary matai leaders entrenched in Samoan tradition and fa'a Samoa. The Mau included women who supported the national organisation through leadership and organisation as well as taking part in marches. Supporters wore a Mau uniform of a navy blue lavalava with a white stripe which was later banned by the colonial administration.
The Mau movement culminated on 28 December 1929 in the streets of the capital Apia, when the New Zealand military police fired on a procession who were attempting to prevent the arrest of one of their members. The day became known as Black Saturday. Up to 11 Samoans were killed, including Mau leader and one of the paramount chiefs of Samoa Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III with many others wounded. One New Zealand constable was clubbed to death by protesters following the outbreak of hostilities.
The Mau movement's efforts would ultimately result in the political independence of Samoa in 1962 but the height of the movement's activity in the Western Islands occurred in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
History
Broadly, the history of the Mau movement can be seen as beginning in the 19th century with European contact and the advent of Western powers, Britain, United States and Germany, vying for control of the Pacific nation. The country became German Samoa.Formation of ''Mau a Pule''
A key event occurred in 1908, in a dispute between the German colonial administration and the Malo o Samoa, or Samoan Council of Chiefs, over the establishment of a copra business owned and controlled by native Samoans.File:Lauaki Namulauulu Mamoe.jpg|thumb|left|150px|Exile Lauaki Namulau'ulu Mamoe.
The dispute led to the eventual formation of a resistance movement called Mau a Pule on Savai'i by Lauaki Namulau'ulu Mamoe, one of the Samoan leaders from Safotulafai who was deposed by the German Governor of Samoa, Wilhelm Solf. As well as deposing members of the Malo o Samoa, Solf called in two German warships as a show of strength. Lauaki returned with his warriors from Savai'i for battle. The German governor convinced Mata'afa to set up a "peace talk meeting" with Lauaki but that Lauaki had to disperse his army before the meeting. Unknown to Mata'afa was the intent of the German governor to rid of Lauaki. Lauaki, a man of honor, returned with his warriors to Savai'i as they were reluctant to leave Upolu without him. After ensuring his warriors' arrival to their villages, Lauaki returned to Upolu. As it took Lauaki several days to disperse his army, the German governor set up his trap.
Upon their return to Upolu, Lauaki and some of the Chiefs were betrayed at this "peace talk", held aboard the German ship. In 1909, Lauaki and the other senior leaders of the Mau a Pule were exiled to the German colonies in the Marianas where they were to stay until 1914, when New Zealand took over Samoa as part of its Empire duties at the outbreak of World War I. Many of those exiled died before returning to Samoa. Lauaki died en route back to Samoa in 1915.
In 1914, at the beginning of World War I, New Zealand forces, unopposed by the Germans, annexed Western Samoa.
Influenza epidemic
Military rule by New Zealand continued after the war ended, and in 1919, some 7,500 Samoans, around 22 per cent of the population, died during an influenza epidemic. It was already known that Samoans were most susceptible to minor European diseases, as they had never encountered them before. When the ship SS Talune arrived in Apia with its crew and passengers obviously sick with influenza, they were allowed to dock by the New Zealanders.Two days later the first deaths were reported. No attempt was made by the New Zealand administrators to quell or contain the spread, and after one week it had spread through the whole of Samoa. Whole families were killed, with such alarming speed that corpses lay around for weeks without being buried. They were either thrown in mass graves or left in houses which were torched. However, in American Samoa, where quarantine precaution measures had been adequately taken, there were no deaths. Upon learning of the situation in Western Samoa, the American Governor offered help to Colonel Robert Logan who was in charge; Logan was a Scotsman who hated Americans. He destroyed the telegram and cut off any other contact to American Samoa. The Americans had a large medical team who could have saved many lives.
This catastrophic event was to lay a new foundation for discontent with an administration already perceived as incompetent and dishonest by many Samoans. The clumsy handling of Samoa's governance, the slow and deliberate erosion of traditional Samoan social structures by successive administrators, and a general failure to understand and respect Samoan culture also sowed the seeds for a revitalised resistance to colonial rule. Logan was replaced by Colonel Robert Tate.
Mau leadership
The groundswell of support among Samoans for the Mau came from the leadership of Samoan matai, the heads of families in Samoa's traditional socio-political structure. Family and chiefly title connections, a central part of Samoan culture, were used to harness support. The success of the Mau in gathering national support showed that fa'a Samoa was still strong despite colonialism.An example of this is found in the many stories of the Mau, in its early days as the fledgling movement began seeking support from matai. One of the urgent matters the early leadership faced was on the question of Savaii, as Pule were yet to pledge their unanimous support. The position of its traditional rulers needed attention if the movement was to gain national appeal. The sensitive cultural maneuvering required for such an undertaking required more than the methods employed by those in Apia and so it was decided that Tumua would travel to Savaii and ask for their support for the fledgling movement. The fleet of fautasi embarked with Upolu's orators on board, led by the matua of Falefa, Luafalemana Moeono Taele, who after resigning his post in the administration's police force, joined the Mau. Choosing to arrive at Satupa'itea instead of the traditional Sale'aula, Moeono met with Asiata and in asking for his support, recalled Falefa's earlier support for the Mau a Pule. By recalling this, Asiata was compelled to assist and joined Tumua as they went on to Sale'aula. There, Moe'ono, Asiata and Tumua met with the assembled Pule and called on them to reciprocate their earlier solidarity by joining forces with Tumua in order to further strengthen the cause for independence.
Samoans of mixed parentage, facing discrimination from both cultures but with the advantage of cross-cultural knowledge, also played a key role in the new movement.
Olaf Frederick Nelson, one of the leaders of the new Mau movement, was a successful merchant of mixed Swedish and Samoan heritage. Nelson was the richest man in Samoa at the time and well-travelled. He was frustrated by the colonial administration's exclusion of native and part-Samoans from governance. Notably, he was one of many who had lost a child to the influenza epidemic of 1919 in addition to his mother, sister, only brother, and sister in-law. Although classified as a European, he considered himself Samoan "by birth, blood, and sentiment."
In 1926, Nelson visited Wellington to lobby the New Zealand government on the issue of increased self-rule. During his visit, the Minister for External Affairs, William Nosworthy, promised to visit Samoa to investigate. When Nosworthy postponed his trip, Nelson organised two public meetings in Apia, which were attended by hundreds, and The Samoan League, or O le Mau, was formed.
The Mau published the Samoa Guardian newspaper as a mouthpiece for the movement. To demonstrate the extent of popular support for the Mau, Nelson organised a sports meeting for movement members on the King's Birthday, in parallel with the official event, and held a well-attended ball at his home on the same night.
Movement members had begun to engage in acts of noncooperation: Neglecting the compulsory weekly search for the rhinoceros beetle, enemy of the coconut palm, thereby threatening the lucrative copra industry. When New Zealand administrators imposed a per-capita beetle quota, many Samoan villages resisted by breeding the insects in tightly woven baskets rather than comply with the orders to scour the forests and collect them.
In 1927, alarmed at the growing strength of the Mau, George Richardson, the administrator of Samoa, changed the law to allow the deportation of Europeans or part-Europeans charged with fomenting unrest. This action was presumably taken on the assumption that the growing movement was merely a product of self-interested Europeans agitating the native Samoans.
In reality, however, the Mau was built upon the traditional forms of Samoan political organisation. In each village that joined the movement, a committee was formed, consisting of the chiefs and "talking men". These committees formed the basic element of an alternative system of governance, and the tendency of Samoans to unite under traditional leadership meant that by the mid- to late 1920s, around 85% of the Samoan population was involved in open resistance.
Following another visit to New Zealand to petition the Government, Nelson was exiled from Samoa along with two other part-European Mau leaders, Alfred Smyth and Edwin Gurr. The petition, which led to the formation of a joint select committee to investigate the situation in Samoa, quoted an ancient Samoan proverb: "We are moved by love, but never driven by intimidation."