Articulating Samoan feminist thought through colonial entanglements

Dr Moeata Keil - Snr Lecturer in Sociology and Assistant Dean Pacific (Pacific Learner Success) at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland

The colonial period in Sāmoa played a pivotal role in embedding Christian morality within Indigenous cultural frameworks, profoundly reshaping understandings of gender and power. This paper develops an Indigenous Samoan feminist theory of gender and power grounded in Samoan cosmologies and genealogies.  It argues that missionisation and colonisation transformed earlier relational and reciprocal understandings of gender, replacing them with patriarchal Christian ideals that became naturalised as “traditional”, ultimately obscuring Indigenous philosophies that preceded them. Drawing on the genealogies of pre-contact Samoan feminist figures, the paper argues that there has never been a singular Indigenous model of Samoan femininity. Instead, they reveal multiple, dynamic and sometimes contradictory ways of being that exceed colonial binaries and resist patriarchal constructions. While decolonial feminist scholarship has demonstrated that gender is a colonial construct imposed through the coloniality of power, this paper asks what an Indigenous Samoan feminist theory of gender and power might look like when generated from Samoan cosmology. It further considers how such a theory can be articulated when contemporary Samoan culture remains deeply entangled with the enduring legacies of missionisation, colonialism and coloniality.

Dr Moeata Keil (she/her)is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Assistant Dean Pacific (Pacific Learner Success) at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland. Her current research develops Indigenous Samoan feminist theory grounded in Samoan cosmologies and genealogies. More broadly, her research advances Pacific feminist scholarship by examining how family law, social policy and welfare systems shape the lived experiences of Pacific peoples and families. Her work calls attention to the importance of understanding family within broader networks of relationships beyond the couple and parent–child dyad, advocating for state institutions, law and social policy to better recognise culturally informed family norms and practices.

This seminar will be held ‘In person’.