Don’t listen to customary land advice

Dear Editor,

I’d love to see how the rights of a Samoan person are upheld in a Court case against a bank in the white man’s courts. 

Just ask all the other indigenous people in the Americas, the African continent, and the islands of the pacific and the Caribbean how their rights have fared in the British/American global economic and legal system. 

Good luck with your Samoan rights to your customary lands. These lawyers with names like Stowers, schooled in the white man’s legal system, probably raised in NZ, don’t really get it. Or maybe they do, it’s just not who the Samoan people should be getting legal advice from when it comes to customary lands, their rights, and the constitution. 

I’d be listening to those Matai who are arguing against the A.D.B according to the Samoan constitution regarding customary lands over what this lawyer person is saying. 

Don’t lease your land Samoans, you will not keep it if you do. Just because Fiji has done something that may jeopardize their rights to their customary lands doesn’t mean Samoans should too. 

Climate change is going to play a huge role in how things continue down the road. Food security and access to fresh water are going to be huge factors in the near future as to who will survive and who will not. 

That will be all that matters, not development. Customary lands have sustained the Samoan people up to this point why mess with it now when climate change is going to change everything. Climate change is the biggest factor in all our lives today. 

China knows it and so do all foreigners who believe that land is a commodity to be accumulated for power and domination over others. 

If you listen to Stowers you will die, just like all the other indigenous cultures of the world have, if you listen to those Matai you will live on through your customary lands.

 

Wendy Wonder 

Samoa Observer

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