hial的部落格

Most Samoans will cognize the account around Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III, Samoan Head of State who, in 1929, was colorful to destruction in tranquil nag opposed to New Zealand's bylaw complete Samoa.

Well, all Samoans should cognize this history.

It began in 1914, once New Zealand took control over Western Samoa. The international was at war at the event (WW1) so New Zealand was beautiful more than left by the British to regulate our islands even so way they longed-for.

By only just astir every account, New Zealand wasn't the chief of colonial masters. Their common cognition towards Samoans was that we were 'childlike', and they imposed more than a few brutal regulations roughly who we could marry, how we ran our businesses and how untold say-so our old-time dominant systems (matai) could have.

Then in 1918, a terminal deformation of influenza, titled the Spanish Flu, poor out in NZ and transmit to Samoa the year after, killing done 7500 family.

What happened was that NZ officials inferior to isolation a liner that carried ill passengers into Samoa.

It was ideal of NZ's at odds brass of the islands. On the one hand, they set up demanding policies to lead us, and on the remaining hand, they were inconsiderate with our welfare and financial aid.

Samoa had had sufficient.

In closer decades, the Mau a Pule - a disagreement against foreign bylaw - had defined in Savai'i to argue against the German job of Samoa.

That endeavour died behind once the Germans exiled leader body of the Mau to Micronesian islands.

But now, resistant NZ rule, it was example for the revitalization of Samoa mo Samoa.

An afakasi bourgeois and solon called Taisi Olaf F. Nelson became a start associate of the new Mau.

In 1926, he visited the NZ superior of Wellington to message the administration to let Samoans more state to self-govern.

In 1927, Nelson published a tabloid titled the 'Samoa Guardian' to maintain the motility.

In 1928 he was exiled from Samoa, on next to two otherwise members of the Mau, but he utilised those cardinal age distant to take his protests all the way to the League of Nations in Geneva.

In Nelson's absence, the Mau chronic to escape NZ.

Led now by the Samoan Head of State, Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III, they perpetual to use well-bred mischief as a way to get their statement intersecting.

They refused to pay taxes, boycotted foreign stock and disregarded NZ officials once they visited their villages.

Then, Black Saturday.

On the 28th of December, 1929 Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III led the Mau on a demonstration downbound the Beach Road of Apia to come upon other than members of the motility who had fitting returned from transportation to Auckland.

The peaceable protest march erupted into anger once the NZ branch of knowledge law wide-eyed forest fire on the marchers. Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III hurried to the forward of the attendance and urged his relations - who had begun to pitch rocks - to be still, 'filemu'.

A unique bullet from at the back brought him set.

Other Samoan men who hurried to activity the modernizer were also killed. When it was over, 8 general public were limp (3 died subsequent) and say 50 were cut.

As he lay dying, Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III continued to beg for peace:

"My humor has been spilt for Samoa. I am swaggering to spring it. Do not flight of the imagination of avenging it, as it was spilt in order. If I die, order must be kept up at any price tag."

So that's the content.

Because the New Zealand authority launched a concealing struggle after the measures of Samoa's Black Saturday, the fiction had to be pieced in cooperation ended the decades from different accounts.

You'll in all likelihood insight the most complete re-telling of this dusky pathway of Samoan past times in a photo album called, 'Black Saturday: New Zealand's tragic blunders in Samoa,' by NZ-born Pacific journalist Michael Field.

In his research, Michael Field came intersecting an Auckland woman, now in her 80's, who was here in Apia the day Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III was killed.

Agnes Heeny was 7 years old once she witnessed the shooting, and the enormous undertake [http://www.michaelfield.org/Mau 2007.htm] is recounted in an nonfictional prose transcribed to keep the 2007 anniversary of the sad trial.

Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III is a critical numeral in what went before because of his death in Samoa's pull out all the stops for freedom, but it is his heritage of order that has ready-made him a Samoan icon.

xx HGG