Dr Agapetos Ana Aia-Fa'aleava tells the story of her upbringing in Samoa, where her father trained for the ministry at the Malua Theological Seminary, then moving to Wellington in Aotearoa where she grew up among Samoan young people with a progressive outlook confronting head-on issues of identity.
In this interview, Dr Aia-Fa'aleava tells us that she has always wanted a 'malu' (a traditional body tattoo for Samoan women) and the ease with which she handled the pain of the au.
Dr Aia-Fa'aleava says, she now understands more about fa'a-Samoa from having her 'malu' done and she feels she is in connection with all the Samoan women who have had the 'malu' and the stories they tell.
The practise of traditional Samoan tattooing, pe'a for males and malu for women, was banned by mainstream Christian denominations and European missionaries for many decades. However, it never disappeared and underwent a revival, especially in Aotearoa in the 1980's.
