How Samoans Resisted Coconut Colonialism
In the Early 20th Century, the Fruit’s Farmers Sowed the Seeds of Today’s Global Labor Struggle
Coconuts are everywhere. If you walk into a grocery store pretty much anywhere in the United States, you’ll find a cornucopia of coconut products: coconut water, coconut oil, coconut macaroons, and, of course, husked coconuts themselves.
Most consumers spend little time thinking about where the coconuts in this “coco craze” come from. But according to a Samoan proverb, “The coconut is sweet, but it was husked with the teeth.”
For the Samoan farmers and workers of the early coconut industry, these sweet treats were a site of struggle against colonial rule and …
