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 …

Why Samoans Are So Overrepresented in the NFL

It All Started in Hawaiʻi on Oahu’s North Shore, Where Plantation Managers and Mormon Elders Nurtured Generations of Football Stars

Long before Oahu’s North Shore became a global hot spot for football, it was a pu`uhonua, a refuge under the protection of priests. Fugitives and villagers escaping the carnage of …