As the Pacific community celebrates another Samoan language week, guardians of Gagana Samoa in early learning centres acknowledge the increasing challenges they face trying to stay true to their language and culture.
Across Aotearoa, there are over a hundred Pacific early childhood learning centres spread throughout the motu.
Most are small, community-run and deeply rooted in their respective cultures.
But at the heart of these services is an indigenous language that is a priority for many families who want their children to grow up grounded in their identity.
“I’ve always thought it was an important thing for our Pasifika children, especially our Samoan children, to know their identity, to know who they are,” says early learning teacher Fuimaono Alovale.
“And seeing our children, you know, coming out and saying, oh yeah, I’m Samoan, I’m Samoan, is always, you know, it’s real encouraging.”
But these centres are also navigating unique pressures – expected to deliver the same standards as mainstream services, while also upholding language, culture, and community expectations.
“When we’re assessed through Western eyes, sometimes it feels like our culture is undervalued,” Alovae says.
“Not many mainstream will do it, but we do a lotu (prayer) in the mornings because spirituality is very important to our people. And then also… the Māoris have it, its tuakana teina… allowing for our elders to be a part of our children’s learning.
“And I think sometimes, I don’t think we were able to sort of ‘word it’ in the way that they thought, you know, it was valuable.”
They are the Education Review Office (ERO) who monitor compliance across all early learning centres.
But for ‘Aoga Amata’, the reviews can be daunting especially when cultural frameworks don’t always align with western standards.
Irene Paleai-Foroti is a Director at SAASIA, the organisation which oversees the Aoga Amata Samoan early childhood centres across Aotearoa, she says they provide a more holistic environment for learning.
“The service that we provide at Aoga Amata is all around service,” Paleai-Foroti says.
“The wellbeing of the children is very important and wellbeing is holistically our view and our practice from a Samoan perspective, so it’s not individualistic in the way that we just look at the child.
“It’s about the child, the family; so we’ve created models that can capture and reflect the essence of our sense of being.”
In recent years, some centres have lost licences or closed down after failing to meet regulations, a situation advocates say reflects systemic issues, rather than a lack of value or effort.
“I think the main challenge for our Aoga is the dominance of the Western view, you know, and especially when they come to Aoga Amata, they come with that lens to assess the work that we do,” Paleai-Foroti says.
“When parents can’t afford to pay their fees, we still allow them to come to the Aoga. If there are no fees and less funding from the ministry, our centre struggles.
“Sometimes we do it out of our service and the love that we have for our community and pray. That’s very powerful for us, we pray that we still sustain the service.”
There are 113 licensed Pacific Island early learning services nationwide with roughly half of them being Samoan, but sustainability remains a concern for many of them with staff shortages and a lack of qualified indigenous language speakers
“We can get teachers that can speak the language and (are) bilingual, but not in full immersion centres like my centre,” says SAASIA Chair Leitualaolemalietoa Sofaea Penn.
“We’ll never hire a person that can’t speak Samoan. That’s part of our requirements for our language to survive. We have to be strong in whatever we can do to make sure that our children will survive with our language, their identity and our culture.”
SAASIA Director Paleai-Foroti says, “Samoan is a medium of instruction. We are not teaching Samoan. We are using Samoan to deliver the curriculum for our children and it’s very hard to find teachers that are fluent because of the IELTS.”
“They need it to pass this English language test before they enter. there’s that fence here that is stopping us from getting in the tertiary, you know, to get our degrees.”
In west Auckland, SAASIA and Healthy Families Waitākere are helping to fill the gap – offering professional and wellbeing support through a community-led initiative called Tāfesilafa’i.
“Tāfesilafa’i was born out of Covid four years ago at Healthy families Waitakere (which) sits in the health prevention, health promotion pipeline,” says the organisation’s Pasifika strategist Ella Falakoa.
“And so what we did is we sent out a sort of survey to our ECE communities. And we had an overwhelming response from our Aoga Amata centers in terms of them needing some support and assistance.
“Before Tāfesilafa’i was even developed, we recognized that our Aoga Amata teachers worked in silo’s, so they didn’t actually know each other. They didn’t connect with each other.
“So, Tāfesilafa’i has really brought them together. And with that has meant for this collective, an increase in confidence.”
For Aoga Amata teachers like Fuimaono Alovale, Tāfesilafa’i has been a welcome development.
“It’s been awesome. Now having those other connections, this collective body where we can actually share, talanoa and share experiences, but also share our success stories,” Alovale says.
With planned changes to review frameworks, and new support for bilingual teachers, there’s hope that the Pacific Early Learning centres will get the recognition and resources they deserve.
“My hope and prayer is that, we and the government will support the work that we do, because it works. It works for our people,” SAASIA Director Paleai-Foroti says.
“I’m hoping that Tāfesilafa’i will get more funding and support for them to carry on the good work that I have done to sustain these programs for teachers and for our children in Aotearoa and the world, to be able to learn their language and be proud of it,” says SAASIA Chair Leitualaolemalietoa Sofaea Penn.
“And that’s their identity; wherever they are, when they speak, they can tell you are a Samoan.”
