![\"Members](\"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Humanities-pix.jpg\")
<\/a>\u201cThat\u2019s part of the reason we undertake this project, to get feedback from the local community because this is part of the local history. So we\u2019re always happy when there\u2019s interaction and talking and telling stories and remembering things and putting the pieces back together,\u201d Humanities Council executive director Scott Russell said.<\/p>\n
One of the members of the audience shared a song her grandfather usually sang to his wife, which she did not know the meaning for the longest time. She eventually knew how the words were Samoan and added that it might be that her ancestors somehow interacted with the Samoans who were exiled on Saipan during the 1900s.<\/p>\n
Several individuals brought up the idea of rewriting the Marianas\u2019 history books to include the oral history, which is not usually taught in schools. Another one appealed to the public to be more conscious and respectful of the islands\u2019 history especially the places that have been neglected.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor this particular project, for this chapter of history, we are working on a booklet where we will combine the archival information from historical records and the surviving oral history and put that into one narrative,\u201d Russell said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea is to have it available for the Public School System and also for the [Northern] Marianas College and also for people in Samoa,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The presentation was given by Faautu Talapusi, who has conducted extensive research on her great-grandfather Iiga Pisa, including collecting oral histories related by her family. She has worked for development organizations in Switzerland for nine years before moving back to Samoa.<\/p>\n
Her talk focused on the youngest of the exiled chiefs, Iiga Pisa, who gained fame by undertaking a 120-mile voyage from Saipan to Guam in a traditional Samoan paddling canoe.<\/p>\n
Several members of the Pisa family also shared stories.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m glad because to me it\u2019s very educational and it will tells about the courage of men and women too,\u201d Iiga Olivia, the eldest living granddaughter of the chief said.<\/p>\n
The first presentation last Thursday featured Dr. Malama Meleisea who discussed the Mau a Pule, the indigenous Samoan resistance movement which was led by the orator chief Lauaki Namulau\u2019ulu Mamoe. Lauaki and nine other chiefs were subsequently exiled to Saipan in 1909 by the German colonial administration for their involvement in the Mau. They lived on Saipan for six years before being allowed to return home in 1915.<\/p>\n
Meleisea is the director of the Center for Samoan Studies at the National University of Samoa.<\/p>\n
Also part of the council\u2019s \u201cSamoan Exiles on Saipan\u201d program were the dedications of two interpretive signs. The first one is north of Lower Base at the site of the former Samoan village, while the second is at Unai Agingan from which Iiga Pisa set out on his canoe voyage to Guam.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An emotional night was witnessed at the Northern Marianas Humanities Council\u2019s \u201cSamoan Exiles on Saipan\u201d…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":204713,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[51,4890,4891,4892],"class_list":["post-204712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-guam","tag-iiga-pisa","tag-lauaki-namulau","tag-malama-meleisea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}