Quotes of the Day

A tree is "growing" in Pago Pago. Circling the sturdy redwood's trunk are writhing ancestral figures — slave, virginal taupou and high chief — and carved at canopy height are the words SAMOA MUAMUA LEATUA, God first in Samoa. Soaring above American Samoa's national museum and gallery, the sculpture — titled From Agony to Ecstasy — is the brainchild of local artist Tile Tuala. Scurrying around it on this warm winter's morning are the half-dozen assistants from other island nations whom the artist has enlisted to help with the finishing touches of his sculpture. "We love to work together with all the artists of the South Pacific," says Tuala.

Tuala's tree sculpture was created as part of the 10th Festival of Pacific Arts in Pago Pago during July and August. More than any other event, this festival (held every four years; the next will be in Honiara, Solomon Islands) has helped shape the region as an arc of creativity. "It's a positive thing," says Samoan – New Zealand hip-hop artist King Kapisi, "to have Pacific island communities meet up at one place and say, Listen, we're still here and giving respect to our heritage. Once you lose your culture, you don't know where you come from."

It was fear of cultural amnesia — particularly of the region's traditional arts and crafts — that underlay the festival's inauguration in Suva, Fiji, in 1972. As "each and every one of our countries aspire to economic prosperity, we are all deeply conscious that the quality of life is what matters in the end," Fiji's then-Prime Minister, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, told delegates. In the 36 years since, the event has opened itself up to cross-cultural exchange (Townsville, 1988), contemporary art (Noumea, 2000) and, most recently, the arts of the northern Pacific (Palau, 2004), to become what the Secretariat of the Pacific Community's Linda Petersen calls "the most important cultural event of the region." This year's theme has been "threading the Oceanic ula," the distinctive floral necklace common to most Pacific welcomings. "We compare islands in the ocean to flowers in a garden," said American Samoa governor Togiola Tulafono on opening night. "Each is distinct in its beauty and sweet scent. All that is needed is a strong thread."

As 2000 artists from 22 countries filled Pago Pago's Veterans Memorial Stadium for the July 21 opening, cultural diversity was everywhere on show — from the striking syncopation of Tahitian hula to folksy bamboo-flute-playing Solomon Islanders to the fierce bow-and-arrow dancers of Torres Strait. The stadium bristled with plumage, war paint and woven lava-lavas as the various island delegations (Papua New Guinea sent 170 people) vied for the audience's affections. "There was a highly competitive air," observes Wesley Enoch, artistic director of Australia's delegation, "especially around the dancing. They want to impress — who can be the best, who can get the crowd whipped up."

Creative connectivity was the festival's theme. Some artists, like Samoan-New Zealander Graham Fletcher, found the similarities between cultures more striking than their differences. Sharing accommodation with Maori and Tongan artists in the New Zealand compound, "We spent all night talking, basically," Fletcher recalls. "It's amazing the connection between all of our languages and customs and everything. We're much closer than we think."

So discovered Torres Strait Islander artist and dancer Alick Tipoti. Through his award-winning black-and-white linocut prints, Tipoti has translated designs traditionally carved on dance apparatus and drums to museum walls in Washington and Dusseldorf. The three festivals he's attended have introduced him to a wider network of artistic influence. "We are the most western part of the Pacific, which is tied together through traditional designs," says the Thursday Island-born artist, who has traced Torres Strait motifs back to the New Zealand Maori via "the Solomon Islands, Palau and across to Hawaii."

Helping spread these artistic influences is a shared legacy of language. As part of his cultural upbringing, Tipoti spent time with a Torres Strait elder and linguist, the late Ephraim Bani. "Through his teaching I learned that our western island language is connected to the Cape York and northern Aboriginal people," he recalls, "and the eastern island language is connected to the coastal villages of Papua New Guinea. Adding to that, our language is very strongly connected to all the Pacific islands. We're part of that network. And that's why I'm really proud to be part of events like this."

In Pago Pago, Tipoti's fellow Torres Strait Islander Joey Laifoo has been on his own voyage of self-discovery. Raised on Badu, Saibai and Thursday islands, this grandson of a pearl diver grew up with stories of how his grandmother's side of the family had migrated to Torres Strait from American Samoa; his grandfather's people originally came from Western Samoa. While his affinity with Samoan culture and language is hardly surprising — "I'm blending in really well" — there is still much to learn, he says: "So why did they move to Torres Strait and settle up there? It's one of the things I want to find out while I'm here."

Ensconced in the Australian delegation's thatched fale in the festival village, Laifoo has also been conducting print workshops with other islanders. Through his teemingly detailed linocut carvings, Laifoo records the stories of his island, from the signs of turtle-mating season (the turtles turn clockwise) to the 1977 oil spill that signaled the end of the pearl-diving industry. "I believe in preserving culture through arts and song," he says, "to revitalize them and start a new wave through our culture."

Protection of traditional knowledge and cultural copyright were the subjects of a three-day symposium held during the festival. "Any traditional knowledge should not be used, adapted or commercialized without the prior informed consent of the relevant traditional custodians," said Terri Janke, legal consultant to the World Intellectual Property Organisation.

But for the Australian delegation's Wesley Enoch, an award-winning theater director (Stolen, Riverland), preservation must always go hand in hand with progress. The delegation he selected for the festival — from Freshwater, a women's a capella group who seek to reclaim languages through song, to Doonooch, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation group using traditional dance — reflect his theme of "Welcoming the New Day." "In Indigenous Australia there's a whole lot of contemporary manifestations of culture that we want to look at," Enoch says. "It's not just about cultural maintenance but about cultural evolution."

Samoan rapper King Kapisi would no doubt chime with these sentiments. For the King, a.k.a. Bill Urale, returning to the Pacific his family left to live in Wellington, New Zealand has brought mixed feelings. In the muscular rhythms of songs like Screams From Da Old Plantation, Urale presents Pacific culture as something to be contested, interrogated and recontextualized. "The thing I don't actually agree with," he says, "is how religion has become part of Samoa's culture. Personally, I think that culture and religion should be apart. Culture should be culture and religion should be religion. I'm just a Samoan saying what I want to say."

With his shiny shaved head, I LOVE HIP-HOP T shirt and postcolonial lyrics, King Kapisi found resonance with a relaxed beach audience of locals, visiting artists, tourists and Mormon Helping Hands volunteers. "The plantation is right here," he rapped to the crowd. Not for the first time at the festival, one saw artistic trees coming to life.

• Michael Fitzgerald/Pago Pago