Meet Chief Uliulileava
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Apart from the correspondance between UCI staff about the School of Social Sciences Learning by Doing Program and newspaper articles, not many documents detail Chief Uliulileava's time here at UCI. This interview transcript is perhaps the only surviving account directly from Uliulileava himself.
Though this interview is brief, it does reveal a little bit more about Uliulileava, his thoughts and values, and his process in regards to building the canoe.
Another point of interest in this interview is Uliulileava's response to question six, in which he lists eight other Samoans he wanted to recruit for this boat building project. This is an exciting addition to the record, as Chief Uliulileava and his daughter, Sarona Sotoa, are the only two Samoans documented as having taken part in this project.
The only evidence we have that other Samoans might have joined the boat building team are Uliulileava's interview and this photo of four unnamed Samoans from a newspaper article in the UCI archives. Other than that, these eight other Samoans, whether they joined the UCI field school or not, are ghosts in the historical record.
"The informant we propose to use in our study is a native of the village (NU'U) of Satalo, on the island of Upolu, Western Samoa. He is 36 years old. He holds the chiefly (ali'i) title Uliulileava, which is a recognized ali'i title within this village of long standing. He is monolingual (Samoan). His family or kin group has a long history of carpentry. (Currently the informant is building a new but traditional chiefly house (fale afolau) for the highest ranking chief of Satalo (Talo). He is an experienced boat-builder and bonito fisherman. This informant has spent his entire life in the village of Satalo. We also already have considerable ethnographic background data on this village."
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