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SALT LAKE CITY — On a warm July Friday night, the gym of a local meeting house of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is decked out for a party: red, gold and silver balloons, the colors repeated in the round tablecloths, a pop of brightness against the hardwood floor's expanse.
Hundreds of photographs are scattered on tables, carefully shuffled to feature different faces, many of them echoes of 11 large portraits pinned to corkboard on a crepe paper-festooned wall.
It looks like a community heritage event, with dozens and dozens of people who are Polynesian. What isn't clear — is surprising once you learn it — is all are related by marriage or blood.
The photos on the wall are of Vida Tu'itama'alelagi Hafoka and her siblings. Her mother and father, Taaviliafi and Faaiuina Savea Aupiu Moe Tu'itama'alelagi, had 13 children. Those gathered are their children, grandchildren, greats and even great-greats. Some in the portraits are gone now but also near. In Pacific Island cultures the spirits of those who die "walk beside us."
"We are thanking our Heavenly Father for bringing all of our travelers here safely," said Vida Hafoka. "So many things can happen along the way. Eat what we have. Welcome." She speaks of growth, the kids, the struggles. "So much love in this family."
Welcome to the Tu'itama'alelagi family reunion, with 200 relatives from across the country and the Pacific Islands.
About 1.8 million Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders live in the U.S., according to 2022 Census Bureau estimates. Most Pacific Islanders in Utah are from Polynesia, a geographic region that includes Hawaii, Samoa, American Samoa, Tokelau, Tahiti and Tonga. Fiji is in Melanesia, along with Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. Micronesia includes the Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Mariana Islands, Saipan, Palau, Yap, Chuuk, Pohnpei, Kosrae, Marshall Islands and Kiribati.
Pacific Islanders nationally are about 0.5% of the population. In Utah, they are closer to 2% of the population. Tongans and Samoans are the largest Polynesian groups in Utah, at 39% and 30%, respectively, although even when combined they are fewer than a quarter of Pacific Islanders in the U.S. In Utah, 10% of Pacific Islanders are Micronesian, 8% Native Hawaiian and 2% Fijian. The 2020 U.S. Census found Utah had the third-highest percentage population of Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders in the nation, behind Hawaii and Alaska.
Adventurous, inquisitive people
They are also often a mix of island identities: You can be born in Tonga of Fijian and Samoan descent, for example. People travel widely through Oceania.
Jake Fitisemanu was born in New Zealand, but his dad is from Samoa, his mom from Hawaii, where he grew up. The family came to Utah for his father's job and he finished high school, then college and earned a master's degree in public health here. The West Valley City councilman has local and national bonafides, including serving on the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders until 2017. He's a program manager with Intermountain Health and associate instructor of ethnic studies at the University of Utah.
Father of two girls, 10 and 14, Fitisemanu is passionate about his heritage. "Our culture is dynamic and it's always evolving and adapting," he said. "Our history as Pacific Islanders is unique in the whole world. Our ancestors were the only people who traversed the entire breadth and length of the Pacific Ocean and discovered 10,000 islands before Christopher Columbus was born."
He calls Pacific Islanders inquisitive, wanting to know what's beyond the horizon. And adaptable: New Zealand can be cold and plants that grow in Hawaii may not flourish there, but he notes the people have always thrived in both places.
Their history in Utah is also very old, "the longest continuous habitation of Pacific Islanders in the U.S. outside of Hawaii," Fitisemanu said. Iosepa, now a ghost town southwest of Salt Lake City, is a fairly renowned settlement. Before that, Native Hawaiians settled in the capitol city's Rose Park neighborhood near Warm Springs as early as 1873. In the 1880s, the first Samoans were in Castle Dale in central Utah and Heber Valley, east of Salt Lake City. There were Maori immigrants from New Zealand in 1884, and in 1894 another group arrived in Kanab, near the Utah-Arizona border.
Many of them came to Utah to live among other members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
"Our ancestors' remains are buried in Utah soil, out on the Goshute Nation and here in places like the Salt Lake cemetery," Fitisemanu said. "We have a really interesting spectrum of families that have been Utahns for maybe five generations and we have immigrant families like mine that arrived in the 1990s. We have this broad spectrum of culture, of folks very integrated into mainstream Utah-American society and folks who just arrived and are learning English."
Other people tend to lump Pacific Islanders and their traditions together, though some are shared and others distinct. Samoans, for instance, have an unbroken history of traditional tattoos called tatau, while other Pacific cultures don't. Samoan men embracing that rite of passage may be decorated from their knees to their torso with elaborate designs reflecting their family's history, their connection to nature, even attributes they hope to embrace or that others see in them. The male tattooing, called pe'a, can take days. Some Samoan women get a malu, tattooing on the front and back of their thighs, often including protection symbols and their ancestral and geographic or desired attributes. The designs are unique to those getting them.
Vida Hafoka's grandmother Talalupelele Tuitogamaatoe completed her malu at age 12. Her father was the High Chief-Sao of the village who later gave that title to his daughter, Vida's grandmother. It signified, among other things, her courage, humility and strength, that she could take care of the village. Her ceremonial malu signified coming from a line of chiefs, Hafoka said. But rather than ensuring others serve you, it ensures you serve the community. "There is a lot of responsibility when you have your malu or pe'a," she said, calling it a sacred decision.
For some, the ancestral tradition conflicts with religion now, while others of the same faith or background see no conflict. Tatau is peculiar in that it is both a personal choice and a family decision, a personal obligation and a collective, shared identity, Fitisemanu said.
