Tafesilafa'i means to greet each other face to face. This festival is an opportunity for the Pacific Islander Community to come together, face to face and to exchange stories, ideas, resources, to break bread and to be. The festival began in 1997, attended by a few hundred guests. Over the years we have featured 276 unique youth groups, partnered with 928 unique sponsors/vendors and entertained over 380,000 guests – face to face. We have had over 76 leaders reflect during the Festival on 22 different themes designed to get Culture to dialogue with Theology.
This year's theme is from the story of a young couple Meto and Alo that fell madly in love. Their love was manifested in the building of this house in the village of Amoa. Tragedy struck and the house was never completed. Thus, the expression – Le Fale nai Amoa, sa lau i ‘ula ma pou i toa. Ae faufau i a’a o le aoa. Housing, the most fundamental manifestation of love and community, yet so many are without safe, sustainable and affordable housing. Perhaps we can draw from the wisdom tradition of the Pacific Islands and learn from the Fale lau i Ula ma Pou i Toa during Tafesilafa’I 2019.
What can we expect from Tafesilafa'i Festival?
The youth groups participating can expect to come away with a sense of accomplishment. The long solitary hours spent practicing their pieces, honing their crafts and fellowshipping with others is celebrated after their performance is completed. Secondly, an appreciation of diversity. Even within seemingly homogenous cultures there are subtle differences and nuances to be respected and paid attention to. The Festival promises to model the idea: It is in our diversity that makes the Island Nations resilient and strong. Finally, the Festival is an affirmation of their storied past. It is an embracement of who they are, where they are from and to whom they belong. I belong, therefore I am.
Tafesilafa'i promises to create space so each person's past is affirmed, embraced and celebrated. Once they embrace who they are, then they will know to embrace who others are. The vision is to affirm the other and to distinguish a future that is open to what God has in mind.
Spectators will come away with a sense of identification with the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander community, and more important, identification with the larger inclusive faith community. I do belong here!
The vendors and sponsors, in addition to economic fulfilment, will have participated in the only faith-based Pacific Islander Festival in Southern California. It was worth the investment!
Volunteers will be gifted with how to identify their mauli such that they are cause in the matter, that they are a node in the matrix and that they have agency in the world. I am making a difference!
All will come away exhausted, tanned and blessed because they have engaged with others.
The Tafesilafa'i Festival offers many benefits for Long Beach, culturally and economically. The festival brings the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander community together for two days each year providing an excellent way of introducing the Pacific Islander community and its people to the Greater Long Beach area.
Tafesilafa'i: Culture informed by Theology.
