Samoan people

Background

Nearly every person living in American Samoa is an indigenous Samoan, and NPS traces their lineage back more than 3,000 years to the first people of the Samoan Islands, who arrived by sea from southeast Asia thousands of years ago. NPS calls Samoan culture the oldest in Polynesia. The United States Government owns no land in the National Park of American Samoa and leases it from the village councils instead. American Samoans are United States nationals rather than citizens, and the territory adopted its own constitution in 1967 with the first constitutional elections in 1977. Authority over the islands passed from the Navy to the Department of the Interior in 1956.

Parks on its homelands

National Park of American Samoa

American Samoa has been inhabited for more than 3,000 years, the first people of the Samoan Islands having arrived by sea from southwest Asia, and NPS calls Samoan culture the oldest in Polynesia. NPS also calls the park unique among national parks in that its land is not federally owned: over 8,000 acres on Tutuila, Ofu and Taʻu are leased from the villages, where land is owned and managed communally under village matai. Source

Sources

• https://www.nps.gov/npsa/learn/historyculture/people.htm
• https://www.nps.gov/articles/samoa.htm
• https://www.doi.gov/oia/islands/american-samoa

Checked September 2026.

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