The Pacific Insular Case of American Smoa

This book is a researched study of land issues in American Smoa that analyzes the impact of U.S. colonialism and empire building in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Carefully tracing changes in land laws up to the present, this volume also draws on a careful examination of legal traditions, administrative decisions, court cases and rising tensions between indigenous customary land tenure practices in American Smoa and Western notions of individual private ownership. It also highlights how unusual the status of American Smoa is in its relationship with the U.S., namely as the only unincorporated and unorganized overseas territory, and aims to expand the U.S. empire-building scholarship to include and recognize American Smoa into the vernacular of Americanization projects.