Maryknoll Sisters of St. Dominic, inc.

American Samoa

When Bishop J. Quinn Weitzel, M.M., was named bishop of the new Samoa-Pago Pago diocese in American Samoa in 1986, he sought some specialized services from Maryknoll Sisters in Hawaii. In the following years, Sisters Marilyn Evans, a Montessori teacher trainer, and Kathleen Skenyon, a master librarian, responded with short term visits for workshops and library assistance. Happily, on June 9, 1991, the Sisters of Hawaii had a Mission Sending Ceremony to send Sisters Marilyn and Kathleen to American Samoa where they arrived on June 13.

Sister Kathleen reorganized the library of the diocesan Pastoral and Cultural Center and put 1400 items on the computer. She had established library development services for diocesan schools and libraries, and trained full time librarians before leaving in 1994. After more than forty years of experience as a social worker, Sister Mary Naab was invited by Bishop Weitzel in 1993 to assist in the development of Catholic Social Services. She and three Samoans met once a week to be consultants with each other. Emphasis was placed on counseling and developing Samoan teams for village education on alcoholism as a family disease, and domestic violence, an island-wide educational effort. She was one of Samoa’s six representatives to attend the National Conference of State Representatives in Washington following the passage of the Violence Against Women Act.

As founder and director of CSS until 1997, Sister Mary was invited back in 2002 to be the keynote speaker at a conference concerning the increased violence toward women and children. Her talk was on “Looking Back and Looking Forward,” and focused on collaboration. Sister Marilyn opened a Montessori school in the eastern part of the island where there was only one elementary school; she started with four children and volunteer teachers and in 2002 they were in a new school with about ninety-five children between 3- and 6-years-old. Their classes about God and relationships were shared with their families.

Sister Marilyn has remained in American Samoa, teaching and working with the teachers both as educators and as women.

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Sister Marilyn Evans

Did You Know?

American Samoa is comprised of 77 square miles of the eastern half of the Samoan island chain in the South Pacific between Hawaii and New Zealand. Most archaeologists believe the first Polynesians settled in what is now American Samoa around 600 BC.
American interest in Samoa was prompted by the late 19th century search for a deep water port in the South Pacific. In a treaty in 1899 between the U.S., Great Britain and Germany, the U.S. was given control of American Samoa.
It has been a territory of the U.S. since April17, 2008, when the High Chiefs of Tutuila signed the first of two deeds of Cession for the islands to the U.S., ratified by Congress in 1929. Swains Island, privately owned, came under U.S. administration in 1929.
During World War II, the islands were an important U.S. Marines staging area. In 1960 American Samoa ratified its territorial constitution and has developed a modern self-governing political system with a Senate selected by the village chiefs and a House of Representatives elected by the general population.
The people of Samoa are U.S. nationals, not U.S. citizens, but many become naturalized U.S. citizens. Much of the land is communally owned by the Polynesian native people who take pride in a strong culture that has survived outside incursions amazingly well.

Albania	American Samoa	Bangladesh	Bolivia	Brazil	Cambodia
Chile	China	East Timor	Ecuador	El Salvador	Guatemala
Japan	Kenya	Korea	Marshall Islands	Myanmar	Namibia
Panama	Peru	Philippines	Taiwan	Tanzania	Thailand
United States	Yap	Zimbabwe