Despite the palm-trees-wafting-in-the-trade-winds image, American Samoa is something of an oddity in the South Pacific. Hastily Americanised in the 1960s, the islands have all the ugly results of commercial and cultural imperialism sticking out from behind the fronds. The history of American Samoa over the last hundred years is a history of the desperate attempts by spent colonial forces to exert authority over a traditional people. Everyone from the British, to the Germans, to the Americans have pushed and pulled at the group of islands, and the shared god of all these Western nations has almost totally replaced the traditional belief system.

Yet despite all of this, American Samoa still somehow manages to be a friendly, spectacular destination for travellers. Cultural practice hasn't