Tagata Pasifika - Is Religion Still important to Pacific Communities

Brief#2Tagata Pasifika Video - Is Religion stillimportant to Pacific Communities
 The video touches up on the significance of religion to Pacific people in 2010, which provides something to contrast Leomala’s ideology of religion around the 1980’s. The comparison of the two texts highlights the differences in opinions towards religion, and most importantly highlights the effect religion has had and still has on Pacific people today. Anosa (featured in the video) quotes “the church plays a bigger role than just a spiritual house, it becomes the substitute village”. This is regarding pacific islanders that have migrated to other countries; some attend church to retain their culture by participating in cultural activities with the church and also associating with others of the same ethnicity. He implies the majority of church goers aren’t attending to ‘praise God’ which cannot be an absolute fact as he doesn’t know the thoughts and feelings of all those attending church, but he has a fair point as according to a poll presented in the video people who answered the question ‘Is Religion important to you?’, 8% answered little, 32% answered not important which are significant numbers although an overwhelming 60% said it was very important. Overall we can conclude that the majority of Pacific people still regard religion as being an important aspect in their lives. Interesting enough, Albert Wendt described the literature from the 80’s as being written with an ambiguous and ironic language structure, this is apparent in Leomala’s reference in the poem to the Cross, because irony is apparent when comparing both texts. Leomala expresses his feeling of hatred and his sense of loss of culture Western religious influences have caused, yet Pacific people today who have left their homeland need the Church to regain their sense of Pacific identity and culture as briefly mentioned earlier.