Samoan children’s sense of place: Experiential landscapes in an urban village Christina R. Ergler, * Claire Freeman * and Anita Latai † * School of Geography, University of Otago, PO Box 56, 9054 Dunedin, New Zealand. Email: christina.ergler@otago.ac.nz. † Department of Social Sciences, National University of Samoa, Apia, Samoa. Abstract: Pacific Island communities are experiencing significant societal changes as a result of rural urban, inter-island migration and migration to New Zealand. These relocations have significant implications for chil- dren’s relationship to place. However, virtually nothing is known about children’s sense of place in Samoa or places and activities that are important to them. This exploratory study worked with eight children aged 5–12 years growing up in an urban village in Samoa drawing on ‘Talanoa’ as research methodology and method by employing photo-elicitation. The study provides a first snapshot of Samoan children’s sense of place growing up in an urban village. Keywords: children, Pacific Islands, sense of place, young people Introduction Children’s voices in the Pacific Region are only a whisper. Experiences of childhood from their own perspective are poorly understood, espe- cially their sense of place or places and activi- ties that are important to them (Freeman et al., 2015). While seeing children as social actors in their own right has in the Western context led to children’s more active involvement in research projects and shifted and complicated how participation is framed (Skelton, 2007; Powell et al., 2012; Horgan et al., 2017), Pacific children’s voices and their conceptualisation or understanding of childhood remain widely under-represented. Culturally they are seen as ‘becoming adults’ and not expected to speak up. Children embody traditional expectations of obedience and respect for the elderly (Faleolo, 2003). However, as we know from the western research context, it is important to place chil- dren as competent, knowledgeable ‘beings in the here and now’ rather than as uninformed and ‘becoming-adults’ (James et al., 1998; Christensen, 2000; Holloway and Valentine, 2000) to gain insights into their lived experi- ences and their current life world. Therefore, this study set out to gain a first understanding of Samoan children’s sense of place and their attachment to their urban village as well as their experiential village landscapes by drawing on the Pasifika research method of ‘talanoa’. This method embodies the meaning of oral commu- nication which we fused with a child-centred focus inspired by Faleolo’s (2003: 9) ‘talanoa Ile I’a’ approach of ‘talking to the fish’. Fish in his study represent the perspectives of young peo- ple, which expands the three traditional Samoan ways of looking at issues, by incorpo- rating a so far neglected perspective, the chil- dren and young people or the school of fish in his terminology. The three traditional ways are • ‘O le faautaga I tumutumu o mauga’ (the perspective of the person at the top of the mountain looking at a school of fish) • ‘O le faautaga I tumutumu o la’au’ (the per- spective of the person at the top of a tree looking at a school of fish) • ‘Ma le faautaga o le pii ama’ (the perspec- tive of the person in the canoe who is close to the school of fish) Traditionally, the school of fish has been looked at from near and afar revealing different perspec- tives, issues and with different oversight, but the point of view from the school of fish has hardly been considered. By focusing on the children of one urban village, we aim to start revealing the Asia Pacific Viewpoint 2020 ISSN 1360-7456 © 2020 Victoria University of Wellington and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd doi:10.1111/apv.12263