Two Samoan chiefs, a male and a female, will share the only award in the world dedicated to indigenous conservationists.
Chief Fuiono Senio, from the Falealupo village on the island of Savaii, Western Samoa, and chief Va'asilifiti Moelagi Jackson, from the Safua village in Savaii, will receive the Indigenous Conservationist Award by the Seacology Foundation Friday, Oct. 7, at 7 p.m. at the Provo Park Hotel.On Thursday, Oct. 6, the chiefs will present a free lecture about rain forest conservation issues and preservation of indigenous cultures at 3 p.m. in the Maesar Auditorium at Brigham Young University.
Chief Senio's award is for his courageous efforts in saving a 30,000-acre rain forest, thereby creating one of the world's first indigenous controlled reserves.
"Fuiono and the Falealupo villages allowed logging only because they needed funds to build a school. When private donors made other funding possible, Fuiono ran six miles to stand in front of the bulldozers and ordered the logging to stop," said Paul Cox, a BYU rain forest biologist and founder of the Seacology Foundation.
"Even after a hurricane impoverished the village, Fuiono refused any overtures from the loggers," Cox said. "He told them he would rather die than allow the rain forest to be destroyed."
Chief Va'asilifiti Moelagi Jackson will be honored for her efforts in creating the first indigenous conservation organization in the South Pacific, the Fa'asao Savai'i. Through her efforts, more than 50 villages have joined the organization, according to Cox.
"In a very novel approach to conservation," Va'asilifiti required creation of a village rain forest preserve as the admission price from all villages that wished to join. The resultant patchwork of reserves throughout her home island of Savaii proved so frustrating to the loggers that they gave up and left," Cox says.