Samoan life is organised by fa'a Samoa, the Samoan way, and its institutions are the aiga, the extended family, and the matai, the titled head who holds a name belonging to that family and represents it in the village council. Titles are conferred rather than inherited automatically, and they carry authority over land, over the distribution of goods and over conduct. Bradd Shore's ethnography describes a social order in which a person acts as the occupant of a position rather than as a private individual, and in which the resolution of a serious offence is a matter for the councils rather than for the parties.
The formal apology, ifoga, is the clearest expression of that. The offender's family goes to the offended family and sits covered outside the house until they are received, and the wrong is settled between the groups rather than between the persons.
Samoan religion before Christianity recognised Tagaloa as a creator working from a height, alongside aitu, spirits attached to families and to places, and restrictions regulating what could be done and by whom. Much of this material was recorded after conversion and by missionaries, so the atlas is cautious about its outlines, and notes that the aitu have not disappeared from Samoan conversation even where the theology has changed.