Territory of the U.S. consisting of several islands in the Pacific Ocean, the largest of which contains the city with the fun name of Pago Pago, which is its capital.

American Samoa is a territory of the United States, located slightly south of the equator, in the Samoa Island archipelago. Samoa has been part of the United States since 1899, and has been self-governing since 1981. It is separated by a few dozen miles of water from the nation of Samoa, with which it shares a culture and a language. Like the other United States territories, it elects a single non-voting delegate to the United States House of Representatives, but has no senators or electoral votes. Unlike the other territories, residents of American Samoa are not United States Citizens, but are United States Nationals, and I don't know that means.

Samoa is small, in both area and population. Its area, of around 80 square miles, makes it slightly larger than the city of Brooklyn or Washington, DC. Its population, of around 60,000 people, means it is slightly less populous than Bismarck, North Dakota. It is also distant: while it is in Polynesia, and shares a common history and culture with Hawaii, American Samoa is about as close to Hawaii as Hawaii is to the mainland of the United States. It is even further from Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the other two Pacific territories of the United States.

The Samoan people, and the other people of Polynesia, have a millennia-long history of exploration and a rich cultural heritage. American Samoa's present status as a small, distant and peripheral part of the United States shouldn't distract from its unique history and culture.

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