Let's all say it again. Communities don't have rights. Cultures don't have rights. Ethnicities don't have rights. Nations don't have rights. Governments don't have rights. Corporations don't have rights. These are mindless aggregates, many of them totally artificial, and none of them possessing the dignity of a human being.

Only real, sentient, individual beings deserve to be treated with dignity. Only these can have rights in anything but a very formal, narrow, legalistic sense. Their real rights always trump the artificial "rights" of aggregates.

There is no dilemma here. The liberty of individuals in Samoa, or anywhere else, is infinitely more important than anybody's desire to preserve a culture. That includes not only the liberty of mind and its offspring, the freedom of speech, but frankly the liberty to masturbate to pornography just because it feels good.

If somebody doesn't like that, then, yeah, screw them. In the unlikely event that it destroys a culture, then so much worse for that culture.

Samoan culture is centred around the traditional family unit, each headed by a Matai or Chief. Attendance at Christian church services is high.

Samoan culture is thousands of years old, yet they attend christian churches. Obviously their culture changed after they made contact with outsiders who were christians (probably missionaries).

Culture isn't static. It changes over time. There's no doubt that having access to the Internet will change their culture, but I doubt it will be as big a change as the introduction of christianity.

If you look at their reasons for wanting internet access, you'll see that it could help strengthen their culture. Right now they're a small, relatively poor island, cut off from the outside world. They want Internet access to be able to talk to relatives in New Zealand (strengthening the family bond, and preserving their culture) and to be able to sell handicrafts more easily (spreading their culture farther).

The choice is really between keeping their existing culture "pure" and unchanging, and slowly fading into obscurity; or embracing new things like the Internet, and accepting that their culture might change again.

Samoan culture is thousands of years old, yet they attend christian churches. Obviously their culture changed after they made contact with outsiders who were christians (probably missionaries).

Ah missionaries. I have always preferred the term cultural genocidists. I find it much more descriptive of their function and goal.