NBC News / Getty Images
Sept. 1, 2022, 3:07 AM +07
National Football League linebacker Manti Te’o says he’s moved past it all — almost. And it’s thanks, in part, to what he describes as embracing the “aloha spirit.”
Te’o, the victim of a major 2013 catfishing scandal that’s now the subject of the recent Netflix documentary, “Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist,” has been reflecting on how his Polynesian identity factored into the incident and backlash, as well as how his culture played a role in his subsequent healing,
“One thing that really separates us, from what I’ve known since I was little, is that we’re very, very loving. We’re very, very inclusive,” Te’o said. “That’s Polynesian culture at its purest in my opinion.”
Te’o rose to national fame nearly a decade ago after he had led the University of Notre Dame football team to an undefeated 2012 season amid the deaths of his grandmother and his then-girlfriend, the fictional Lennay Kekua. But early the following year, public opinion turned on Te’o after it was discovered that Kekua, whom he had never met in person, had been made up by Naya Tuiasosopo, who had used photos of another woman to pose as Kekua, a practice known as “catfishing.”
Te’o told NBC Asian America that as a football player who grew up in a tight-knit Pacific Islander community in Hawaii, it was Kekua’s shared Polynesian identity that was an undeniable factor in drawing him in.
“Everybody doesn’t want to be alone,” he said of finding a common culture with the person he thought to be Kekua. “Everybody wants to have somebody that can go with them through whatever experience they’re going through.”
With interviews from both Te’o and Tuiasosopo, in addition to friends and family members, the two-part documentary revisits the events. From Te’o’s rise as a Heisman trophy contender, who refused to miss games despite the sense of loss he said he felt, to the persona that Tuiasosopo, who has since come out as transgender, had manufactured while struggling with her own gender and sexual orientation, as well as the barrage of shifting media coverage, the episodes give new context to the wildly misunderstood incident.
While Te’o’s race and culture were not explicitly examined in the documentary, his Polynesian heritage and community are an inextricable part of both his story and who he is, he said. The linebacker, who most recently played for the Chicago Bears in 2021 and is currently a free agent, said that growing up, his Polynesian culture “was everything for me.” Not only was his culture infused across family and sports, his hometown of Laie, Hawaii, itself was also home to a close Pacific Islander community that made up almost 30% of the population. So when Te’o moved to South Bend, Indiana, for college, he said he experienced a major “culture shock.”
“The thing about Hawaii is it’s not like you could just drive and go into another state,” he said. “You’re in the middle of the Pacific. … when you leave Hawaii, everything is new, everything is just uncharted territory.”
He said he felt a sort of unspoken connection with the fictional Kekua, who purported to attend Stanford University and whose Samoan background meant they had the same “pillars of culture.” There was just an understanding between them, Te’o said.
“If I see somebody who I look like, who was supposedly raised the same way as me, there’s a lot of things that you don’t have to talk about. You just skip it over,” he said. “Like hey, I’m Polynesian. You’re Polynesian, you may not have been raised exactly like me, but we all understand in Polynesian culture … There are these beliefs and lessons that are taught to every kid.”
Though Te’o branched out and made friends across cultures, he said that being able to connect with someone of the same heritage gave him a sense of comfort and allowed him to have the “courage” to expand his social circles.
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