Oceania

Abstract

Spanning nearly a third of the earth's surface, the Pacific Ocean is larger than all the earth's land surfaces combined. This vast ocean contains more than ten thousand islands from microscopic coral islets to the vast and mountainous islands of New Guinea and New Zealand. The overwhelming geographic dispersion of these islands is only exceeded by the richness of cultural, political, and economic diversity represented within each island country cluster. This vast area can be divided geographically into the North Pacific Ocean Islands, the Pacific Ocean Islands, and the South Pacific Ocean Islands (Scarr, 1990). However, for research purposes, more common elements of analysis can be distinguished by dividing this vast region into the three major ethnic groupings of Micronesian, Polynesian, and Melanesian (see figure 1, Oliver, 1989). The largest of the three areas in terms of ocean territory constitutes the Polynesian islands (from the Greek, many islands). Despite the great distances between them, they share similar physical features, religious concepts and practices, kinship unit structure, and closely interrelated languages. Polynesia includes the countries and territories of American Samoa, the Cook Islands, French Polynesia, Easter Island, Tonga, Tuvalu, Tokelau, Niue, and Western Samoa. The Polynesian population today is estimated to be 600,000 (Naidu and Hau'ofa, 1993). Micronesia (from the Greek, small islands) is a vast region that includes thousands of tropical islands scattered between Hawaii and