Pacific Islander

1. A native or inhabitant of any of the Polynesian, Micronesian, or Melanesian islands of Oceania.
2. A person of Polynesian, Micronesian, or Melanesian descent. See Usage Note at Asian.

The populations of the Pacific are few in number, and yet they are dispersed over an area covering almost a quarter of the surface of the earth. The cultures of the Pacific divide into three distinct groups. The Polynesians, including the Hawaiians, Samoans, Tongans, Maori, and Tahitians, make up the best known and largest populations in the Pacific. The other two groups are the peoples of Micronesia (little islands) and Melanesia (dark skins).

The locations of the three cultural groups are geographically distinct. With the exception of the residents of the State of Hawaii, Micronesians are in the north, Melanesians are in the south, and Polynesians are in the middle. Studies of the cultures of Micronesia and Melanesia have filled books. However, information on the public health of these peoples is much less common.

As with many indigenous cultures around the world, the concept of the human organism in these cultures is holistic—the person is seen as the amalgam of body, mind, and spirit. As such, traditional systems of healing tended to follow this concept. When the Spanish explorers of the early sixteenth century arrived in these islands, they found that spiritualists, masseuses, herbalists, and vaporists provided the basis of the healing systems.

However, the details of the nature of the health systems of both Micronesia and Melanesia have remained locked in the colonial systems of power that have dominated the region for the past four hundred years. For many of these populations, the pathway of the Spanish, followed by the Germans and then the Japanese, yielded to the Americans, Australians, French, and English after World War II. The systems of care clearly reflect this history, and the problems associated with these care systems continue to plague these young nations struggling for independence and sustainable economies.

The Area, the People, and Their Health

The populations of the Pacific nations, Hawaii and Papua New Guinea included, represent a small fraction of the world's people. In the area known as Micronesia, the largest centers of population are Guam (154,623), Kiribati (91,985), the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (71,912), and the Federated States of Micronesia (133,134). Somewhat smaller are the Republic of the Marshall Islands (68,126), the Republic of Palau (18,766), and Nauru (11,845). Melanesia has somewhat larger nations, including Papua New Guinea (4,926,984), Fiji (832,494), the Solomon Islands (466,194), New Caledonia (201,816), and Vanuatu (189,618).

In general, within the region, birth and death data are somewhat unreliable. However, from the data available, the population is growing more rapidly than most other places in the world. From the high of the Republic of Marshall Islands (RMI)

Table 1

total fertility rate (TFR) of 6.6 children per woman to the low of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands' (CNMI), rate of 1.7 children per woman, the consistency of the growth of the region is clear. Most areas have a TFR above 3.2. The infant mortality rate (IMR) also has wild variation across the region, with Vanuatu at 62.5 and the CNMI at 5.8 deaths per 1,000 live births (see Table 1).

For the most part, the economies of this region are dependent on fishing, external government grants-in-aid, and a small tourism industry. Exceptions to this occur in Guam, which has a strong U.S. military presence, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, which has a number of off-shore textile manufacturers.

The region faces an almost impossible task as it attempts to deal with the major infectious diseases of cholera, dengue, and tuberculosis at the same time that it faces an ever-increasing burden from chronic diseases, particularly diabetes and various cancers. The systems of care in place are ill-equipped to manage either of these disease patterns. As new diseases emerge in the area, including HIV/AIDS (human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency disease) in Papau New Guinea and crystal methamphetamine addiction in the Mariana Islands, the systems of care have neither the skilled providers nor the facilities and materials needed to cope with these problems.

The Public Health Systems

Throughout the colonial eras of the Spanish, the Germans, and the Japanese, the systems of public health in both Micronesia and the Melanesia were designed to assure a healthy workforce. Early records describe the "primitive" ways in which the people practiced even the most basic hygiene with water supplies contaminated by feces from animals as well as humans. Minimal available food made malnutrition a given among the population, and traditional healers practicing their trade as bone setters, herbalists, masseuses, and spiritualists, as in most indigenous populations. The establishment of the early German trading posts meant the need for local labor capable of loading and unloading ships. Thus, plantation-type medical care was made available, often from ship doctors and others with minimal training. With the movement of the Japanese into the area following World War I, the colonization of the region became more ordered, with settlers coming from Japan and local people receiving some basic education to improve the productivity of the copra (a coconut by-product) and other crops. The Japanese had physicians in all colonial outposts to address the immediate needs of the workers. Water and sewerage systems were established in the larger villages, and, in general, the public health of the population, while not excellent, was at least able to reduce the death rates from the many diseases brought to the islands over the preceding thirty years.

With World War II and the military mobilization of the Japanese colonists, the plantations became less important and the need to maintain a viable workforce was reduced. The public health system remained, as did the dispensaries and hospitals; however, as the war in the Pacific expanded, the infrastructure was destroyed.

At the end of World War II, there was no health or public health system throughout the Japanese-occupied areas. The American, Australian, and New Zealand troops dispatched to secure the various outposts brought their own medicines and providers with them and, as part of their efforts to win over the people, provided medicines and care to those in need. In the U.S. Pacific, an assessment of the needs of the islanders in their protection (by international mandate) was made by the USS Whidbey in the early 1950s. The findings were shocking, in that the people suffered from many diseases that were thought to no longer be a problem to the world. Recommendations to the U.S. government at the end of the military era established the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (TTPI), with headquarters in Saipan and responsibility for all aspects of life in the "American Pacific" which, with the exception of Kiribati and Nauru, encompassed all of Micronesia.

Farther south, the abundance of the U.S. treasury was not available. The Australian and New Zealand governments assisted the Melanesians (including the people from Kiribati and Nauru) in their sphere of influence and brought public health and medical care to the southern Pacific, with the exception of New Caledonia, which remained a protectorate of France.

The modern public health and medical care systems of these two distinct regions of the Pacific have their basis in the postwar era. In the north, the U.S. government, through the TTPI, established a system of hospitals as the central points of care in all of the ten jurisdictions for which the TTPI had responsibility. In 1985 (1999 for Palau) the three areas now known as the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau established a formal relationship with the U.S. government known as the Compact of Free Association. Under that compact the newly

Table 2

created nations were to be systematically transformed from dependencies to independent nations over a fifteen-year period. The responsibility for health services transferred to the island governments, and with it the determination of health priorities and expenditures. The period since 1985 has been spent revitalizing the public health and general health care systems. Newly trained indigenous health providers have staffed the health departments of these three nations, and reorganization of the strategies for health has come through much consultation with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). These systems are attempting to establish primary health care centers throughout each nation, with the intent to reduce the dependence on expensive hospital-based care. However, budgets are small, needs are great, and the systems are weak.

In the southern Pacific, the transition from the post-war military care system to one operated by the national governments accompanied the independence of the various nations. The systems of care that the national governments inherited were already targeted on primary health care, and they already had a considerable investment in the use of dispensaries as a major source of care. However, the budgets have been very small in these nations as well, and the retention of trained local practitioners has been a major problem. Facilities have been built through bilateral arrangements sponsored by several foreign governments, and the basic public health infrastructure has begun to take shape through various ADB loans and other arrangements. The WHO has been very active in the southern Pacific, as has been the South Pacific Commission (now Secretariat for Pacific Communities) which has been instrumental in developing the health education focus of the region as well as the improvement of health data and general health department capacity.

In a short fifty years, the people of Micronesia and Melanesia re-created their public health systems. The water supplies are nearly all safe and sewerage is mostly disposed of in an appropriate manner. The food supply is inspected and safer, as is the supply of medicines used by the dispensaries and the hospitals. The prevalence of parasitic disease among children is remarkably reduced, as is the number of deaths from malnutrition and other nutritional deficiencies (see Table 2). However, the epidemiological transition is not over for the people of the Pacific. The future is dotted with many diseases of modernization—diabetes, substance abuse, severe mental illness, cancers, heart disease, and environmental diseases. The systems of care are not yet mature, and the need for continued support from major developed nations is obvious to any who have traveled the area.

(SEE ALSO: Acculturation; Cultural Anthropology; Cultural Norms; Ethnicity and Health; Geography of Disease; Indigenous Populations)

Bibliography

Carrier, J. G. (1992). History and Tradition in Melanesian Anthropology. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

CIA Factbook 2000. Available at http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/.

Kiste, R. C., and Marshall, M., eds. (1999). American Anthropology in Micronesia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Oliver, D. I. (1951). The Pacific Islands. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

U.S. Department of the Interior, Office of Insular Affairs (1990). Report on the State of the Islands, 1999. Washington, DC: Author.

World Health Organization, Western Pacific Regional Office (2000). Community Health Profile, 2000. Geneva: Author.

— D. WILLIAM WOOD

Pacific Islanders do not form one distinctive ethnic group, but come from across Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia. Pacific Islanders come from the islands of Hawaii, the U.S. insular territories of American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands, as well as the Freely Associated States of Micronesia and the tiny nations of the Marshall Islands and Palau. Other places of origin outside of U.S. affiliation include Fiji, Tahiti, the Solomon Islands, and Tonga.

In the 2000 census, 874,000 people, or 0.3 percent of the U.S. population, identified themselves as Pacific Islanders, either exclusively or in combination with other groups. Of this total, native Hawaiians, Samoans, and Guamanians-Chamorros accounted for 74 percent of the respondents. The majority of Pacific Islanders were born in Hawaii. Honolulu, New York, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Phoenix were the largest population centers, with groups of Pacific Islanders also found in Utah, Texas, and Washington.

Pacific Islanders had the highest proportion of people reporting more than one race. Ethnic identification may be situational; for example, a person might be a Samoan living in Hawaii, but may also have Tongan, Maori, and European ancestors, and yet ultimately be identified as Hawaiian when on the mainland. In this sense, Pacific Islander is an inclusive designation, and mixed ancestry is as definitive as pure ancestry. The Pacific Islander has a larger household than average, which often includes extended family members. Language and culture, closely linked to family and tradition, are the keystones to retaining Pacific Islander identity when living in the United States.

Migration of Pacific Islanders has occurred in response to shrinking economic opportunities in their homelands or to the changing status of the island nations and their relationship to the United States. Although only 16 percent of those who identify themselves as Pacific Islanders were actually born on the islands, they continue to maintain close economic and political ties to their homeland communities.

The first of the islands to come under U.S. authority was American Samoa, in 1872. It remained under the authority of the U.S. Navy until 1951, when it was transferred into the administration of the U.S. Department of the Interior. After World War II (1939–1945) the United Nations granted the United States trusteeships of the small island nations of Micronesia, known as the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. These trusteeships began to be dissolved in the 1970s, a process that was concluded in 1994. The fluidity of the compacts with the United States allowed large numbers of Pacific Islanders to migrate to Guam and Hawaii, where they had a significant impact on the local economies.

Hawaii was annexed in 1898 and became a state in 1959. In the 1990s a movement for Hawaiian sovereignty grew, which had popular support among native Hawaiians, but has not succeeded in legal challenges to the status of the islands. The sovereignty movement brought to attention the means by which Hawaii had been acquired, and in 1993, President William Jefferson Clinton signed a congressional resolution apologizing for the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii one hundred years earlier. Similar movements have appeared in Guam, but remain outside the mainstream.

Bibliography

Spickhard Paul R., and Rowena Fong. "Pacific Islander Americans and Multiethnicity: A Vision of America's Future?" Social Forces 73 (1995): 1365–1383.

Statistics Site. Office of Insular Affairs. Home page at http://www.pacificweb.org/.

White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Home page at http://www.aapi.gov/.

This article is about the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Islands. For other indigenous peoples, see Indigenous peoples (disambiguation).

For the rugby union team, see Pacific Islander (disambiguation).

Pacific Islander (or Pacific Person, pl: Pacific People, also called Oceanic[s]), is a geographic term to describe the Austronesian , and Australiod inhabitants of any of the three major sub-regions of Oceania: Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia.^[1][2] According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, these three regions, together with their islands consist of:

Polynesia: The islands scattered across a triangle covering the east-central region of the Pacific Ocean. The triangle is bounded by the Hawaiian islands in the north, New Zealand in the west, and Easter Island in the east. The rest of Polynesia comprises Samoan islands (American Samoa and Samoa), the Cook Islands, French Polynesia (Tahiti and The Society Islands, Marquesas Islands, Austral Islands, and the Tuamotu Archipelago), Niue Island, Tokelau and Tuvalu, Tonga, Wallis and Futuna, and Pitcairn Island.

Melanesia: The island of New Guinea, the Bismarck and Louisiade archipelagos, the Admiralty Islands, and Bougainville Island (which make up the independent state of Papua New Guinea), the Solomon Islands, the Santa Cruz Islands (part of the Solomon Islands),New Caledonia and Loyalty Islands, Vanuatu (formerly New Hebrides), Fiji, Norfolk Island, and various smaller islands.

Micronesia: The islands of Kiribati, Guam, Nauru, the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Palau, and the Federated States of Micronesia (Yap, Chuuk, Pohnpei, and Kosrae, all in the Caroline Islands).

Contents 1 Usage of term in Australia, New Zealand and United States 2 Excluded 3 List of Pacific peoples 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

Usage of term in Australia, New Zealand and United States

Pacific Islander
American

ancestries

Melanesian

Polynesian

Micronesian

Fijian

Samoan

Hawaiian

Polynesian

Chamorro

In Australia the term South Sea Islander was used in the past to describe Australian descendants of people from the more than 80 islands in the Western Pacific.^[3] In 1901 legislation was enacted to restrict entry of Pacific Islanders to Australia and to facilitate their deportation: Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901. In the legislation Pacific Islanders were defined as:

“Pacific Island Labourer” includes all natives not of European extraction of any island except the islands of New Zealand situated in the Pacific Ocean beyond the Commonwealth [of Australia] as constituted at the commencement of this Act.^[4]

In 2008 a newly announced Pacific Islander guestworker scheme provides visas for workers from Kiribati, Tonga, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea to work in Australia.^[5] The pilot scheme includes one country each from Melanesia (Vanuatu), Polynesia (Tonga) and Micronesia (Kiribati): countries which already send workers to New Zealand under its seasonal labour scheme. Australia’s pilot scheme also includes Papua New Guinea.^[6][7]

Local usage in New Zealand uses the term to distinguish those who have emigrated from one of these areas in modern times from the indigenous New Zealand Māori (who are also Polynesian but arrived in New Zealand many centuries earlier), and from other ethnic groups. A stated reason for making the ethnic distinction is that the Pacific peoples suffer from socio-economic disadvantages as a group and benefit from culturally targeted social and health assistance.

In the United States, the geographic location of "Pacific Islander" is the same, but is generally understood as a reference to indigenous natives of Hawaii. Pacific Islanders are defined as a native or inhabitant of any of the Polynesian, Micronesian, or Melanesian islands of Oceania. Some examples of the ethnic groups that would be considered Pacific Islanders are the indigenous peoples of Hawaii, the Marianas, Samoans, Guamanian, Chamoru,Tahitians, Mariana Islander, and Chuukese.^[8][9]

Excluded

Inhabitants of the following islands and regions are not considered to be Pacific Islanders: Russia's Kuril Islands, Alaska's Aleutian Islands, Taiwan, Japan, Philippines, Indonesia, as they are not located within the three regions of Oceania (Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia).^[10][11]

List of Pacific peoples

This section requires expansion.

• Austronesian-speaking peoples
  • Polynesians
    • Hawaiians
    • Maoris
    • Niueans
    • Samoans
    • Tongans
    • Tuvaluans
    • Uveans
    • Futunans
    • Tahitians
    • Tuamotuans
    • Tubuai
      • Rapans
    • Marquesans
    • Chamorros
    • Carolinians
    • Gambier Islanders
    • Cook Islanders
      • Rarotongans
    • Rapanui

• • Melanesians
    • Ni-Vanuatu
    • Fijians
  • Micronesians
• Papuans

See also

• indigenous peoples of Oceania
• Indigenous Australians
• Australian Aborigines
• Tasmanian Aborigines
• Blackbirding - the recruitment of people through trickery and kidnappings to work on plantations, particularly the sugar cane plantations of Queensland (Australia) and Fiji

References

1. ^ Pacific islander on Encarta.
2. ^ Pacific islander on Dictionary.com.
3. ^ "South Sea Islander Project". ABC Radio Regional Production Fund. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 2004. http://www.abc.net.au/radio/rpf/stories/s1314059.htm. Retrieved 2008-08-27. "Recognition for Australian South Sea Islanders (ASSI) has been a long time coming - it was not until 1994 that the Federal Government recognized them as a distinct ethnic group with their own history and culture and not until September 2000 that the Queensland government made a formal statement of recognition." 
4. ^ "Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901 (Cth)" (PDF). Documenting a Democracy. National Archives of Australia. 1901. http://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/resources/transcripts/cth4i_doc_1901.pdf. Retrieved 2008-08-27. 
5. ^ "Pacific guestworker scheme to start this year". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 2008-08-17. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/08/17/2337828.htm. 
6. ^ The Hon Duncan Kerr SC MP; Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs (2008-08-20). "Seasonal Worker Pilot Scheme is more proof of Australia's new Pacific focus". Press release. http://www.foreignminister.gov.au/parlsec/releases/2008/dk007.html. 
7. ^ Note that Australian classification standards code Pacific Islander, Oceanian, South Sea islander and Australasian all with code 1000 - ie identically. This coding can be broken down into the finer classification of 1100 Australian Peoples ; 1200 New Zealand Peoples ; 1300 Melanesian and Papuan ; 1400 Micronesian ; 1500 Polynesian. Note that there is no specific coding therefor for "Pacific islander". See: "Australian Standard Classification of Cultural and Ethnic Groups (ASCCEG) - 2nd edition" (pdf - 136 pages). Australian Bureau of Statistics. 2005-07-07. http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/00A57A2C8FE19CACCA2570360074713B/$File/12490_2005.pdf. Retrieved 2008-08-27. 
8. ^ 1990 Census of Population and Housing Public Use Microdata Sample
9. ^ "Census 1990: Ancestry Codes". University of Michigan. August 27, 2007. http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/cicdoc/cen90app/ancestry.htm. 
10. ^ "Pacific islander". Encarta. http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/dictionary/DictionaryResults.aspx?search=pacific%20islander. Retrieved 2008-09-12. 
11. ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=uwi-rv3VV6cC&pg=PA227&lpg=PA227&dq=Austronesian+dominant+ethnic+group&source=bl&ots=AFJZZXSxR1&sig=mYRznuyA9dxMLW6DKb0bWvTJ3QI&hl=en&ei=u9kHSvCRCaCCtgORjqXwAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6#PPA199,M1

External links

• Asian Pacific Americans in the U.S. Army

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