Polynesian Polynesian Are kanaka maoli indigenous to Hawai'i? Would the status of being ...
...and even the Americas had indigenous peoples living in those places for many thousands of years before anyone ventured into any of the Polynesian islands. ...

Indigenous Intellectual Property Rights -- The General Theory, and ...
...a matter of enforcing informal indigenous copyright over ... a canoe made of modern materials be called "Polynesian"? And how can modern people "remember" ancient ...

Google Directory - Society > Ethnicity > Indigenous People > ...
...www.aloha.net/~vaka/ Site about the revival of ancient Polynesian canoe-voyaging traditions, amongst the people of Taumako Island - part of Solomon Islands. ...

The World Wide Web Virtual Library: Indigenous Studies CWIS George ...
Library Documentation Archives Americas Center for World Indigenous Studies; ... Polynesian Voyaging Society. ... Vaturanga Home Page - Vaturanga People/Solomon Islands. ...

FWDP -- Oceania Documents
Documentation Project Documents From Melanesia, Polynesia and the ... rights of the West Papuan People to the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations, 1985. ...

Human Migratory Patterns
...similarities between languages spoken by indigenous inhabitants of ... plenty of mixing with people in New ... low genetic variation in ancestral Polynesian populations ...

Indigenous People Issues
...supporting mission work, particularly mission work done by indigenous people, but that ... 2). He claims that the Polynesian people were descended from Israel (pg. ...

guam indigenous people pacific ethnic studies
...at ancient times and ancient people. "The ancient Chamorros, the earliest known inhabitants of the Mariana Islands, were of Mayo-Polynesian descent originating ...

indigenous hawaii pacific island studies
...the Hawaiian language but other indigenous languages too ... __ While not exactly about 'people,' the material ... an important step in understanding Polynesian culture ...

Polynesian - encyclopedia article about Polynesian. Free access ...
...are spoken by the Polynesian indigenous people Indigenous peoples are: Peoples living in an area prior to colonization by a state; ...

Maori people - encyclopedia article about Maori people. Free ...
...such as Hawaiian Hawaiian is the ancestral language of the indigenous people of the Hawaiian Islands, the Hawaiians, a Polynesian people. ...

Information on Native Americans: American Indian FAQ for Kids
...(The word "Eskimo" is considered rude by many Inuit.) The Hawaiians are Polynesian people who are considered indigenous Americans for political reasons (the ...

World Cultures
Indigenous Peoples of Taiwan. Malayo-Polynesian. Indigenous Peoples of China. (50+ Indigenous Groups 67 million people 7% of population) Vighurs Tadjik Wieger. ...

Indigenous Peoples of Taiwan
...who are indigenous tribal peoples. Distinguished from the majority Han Taiwanese, indigenous tribal groups are part of the so-called Malayo-Polynesians. ...

The Task:
Indigenous People: http://www.ucalgary.ca/HIST/tutor/eurvoya/communicate.html. ... Migrations of Polynesian people. http://www.athenapub.com/nworld/taino1.htm. ...

Polynesian culture -- Encyclopædia Britannica
...the beliefs and practices of the indigenous peoples of those Pacific Islands grouped as Polynesia. They include the island groups ...

Music of Indigenous People
MUSIC OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES. ... The great Maori opera singer does the traditional songs of her people. ... Weavers of Song: Polynesian Music and Dance Mervyn McLean. ...

Yak's Corner -- Planet Yak
Meet the Tongans The Tongans are Polynesians, one of the many groups of indigenous, or native, people of the South Pacific islands. ...

Indigenous Peoples and Conservation
II� conference in Honolulu, began with a traditional Polynesian presentation of ... been nurtured and preserved through the years solely by indigenous people. ...

INCULTURATION
...are seeking recognition of themselves as a people, the indigenous people of this ... of years into the beginnings of the movement of the Polynesian people into the ...

Kaanapali Beach
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Notes on Oceania
...cultures are related to the Polynesian cultures as they ... back to Asia through the Lapita people in the ... The indigenous populations believed in several spirits of ...

The Languages of Oceania
...the traditional knowledge that define people by telling ... Retaining the traditional indigenous languages is an important ... Polynesian is a small subgroup of the ...

Whole Earth: Island Sovereignty - Pacific Islands - Brief Article
...a common voice of the Pacific's indigenous communities ... preserve `the land, sea and people of Hawai ... Hawaiian elder Leialoha Perkins, the Polynesian voyaging canoe ...

NDT -- Stewart et al. 19 (3): 678
Pacific Island people, who for the most part also are Polynesian, have settled there in large numbers only since the 1950s. Like Indigenous Australians, both ...

Fruits & vegetables of Tahiti by The Tahiti Traveler
It quickly developed to the detriment of the indigenous vegetation. However -as Polynesian people have understood it- this plant has both many medicinal ...

UH Press Journals: The Contemporary Pacific, vol. 11, no. 1 (1999)
...most American Samoans practice the indigenous kinship-based ... of land tenure in other Polynesian countries are ... successful in supporting the needs of its people. ...

Religious Beliefs and Cosmology of the Filipinos, Indigenous ...
...those found among other Malayo-Polynesian peoples, were highly ... as Memintaran he inspires the people to right ... brief sketch of some indigenous Filipino religious ...

eTaiwanNews.com/Austronesian Cultural Festival kicks off in ...
Taiwan's indigenous people as a whole are believed to belong to the Austronesian ... Australia, New Zealand and most of the Melanesian and Polynesian islands. ...

eTaiwanNews.com/Pingpu ethnic groups summit scheduled to be held ...
Taiwan's indigenous people could either have originally come from the ... New Zealand, believes that the Maori people and other Polynesian peoples of the ...

NATIVE-L (November 1995): Mururoa - Nuclear Colony
Hawaii, New Zealand (where the indigenous are called ... the polynesian peoples build excellent boats and where called ... about 40 meters and 200 people could travel ...

NativeWeb Resources: Aboriginal & Indigenous Nations
...formed to provide support to the Polynesian Gay, Lesbian ... forum for occupied nations, indigenous peoples, minorities, and ... The Metis are a proud people of mixed ...

Active New Zealand - All about New Zealand. Adventure Tours ...
Indigenous Culture The Maori people are the indigenous people of Aotearoa (New ... Maori Protocol Being a tribal Polynesian people, Maori have a unique protocol. ...

Startsiden ABC
Northern Territory Library - AIR (Australian Indigenous Resources). NUNAVUT. Osage Research. ... Polynesian Cultural Center. Potawatomi Web - Nishnabek The People. ...

Catalyst - Maori Origins
...are the indigenous people of Taiwan, and it turned out they had exactly the same alcohol gene profile as the Maori. It looked like the Polynesian homeland was ...

Peter Wood on Maori & LEGO on National Review Online
...into a propaganda victory for the "rights of indigenous peoples." The Danish ... the numerous positive associations the West has with aboriginal Polynesian cultures ...

ScienceDaily -- Browse Topics: Society/Ethnicity/Indigenous_People ...
6. Books : Tikopia Songs : Poetic and Musical Art of a Polynesian People of the Solomon Islands (Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture). ...

Map Zones : Fiji Map
...the indigenous Fijian people are usually ... intermarriage between Fijians from the Lau Islands of eastern Fiji and the neighbouring Polynesian islands of ...

Mana Pasifika
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How and Why?
For Van Tilburg, the Polynesian canoe is a metaphor in her theories of how the ... of Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, the name given by the indigenous people to their ...

PNG country information
People Nearly 5.3 million people inhabit Papua ... while more than 700 indigenous languages are ... Melanesian, Papuan, Negrito, Micronesian, and Polynesian peoples. ...

CNN.com - Maori challenge Lego over use of culture - June 1, 2001
...the cultural heritage of Polynesian people and would ... decorating themselves with Polynesian-style tattoos. ... and cultural property rights of indigenous peoples. ...

Maori Culture
MAORI CULTURE The Maori are the indigenous people of New Zealand, and have a rich and varied ... Being a tribal Polynesian people, MÄ?ori have a unique protocol. ...

New Zealand Archaeology
Zealand “The uses and abuses of archaeology for indigenous populations� contact ... Its purpose is debated but it shows Polynesian people engaged in monumental ...

POV - Georgie Girl . Resources . New Zealand | PBS
New Zealand Aotearoa's ("land of the long white cloud") indigenous Polynesian people, or its tangata whenua (people of the land), were the first occupants of ...

GM Resource & Referral Directory
People indigenous to Oceania and the South Pacific are either Melanesians (Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea) or Polynesians (Samoa, Tonga ...

Polynesian culture refers to the aboriginal culture of the Polynesian-speaking peoples of Polynesia and the Polynesian outliers. Chronologically, the development of Polynesian culture can be divided into four different historical eras: Exploration and settlement (c.1800 B.C. to 700 A.D.)

Archaeological and linguistic evidence suggests that the first Polynesians entered the Tongan islands sometime around 1800 B.C., bringing with them the Lapita culture which originated in the Santa Cruz Islands.

The early Polynesians were skillful navigators, capable, by careful observations of cloud reflections and bird flight patterns, to determine the existence and location of islands. Archaeological evidence indicates that by about 700 A.D., every inhabitable island in the vast triangle of Polynesia had been colonized. By comparison, Viking navigators first settled Iceland around 175 years later.

The discovery of new islands and island groups was by means of entire small villages of people setting sail on great Polynesian catamarans.

Pre-European growth: (c. 700 to 1595)

While the early Polynesians were skilled navigators, most evidence indicates that their primary exploratory motivation was to ease the demands of burgeoning populations. Polynesian mythology does not speak of explorers bent on conquest of new territories, but rather of heroic discoverers of new lands for the benefit of those who voyaged with them.

While further influxes of immigrants from other Polynesian islands sometimes augmented the growth and development of the local population, for the most part, each island or island group's culture developed in isolation. There was no widespread inter-island group communication, nor is there much indication during this period of any interest in such communications, at least not for economic reasons. This fact makes all the more astounding the limited linguistic entropy of the Polynesian languages.

During the period following complete settlement of Polynesia, each local population developed politically in diverse ways, from fully-developed kingdoms in some islands and island groups, to constantly-warring tribes or extended family groups between various sections of islands, or in some cases, even within the same valleys on various islands.

While it is likely that population pressures caused tensions between various groups, the primary force that seems to have driven unity or division among tribes and family groups is geophysical: on low islands, where communications are essentially unimpeded, there does not appear to have developed any widely-observable incidence of conflict. At the same time, there were often warring groups inhabiting such low islands, even those on various islands in the same atoll. Meanwhile, on most high islands, there were, historically, warring groups inhabiting various districts, usually delimited primarily by mountain ridges, with carefully drawn lowland boundaries. Early on, however, many such islands developed a united social and political structure, usually under the leadership of a strong monarch. The most glaring exception to this high-island theme is in the Marquesas Islands, where warring groups continued to massacre members of enemy tribes well into the 19th century. The interesting thing about the Marquesas Islands exception is that, unlike other high-island groups in Polynesia, the Marquesas are not surrounded by fringing coral reefs, and consequently, have no low coastal plains. Every valley in the Marquesas is accessible to other valleys only via boat, or by travelling over steep mountain ridges. Rather than undermining the thesis then, that political unity was a direct outgrowth of geophysical conditions, the example of the Marquesas in fact confirms it.

European discovery and colonization, until World War II (1595 to 1945)

The first Polynesian islands visited by European explorers were the Marquesas Islands, first discovered by Europeans when the Spanish navigator, Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira, found the islands in 1595.

Because of the paucity of mineral or gemological resources, the exploration of Polynesia by European navigators (whose primary interest was economic), was of little more than passing interest. The great navigator Captain James Cook was the first to attempt to explore as much of Polynesia as possible.

Following the initial European contacts with Polynesia, a great number of changes occurred within Polynesian culture, mostly as a result of colonization by European powers, the introduction of a large number of alien diseases to which the Polynesians had no immunity, slaving ventures to supply plantations in South America, and an influx of Christian missionaries, many of whom regarded the Polynesians as descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. In many cases, colonizing powers, usually under pressure from missionary elements, forcibly suppressed native cultural expression, including the use of the native Polynesian languages.

By the early 1900s, all of Polynesia was colonized or occupied to various degrees by Western colonial powers, as follows:

  • Chile
  • France
  • Germany
  • the United Kingdom
  • United States Meanwhile, all of the Polynesian outliers were subsumed into the sometimes-overlapping territorial claims of Japan, the United Kingdom and France.

    During World War II, a number of Polynesian islands played critical roles. The critical attack which brought the United States into the war, was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, in south-central Oahu, Hawaii.

    A number of islands were developed by the Allies as military bases, especially by the American forces, including as far east as Bora Bora.

    Modern times/After World War II (1945 to present)

    Following World War II, political change came more slowly to the islands of Polynesia than to the other parts of overseas colonies of European powers. Although sovereignty was granted by royal proclamation to New Zealand as early as 1907, this did not go into full effect until 1947.

    Following in independence were the nations (and the sovereign powers from which they obtained complete political independence) of: The remaining islands are still under official sovereignty of the following nations: The various outliers lie within the sovereign territory of the nations of Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the French territory of New Caledonia.

    Independence and/or increasing autonomy is not the only influence affecting modern Polynesian society. The primary driving forces are, in fact, the ever-increasing accessibility of the islands to outside influences, through improved air communications as well as through vastly improved telecommunications capabilities. The economic importance of tourism has also had a tremendous impact on the direction of the development of the various island societies. Accessibility of outside sources, as well as the tourism viability of individual islands has played an important role to which the modern culture has adapted itself to accommodating the interests of outsiders, as opposed to the influences of those intent upon promoting the retention of native traditions. Because of this, Polynesia is today an area in varying degrees of extreme cultural flux. Polynesian