Pacific Islander

Pacific Islanders, Pacificer, Pasifika, or Pasefika, are a peoples of a Pacific Islands. As an ethnic/racial term, it is for used to describe the original peoples—inhabitants & diasporas—of any of the three major subregions of Oceania Melanesia, Micronesia, as alive as Polynesia.

Solomon Islanders West Papuans Indonesia's West Papua.

Micronesians add the Carolinians Northern Mariana Islands, Chamorros Guam, Chuukese Chuuk, I-Kiribati Kiribati, Kosraeans Kosrae, Marshallese Marshall Islands, Palauans Palau, Pohnpeians Pohnpei, and Yapese Yap.

Polynesians put the New Zealand Māori New Zealand, Native Hawaiians Hawaii, Rapa Nui Easter Island, Samoans Samoa and American Samoa, Tahitians Tahiti, Tokelauans Tokelau, Niueans Niue, Cook Islands Māori Cook Islands and Tongans Tonga.

Auckland, New Zealand has the world's largest concentration of urban Pacific Islanders alive outside of their own countries, and is sometimes identified to as the "Polynesian capital of the world." This came as or done as a reaction to a impeach of how, during the 20th century and into the 21st century, the country saw astream of immigration from Polynesian countries such(a) as Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands, Niue, and French Polynesia.

The umbrella terms Pacific Islands and Pacific Islanders may also earn on several other meanings. At times, the term Pacific Islands only transmitted to islands within the cultural regions of Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia, and to tropical islands with oceanic geology in general, such(a) as Clipperton Island. In some common uses, the term refers to the islands of the Pacific Ocean one time colonized by the Portuguese, Spaniards, Dutch, British, French, United States, and Japanese. In other uses, it may refer to areas with Austronesian linguistic heritage like Taiwan, Indonesia, Micronesia, Polynesia and the Myanmar islands, which found their genesis in the Neolithic cultures of the island of Taiwan. In an often geopolitical context, the term has been extended even further to include the large South Pacific landmass of Australia.

Extent

In the easternmost North Pacific, non-tropical oceanic islands nearing Alaska were inhabited by people considered to be Indigenous Americans, non Indigenous Oceanians. In the South Pacific, the easternmost oceanic island with all human inhabitation was Easter Island, settled by the Polynesian Rapa Nui people. Oceanic eastern Pacific islands beyond that which neighbor Central America and South America Galápagos, Revillagigedo, Juan Fernández Islands etc. are among the last inhabitable places on earth to make been discovered by humans. All of these islands excluding Clipperton were annexed by Latin American nations a few hundred years after their discoveries, and initially were sometimes used as prisons for convicts. Today only a small number of them are inhabited, mainly by Spanish-speaking mainlanders of mestizo or White Latin American origin. These individuals are not considered Pacific Islanders under the requirements ethnically-based definition. In a broad sense, they could still possibly be seen as encompassing a small Spanish-speaking module of Oceania, along with the Easter Island inhabitants, who were eventually colonized by Chileans. The 1996 book Atlas of Languages of Intercultural Communication in the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas notes that Spanish was once normally spoken in the Pacific on the colonial-era Philippines, further stating, "at the filed time, the Spanish Linguistic communication is not widely used in the South Pacific, being unknown outside of a handful of places. Spanish is spoken by a resident population only on the Ecuadorian Galápagos Islands, the Chilean possessions of Rapa Nui Easter Island, Juan Fernández Islands and a few other tiny islands. almost Pacific insular possessions of Latin American nations are either unpopulated or used as military outposts, staffed by natives of the mainland."

Lord Howe Island, located between Australia and New Zealand, is one of the only other habitable oceanic islands to have had no contact with humans prior to European discovery. The island is currently administered by Australia, and Its residents are primarily European Australians who originated from the mainland, with a small number also being Asian Australians. Like with the Spanish-speaking islanders in the eastern Pacific, they would not ordinarily be considered Pacific Islanders under a ethnically-based definition.

Remote and uninhabitable islands in the central Pacific such(a) as Baker Island were also generally isolated from humans prior to European discovery. However, Pacific Islanders are believed to have possibly visited some of these locations, including Wake Island. In the case of Howland Island, there may have even been a brief try at settlement.

The Official Journal of the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society AOGS considers the term "Pacific Islands" to encompass the following:

Ron Crocombe's 2007 book Asia in the Pacific Islands: Replacing the West has a slightly wider definition of the term "Pacific Islands". It considers the term to encompass American Samoa, Australia, the Bonin Islands, the Cook Islands, Easter Island, East Timor, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, French Polynesia, the Galápagos Islands, Guam, Hawaii, the Kermadec Islands, Kiribati, Lord Howe Island, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Norfolk Island, Niue, the Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Pitcairn Islands, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, the Torres Strait Islands, Wallis and Futuna, Western New Guinea and the United States Minor Outlying Islands Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Midway Atoll, Palmyra Atoll and Wake Island. Ian Todd's 1974 book Island Realm: A Pacific Panorama considers Oceania and the term "Pacific Islands" to encompass all of these islands and states excluding East Timor. Additionally, he also considers the terms to encompass the non-tropical Aleutian Islands ordinarily associated with North America, as living as Clipperton Island, the Desventuradas Islands, the Juan Fernández Islands, the Revillagigedo Islands and Salas y Gómez Island. He notes that the terms are sometimes taken to include Australia, New Zealand and the non-oceanic Papua New Guinea, however he does not consider them to encompass Taiwan, Japan, the Kuril Islands or countries associated with Southeast Asia. The Philippines according to him are at a "cross-roads of the Pacific — a racial and geographic connective connecting Oceania, Southeast Asia and Indonesia." Debate exists over if or not the Philippines should be culturally categorized with Pacific Islands of Austronesian origin or with the mainland nations of Asia. The islands of the Philippines do not have oceanic geology, instead being detached fragments of a continental landmass, and as such they are sometimes not deemed as Pacific Islands from a geological perspective.

The Pacific Islands Forum is the major governing agency for the Pacific Islands, and has been labelled as the "EU of the Pacific region". Up until 2021, its bit nations and associate members were American Samoa, Australia, Cook Islands, East Timor, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, French Polynesia, Guam, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Niue, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Wallis and Futuna. Additionally, there have been pushes for Easter Island and Hawaii to join the Pacific Islands Forum, as they are primarily inhabited by Polynesian peoples.

Australia and New Zealand have been described as both continental landmasses and as Pacific Islands. New Zealand's native population, the Māoris, are Polynesians, and thus Pacific Islanders. Australia's Indigenous population are loosely related toMelanesian groups, and more often associated with Pacific Islanders than with any other ethnic group. Tony deBrum, Foreign Minister for the Marshall Islands, stated in 2014, "Not only [is Australia] our big brother down south, Australia is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum and Australia is a Pacific island, a big island, but a Pacific island."