Pacific Islands Languages and Societies Commons^™

From Atoll To Mainland: Aging Micronesians In The Context Of Migration, Juliana Flinn

Pacific Studies

A case study of the atoll of Pollap, part of Chuuk State in the Federated States of Micronesia, analyzes changes in the process of aging over the past forty years, in particular as a result of migration of Micronesians to Guam, Hawai‘i, and the mainland United States. Forty years ago, most elderly aged at home surrounded by family to care for them, valued for their knowledge, advice, and even some productive activities. With migration, however, many elderly now live abroad with grown children. Some migrated as young people, found jobs, acquired good English skills, and have made homes in the …

Chapter 10, Life In Town In Intimacy And Community In A Changing World: Sikaiana Life 1980-1993, William Donner

Sikaiana Ethnography

A description of emigration to towns, mainly Honiara, among the Sikaiana people of the Solomon Islands from 1980 to 1993. The migrants maintained and developed many ways to express their solidarity and community.

A related website can be found here,

Transnational Journeys: Samoan Migration And Remittances Reconsidered, Paul Shankman

Pacific Studies

In her work on Samoan population movement, Sa‘iliemanu Lilomaiava-Doktor criticizes earlier approaches to migration and remittances as “wrongheaded” because they were based on an “economistic” Euro-American model that did not sufficiently include indigenous perspectives. She then offers an approach that focuses on Samoan conceptions of movement, obligation, and connection. This article addresses her critique and examines the role of indigenous concepts in understanding and explaining trends in Samoan migration and remittances over the past several decades. As important as indigenous perspectives are, a number of the trends that Lilomaiava-Doktor derives from her approach are problematic. Furthermore, a review of the …

Living Aloha: Portraits Of Resilience, Renewal, Reclamation, And Resistance, Camilla G. Wengler Vignoe

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

When Native Hawaiians move away from the islands, they risk losing their cultural identity and heritage. This dissertation utilizes a Hawaiian theoretical framework based in Indigenous research practices and uses phenomenology, ethnography, heuristics, and portraiture to tell the stories of leadership, change, and resilience of five Native Hawaiians who as adults, chose to permanently relocate to the United States mainland. It explores the reasons why Kanaka Maoli (politically correct term for Native Hawaiians) leave the 'āina (land; that which feeds) in the first place and eventually become permanent mainland residents. Some Hawaiians lose their culture after relocating to the United …

A Promised Land In The Diaspora: Christian Religion, Social Memory, And Identity Among Banabans In Fiji, Wolfgang Kempf

Pacific Studies

This article explores the evolving concept of diaspora, highlighting its departure from its original religious connotations to a broader framework encompassing migration, transnationalism, and identity. While religion has often been overlooked in contemporary diaspora studies, the article argues that Christian institutions play a pivotal role in shaping identity and social organization among Pacific Islanders living abroad. Focusing on diasporic Banabans in Fiji, the study examines how Christian discourses and biblical narratives—particularly the Exodus motif—have been appropriated to articulate a collective history of displacement and survival. The article situates Pacific migration within a historical and colonial context, demonstrating how religion functions …

Kapingamarangi People In The United States, Michael D. Lieber, Willys Peters, Rosita Peters, Mike Borong

Pacific Studies

This article explores the Kapingamarangi diaspora, focusing on the formation and transformation of their communities outside their ancestral homeland. Since their initial migration to Pohnpei in 1919, Kapinga people have established enclaves across Micronesia and the United States, driven by educational opportunities and labor recruitment. The study examines how Kapinga migrants sustain cultural identity through face-to-face interactions and digital communication, redefining the concept of community in a transnational context. By analyzing their lived experiences—including challenges related to healthcare, employment, and social integration—the article highlights the interplay between traditional Kapinga cultural models and adaptation in the diaspora. Ultimately, this work contributes …

Discourses On Chuukese Customary Adoption, Migration, And The Laws Of State(S), Manuel Rauchholz

Pacific Studies

This article concerns Chuukese adoption, child exchange, and fosterage practices and how they are continued or discontinued when Chuukese migrate to Guam, Hawai‘i, or the continental United States.1 By focusing on one cultural practice and the system of values attached to it, I hope to pinpoint some of the major changes that take place when key identity- shaping factors diversify and are no longer shared by an ethnic group, let alone families within that ethnic group. We will see how, for Chuukese today, “cultural citizenship” is a “dual process of self-making and being made within the webs of power linked …

Vol. 32 (2009): Pacific Studies Full Issue 4, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Pacific Studies is published two times a year by The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies, Brigham Young University Hawai‘i #1979, 55–220 Kulanui Street, Lāʻie, Hawai‘i 96762, but responsibility for opinions expressed in the articles rests with the authors alone. Subscription rate is US $26.00 yearly, payable to The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies. The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies (formerly The Pacific Institute) is an organization funded by Brigham Young University Hawai‘i. The Center assists the University in meeting its cultural and educational goals by undertaking a program of teaching, research, …

Book Review: Ron Crocombe. Asia In The Pacific Islands: Replacing The West, Evan Lampe

Pacific Studies

Ron Crocombe. Asia in the Pacific Islands: Replacing the West. Suva, Fiji: University of the South Pacific IPS Publications, 2007. Pp. 644. ISBN 9789820203884. US$49.00 paper, B/W illustrations.

Reviewed by Evan Lampe, Endicott College

Changing Contexts For Grandparent Adoption On Raivavae, French Polynesia, Jeanette L. Dickerson-Putnam

Pacific Studies

This paper examines change in grandparent adoption and care of grandchildren on the Austral island of Raivavae in French Polynesia. The focus is on how Raivavaens have utilized the flexible, negotiable, and contingent institution of grandparent adoption as a strategy for coping with changing global/local linkages, out-migration for employment, and introduction of nonindigenous institutions and processes. The inherent flexibility of the adoptive relationship is apparently enabling Raivavaens to mold it in ways that serve a new set of needs and circumstances, most of which reside with the grandchild's parents rather than the grandparents. Grandparents appear to have extended and otherwise …

Rice And Tea, Fish And Taro: Sikaiana Migration To Honiara, William W. Donner

Pacific Studies

For the past seventy years, the people from Sikaiana in the Solomon Islands have been migrating away from their atoll. After World War II, most Sikaiana migrants settled in Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands, located on Guadalcanal Island. Several generations of Sikaiana people have matured in Honiara, and, during my stays in the 1980s, the Sikaiana population in Honiara outnumbered the population on Sikaiana. In Honiara, Sikaiana migrants have developed many activities that bring them together as a community, including a residential settlement, funerals, wedding exchanges, and fund-raising events. Sikaiana people living on the atoll form a small …

From Moral Community To Moral Communities: The Foundations Of Migrant Social Solidarity Among Samoans In Urban Aotearoa/New Zealand, Cluny Macpherson

Pacific Studies

There is clear evidence of moral community within early expatriate migrant Samoan communities in New Zealand. This moral community was partly the consequence of many migrants’ common life experiences and their resultant commitment to, and belief in, the integrity of their worldview and lifestyle. While commitment was a necessary condition, it was not a sufficient condition for moral community. This article argues that critical to the emergence of moral community were demographic, political, and economic factors—often underrated in anthropological explanations—that influenced the choice of migrants by their families, the processes of migration, and the concentration of migrants in residential and …

Marae And Tribal Identity In Urban Aotearoa/New Zealand, Paul Tapsell

Pacific Studies

This article examines the ceremonial courtyard called a marae, the quintessential focus of tribal Maori society, which not only represents customary authority over surrounding land but also provides the forum on which taonga (ancestral treasures) are ritually performed. Historically rooted in the Pacific, the tribal marae has stayed intact for countless generations serving generations of kin communities in their ever-changing social, political, and economic contexts. After World War II the marae underwent new transformations as descendants began migrating in their thousands from relative rural isolation to newly developing metropolitan areas. Competition and accessing new opportunities based upon ethnicity gave rise …

Where Has Rotuman Culture Gone? And What Is It Doing There?, Alan Howard, Jan Rensel

Pacific Studies

This article explores the now-problematic concept of “culture” and related terms in the context of a diffuse transnational Rotuman population, more than three- fourths of whom live abroad in Fiji, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, and Europe. We begin by reflecting on prevailing criticisms of the culture concept, then present data in historical perspective on Rotuman communities in five different locations: Rotuma, Fiji, Australia, New Zealand, and Hawai‘i. In presenting these data we examine the patterning effects of four key variables, in- cluding (1) macrosocietal attitudes, (2) the nature of the migration flow, (3) the size of communities, …

Is Tonga's Mirab Economy Sustainable? A View From The Village And A View Without It, Mike Evans

Pacific Studies

The development implications of the now-classic MIRAB economic pattern for South Pacific microstates (with economies dominated by overseas remittances and foreign aid) have attracted considerable attention. Some scholars argue the MIRAB pattern is well entrenched and can be sustained with a minimum of undesirable social and economic outcomes. Others decry the acceptance of the dependency of South Pacific nations and argue for renewed effort toward the development of self-sustaining economies. I argue that the debate must directly address the underlying social relations that facilitate and shape migration and remittances. In Tonga, the movement of people from rural areas has wide-ranging …

Changing Contours Of Kinship: The Impacts Of Social And Economic Development On Kinship Organization In The South Pacific, Cluny Macpherson

Pacific Studies

The incorporation of microstates into the capitalist world-system sets the stage for profound transformations of kinship organization. This article argues that, while ideologies of kinship may remain largely intact, the actual organization of kinship is changing. It explores the roles of social, demographic, political, and economic factors in the transformation of the structure of kinship and family in the South Pacific in the period since continuous contact with the West commenced some 170 years ago. The case of Western Samoa is offered as an example of the process of change that is occurring at varying rates throughout Pacific Island societies.

Vol. 20 No. 1 (1997): Pacific Studies Full Issue, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Pacific Studies is published two times a year by The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies, Brigham Young University Hawai‘i #1979, 55–220 Kulanui Street, Lāʻie, Hawai‘i 96762, but responsibility for opinions expressed in the articles rests with the authors alone. Subscription rate is US$40.00 yearly, payable to The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies. The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies (formerly The Pacific Institute) is an organization funded by Brigham Young University Hawai‘i. The Center assists the University in meeting its cultural and educational goals by undertaking a program of teaching, research, and …

Vol. 20 No. 1 (1997): Pacific Studies Front Matter, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Pacific Studies is published two times a year by The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies, Brigham Young University Hawai‘i #1979, 55–220 Kulanui Street, Lāʻie, Hawai‘i 96762, but responsibility for opinions expressed in the articles rests with the authors alone. Subscription rate is US$40.00 yearly, payable to The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies. The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies (formerly The Pacific Institute) is an organization funded by Brigham Young University Hawai‘i. The Center assists the University in meeting its cultural and educational goals by undertaking a program of teaching, research, and …

Contributors: Vol 20 No. 1, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Contributors list of Vol. 20 (1997): Pacific Studies Full Issue 1

Reading The Leaves: The Role Of Tongan Women’S Traditional Wealth And Other “Contraflows” In The Processes Of Modern Migration And Remittance, Kerry James

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Demographic Change In The Republic Of Palau, L. J. Gorenflo

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

How Many Hawaiians Live In Hawai‘I?, Robert C. Schmitt

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Regional Demographic Change In Chuuk State, Federated States Of Micronesia, L. J. Gorenflo

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Changing Patterns Of Commitment To Island Homelands: A Case Study Of Western Samoa, Cluny Macpherson

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Lamont Lindstrom's Review Of Gerald Haberkorn's Port Vila: Transit Station Or Final Stop?, Lamont Lindstrom

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

The Evolution Of Regional Demography In The Marshall Islands, L. J. Gorenflo, Michael J. Levin

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Madrich: Outer Islanders On Yap, William H. Alkire

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Madrich: Outer Islanders On Yap, William H. Alkire

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Regional Demographic Change In Pohnpei State, Federated States Of Micronesia, L. J. Gorenflo, Michael J. Levin

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Regional Demographic Change In Yap State, Federated States Of Micronesia, L. J. Gorenflo, Michael J. Levin

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.