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Pacific Islanders

The term Pacific Islanders includes individuals from a variety of origins. In the 2000 census, a number of racial categories could be checked: White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, and several Asian groups, including Native Hawaiian, Guamanian or Chamorro, and Samoan. The Other Pacific Islanders category also could be checked. In addition, individuals were allowed to select one or more racial categories to indicate their racial identity. Thus, the Pacific Islanders category includes Native Hawaiians, Guamanians or Chamorro, Tongans, Marquesans, Maori, Tahitians, Fijians, and others from the smaller islands of the Pacific—altogether, a diverse grouping of languages and cultures. The largest of these groups, as shown in Table 1, are the Native Hawaiians and Samoans. This entry presents information and a brief review of these groups on both the mainland and Hawaiian Islands of the United States. It also briefly discusses the issues of out-marriage, language retention, and homelands.

For many census and governmental purposes, Pacific Islanders are often grouped with the larger Asian groups for analysis. However, they differ greatly from most Asians linguistically, culturally, and in area of origin. Asians as a whole do quite well in standard comparisons with the other residents of the United States—in educational levels, standard of living, occupational status, and poverty status. Pacific Islanders, however, are not doing as well on some of these indicators as are most Asian groups or Americans.

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Origins of Pacific Islanders

Pacific Islanders trace their ancestry to numerous islands of the Pacific Ocean, an area collectively referred to as Oceania, which also includes Australia, New Zealand, and the islands of Indonesia and New Guinea. The islands east of New Guinea are referred to as Melanesia. Further east are two additional groupings: the Micronesian Islands (meaning small islands) and the Polynesian Islands (meaning many islands). Micronesia includes the Marianas, Guam, Wake Island, the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia. The Polynesian Islands are generally considered to be those east of New Zealand, stretching to the Hawaiian Islands; they include the Midway Atoll, Samoa, American Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, the Cook Islands, French Poloynesia, and Easter Island. Other islands, such as the Philippines, the islands of the South China Sea, and Indonesia, are usually identified with their nearest continent because these islands are not located in any of the three regions of Oceania.

Table 1 Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander Household Population by Detailed Group: 2004
Detailed GroupPopulationPercent of Pacific Islander-alone population
Native Hawaiian and Other
Pacific Islander alone403,832100.0
Polynesian256,40663.5
Native Hawaiian154,66638.3
Samoan60,52015.0
Tongan39,0529.7
Other Polynesian2,1680.5
Micronesian101,33525.1
Guamanian or Chomorro68,33616.9
Other Micronesian32,9998.2
Melanesian22,9125.7
Fijian22,8405.7
Other Melanesian72-
Other Pacific Islander23,1795.7
Source: U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. American Community Survey (Detailed Tables, B02007). Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau.
Notes: Data are based on sample limited to the household population and exclude the population living in institutions, college dormitories, and other group quarters. For information on confidentiality protection, sampling error, nonsampling error, and definitions, see http://factfinder.census.gov/home/en/datanotes/exp_acs2004.html. In the table, a dash (-) indicates that the figure rounds to 0.0.

Pacific Islanders in the United States

Most Pacific Islanders in the United States are from Polynesia, with the largest group being Native Hawaiians. The Hawaiian Islands were annexed by the United States, without consent of the native peoples and government, over the period from 1893 to 1898. Statehood was granted in 1959. The 2000 U.S. Census listed a total of 874,000 people who reported their “race” as Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. Pacific Islanders constitute 0.3% of the total population of the United States. The total number includes 398,835 who reported only Pacific Islander and 475,579 who reported Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander as well as one or more other races. Those who reported mixed ancestry were most likely to have Asian (29%), White (24%), or both Asian and White (19%) ancestry.

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