Pacific Islands/Oceania

The Pacific Islands region encompasses most of the island nations, territories, and states in the southern part of the Pacific Ocean. The term Oceania includes this region and may also refer to Australia, Indonesia, Brunei, Singapore, and the island parts of Malaysia. The terms Oceania and Pacific Islands usually do not refer to the Aleutian islands of Alaska or to the islands that are off the Pacific coast of Russia, China, and North and South America, nor do they include the island nations of Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines.

Usually, the Pacific Islands are grouped into three main clusters that have common historical and ethnic characteristics. The largest is the Polynesian (“many islands”) triangular group that spans much of the South Pacific and includes native New Zealand, the American state of Hawai'i, Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, the Cook Islands, French Polynesia (including Tahiti), and Easter Island. The other two clusters are in the western South Pacific. One is the mountainous islands of Melanesia (“black islands”) that include Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, and New Caledonia. The other is Micronesia (“small islands”), which is north of the equator and mostly flat and includes Guam, Wake Island, Palau, the Marshall Islands, Tokelau, Niue, Nauru, Kiribati, and the Federated States of Micronesia. There are some 20,000 to 30,000 islands in the Pacific Islands region, spanning thousands of miles. The population of the region (excluding New Zealand and Hawai'i) was around 7 million at the end of the 20th century.

The religious history of the Pacific Islands is roughly divided into pre-and post-European colonial contact. Beginning in the 16th and 17th centuries, European explorers, traders, exploiters, and settlers traversed the region and made an enduring impact on its cultural life. Perhaps the best known was the 18th-century British explorer Captain James Cook, who came to an unhappy end in the Hawai'ian islands. In the 19th century, cargo cults emerged in some areas of Melanesia and Micronesia as a result of cultural contact. Indigenous people in the islands thought that their ritual and spiritual activity would hasten the return of godlike foreigners with abundant material blessings and visions of salvation.

By the 20th century, most of the population of the region had converted to Christianity, and what remained of the traditional religious culture of the Pacific Islands is found in some of their local lore and customs. In some cases, indigenous religion and ritual artifacts have been integrated into the practices of Christian churches. In Hawai'i, the Congregational churches of New England missionaries were often built on the stone altars of traditional Hawai'ian religious sites (heiau). In the second half of the 20th century, large-scale conversions to the Mormon faith added a further layer to the religious complexity of the region. The religious character of each island's culture is unique, however, and must be examined in its specificity.