The ‘New Pacific’

The brown, indigenous, uni-insular Pacific Islander is an anachronism. Demographic heterogeneity now characterizes much of Pacific Islands, with multiple ethnicities defying traditional categorizations. Far more Europeans and/or Asians than Polynesians reside in New Zealand and Hawai‘i, for example, many of these boasting Islander ancestors. There are more Chamorros, Niueans and Tokelauans living abroad than on their ancestral isles, many of them with children of mixed heritage. The islands are currently uniting all indigenous (and acculturated) Islanders in a way not seen in the Pacific since the great voyaging spheres of the Middle Ages. Indeed, the phenomenon is so widespread that it has been labelled ‘contemporary voyaging’.