Oceania

Abelam

Identification. The Abelam live in the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea and are divided into several subgroups; the most prominent is the Wosera, who are so named after the area they inhabit.

Anuta

Identification. Anuta is a volcanic island in the eastern Solomon Islands.

Aranda

Identification. Aranda refers first of all to a language group.

Asmat

Identification. The Asmat are hunting, fishing, and gathering people who inhabit an area which they refer to as Asmat capinmi, the Asmat world.

The Banaro are a group numbering about 2,500 located along the middle course of the Keram River, a tributary of the Sepik River in Madang and East Sepik provinces, Papua New Guinea. Banaro is a Papuan language isolate belonging to the Sepik-Ramu Phylum.

Bau

Identification. The name "Bau" was originally that of a house site (yavu) at Kubuna on the Wainibuka River in the interior of Viti Levu, the main island of Fiji, but today "Bau" usually refers to the small offshore islet, home of the Paramount chiefs, and "Kubuna" to those who claim kinship with the chiefly families, or those who "go with" Bau in the wider politics of all Fiji.

Belau

Identification. Hearing the word beluu, "village Homeland", early British explorers of the western Pacific mistakenly referred to the Belau Islands as "Pelew"; the spelling "Palau" became standardized in nineteenth-century German Scientific writings.

Bikini

Bikini is the largest of the twenty-six islands in the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Bikini is the northernmost atoll in the Ratak chain of atolls and islands and is located at 11° 31′ N and 165° 34′ E.

Boazi

Identification. Boazi is the name of a language spoken by approximately 2,500 people who live along the middle reaches of the Fly River and along the central and northern shores of Lake Murray in the southern lowlands of New Guinea.

Chambri

Identification. The Chambri (called Tchambuli by Margaret Mead) live south of the Sepik River on an island Mountain in Chambri Lake in East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea.

Chamorros

The Chamorro are the indigenous inhabitants of the island of Guam and the surrounding Southern Mariana Islands. The present-day descendants of the precontact Chamorros have a syncretic culture, greatly influenced by Spanish, Filipino, Japanese, and especially American culture.

Chimbu

Identification. The Chimbu live in the Chimbu, Koro, and Wahgi valleys in the mountainous central highlands of Papua New Guinea.

Choiseul Island

Identification. Choiseul Island is the northwesternmost island in the Solomon Islands chain of the western South Pacific, lying between Bougainville Island and Papua New Guinea to the west, Santa Isabel to the east, and Velia Lavella and New Georgia to the south, all of which are 40 to 80 kilometers distant.

Cook Islands

Dani

Identification. Dani is a general term used by outsiders for peoples speaking closely related Papuan (Non-Austronesian) languages in the central highlands of Irian Java, Indonesia (formerly Netherlands New Guinea, West New Guinea, Irian Barat).

Daribi

Identification. "Daribi" is the name for a people of Papua New Guinea who speak a single language with little or no dialect differentiation.

Dieri

Dobu

Identification. Dobu (Goulvain Island on the earliest maps) is a small island (3.2 by 4.8 kilometers), an extinct volcano.

Easter Island

Eipo

Identification. The Eipo and their neighbors live in the Daerah Jayawijaya of the Indonesian Province of Irian Jaya.

Foi

Fore

Identification. The Fore people are subsistence-oriented swidden horticulturalists who live in the Okapa District of the Eastern Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea.

Futuna

Gahuku-Gama

Identification. The name "Gahuku," like "Gama," is that of a tribe or district group, but the former has been extended by linguists to include a congeries of such units and the Common language they speak.

Gainj

Identification. Gainj is the name for approximately 1,500 people who distinguish themselves from their culturally similar neighbors on the basis of language and territorial affiliation.

Garia

Identification. The Garia live in southern Madang Province of Papua New Guinea.

Gebusi

Identification. Gebusi identify themselves as a distinctive Gebusi-speaking cultural group within the Nomad River area of the East Strickland River Plain, Western Province, Papua New Guinea.

Gnau

Identification. Speakers of the Gnau language live in the West Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea.

Gogodala

Identification. The Gogodala live in the Western Province of Papua New Guinea.

Goodenough Island

Guadalcanal

Identification. Among the peoples inhabiting Guadalcanal Island, one of the Solomon Islands, there is found considerable variety of cultural practices and language dialects.

Gururumba

Identification. The Gururumba are one of nine political sovereignties located in the upper valley of the Asaro River in the Eastern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea.

Hawaiians

Identification. Hawaiians are the indigenous people of the Hawaiian Islands.

Iatmul

Identification. The Iatmul live along the banks of the Middle Sepik River in the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea.

Kaluli

Identification. "Bosavi kalu" (meaning "men of Bosavi") is the collective designation of four closely related horticulturalist groups who live in the rain forest of the Great Papuan Plateau.

Kamilaroi

The Kamilaroi were an Aboriginal group located in New South Wales, Australia, along the Barwon, Bundarra, Balonne, and upper Hunter rivers and in the Liverpool plains. They are now nearly extinct and only a small number remain.

Kapauku

Identification. The Kapauku live in the central highlands of western New Guinea, now Irian Jaya.

Kapingamarangi

Identification. Kapingamarangi, one of the Polynesian outliers, is the southernmost atoll in the Eastern Caroline Islands of Micronesia.

Karadjeri

The Karadjeri (Garadjui, Guaradjara, Karadjari) are an Aboriginal group located in the state of Western Australia, in the area of Roebuck Bay and inland to Broome. In 1984 there were thirty-five individuals.

Kariera

The term "Kariera" refers both to a particular Western Australian people, with a distinct name and language, as well as to a specific form of social organization and kinship reckoning shared by several distinct groups (Nglera, Kariera, Ngaluma, Indjibandi, Pandjima, Bailgu, and Nyamal). The territory associated with the Kariera type of organization is defined by the drainage of the De Grey River, as well as portions of the region along both sides of the Fortescue River.

Keraki

Identification. The term "Keraki" generally refers to one of several small transhumant cultural groups living near the Morehead River in the Trans-Fly region of Papua New Guinea, applying principally to Nambu speakers but also Including some of their immediate neighbors.

Kewa

Identification. The Kewa live in the Southern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea and speak three major, mutually intelligible dialects.

Kilenge

Identification and Location. The Kilenge, subsistence swidden horticulturalists, live along a 4-kilometer coastal stretch on the northwest tip of the island of New Britain, 5°28′ S, 148°22′ E.

Kiribati

Kiwai

Identification. The Kiwai are a coastal people of southern New Guinea who live between the Pahoturi and Fly rivers and on the islands and river banks of the estuaries of the Fly and Bamu rivers.

Koiari

The Koiari (Grass Koiari) numbered about 1,800 in 1973. They live at about 9°S and 148° E in Port Moresby Subprovince, Central Province of Papua New Guinea.

Kosrae

Kurtatchi

Identification. Strictly speaking, the name "Kurtatchi" refers to a single village, the subject in 1930 of a classic Ethnographic study by Beatrice Blackwood.

Kwoma

Identification. The Kwoma are located in the Ambunti Sub-Province of the Sepik River region of Papua New Guinea.

Lak

Lakalai

Lau

Identification. Lau is a chain of about 100 small islands and reefs spread over an area of about 1,400 square kilometers in the South Pacific.

Lesu

Identification. Lesu is a village on the east coast of the island of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea.

Loyalty Islands

Mae Enga

Identification. The Mae form a cultural and geographical subdivision of the Enga, who comprise most of the inhabitants of Enga Province in the central highlands of Papua New Guinea.

Mafulu

Identification. Mafulu is the name, based on the pronunciation used by the neighboring Kunimaipa speakers, for the people of Mambule, their nearest community of Fuyuge speakers.

Mailu

Identification. The Mailu are a Papuo-Melanesian people of the southern coast of eastern Papua New Guinea and its adjacent islands.

Maisin

Identification. Maisin-speaking people live in Papua New Guinea.

Malaita

Malekula

Manam

Identification. Manam Island, formerly called Vulkan-Insel or Hansa-Vulkaninsel by the Germans, and its outlier, the small island of Boesa (Aris-Insel) 6.5 kilometers to the northwest, are part of the Schouten Island archipelago, a chain of small volcanic islands that stretches along the northeast coast of Papua New Guinea.

Mandak

Identification. Mandak is a linguistic-cultural designation for people living in central New Ireland, Papua New Guinea.

Mangareva

Mangareva, also known as the Gambier Islands, consists of four small volcanic islands located southeast of the Tuamotu Archipelago in French Polynesia at 22° S and 128° W. The islands have a land area of about 29 square kilometers.

Manihiki

Manihiki is separated by 40 kilometers of open sea from its twin atoll of Rakahanga. It consists of two large islets and many smaller ones in the northern Cook Archipelago.

Manus

Identification. The terms "Manus" and "Manusian" denote people native to Manus Province, Papua New Guinea.

Maori

Identification. The Maori are the indigenous inhabitants of New Zealand.

Mardudjara

Identification. The Mardu Aborigines are part of the Western Desert cultural bloc, which encompasses one-sixth of the continent of Australia, and is notable for its social, cultural and linguistic homogeneity.

Marind-anim

Identification. Marind (anim means "people") is the name by which some forty territorial groups (subtribes) in New Guinea identify themselves vis-à-vis foreigners.

Maring

Identification. The Maring are a linguistically and Culturally distinct people of the interior highlands of New Guinea, made up of twenty-one named clan clusters divided, geographically, into two groups: one occupying the mountains of the Simbai Valley of Madang Province; the other located in the Jimi Valley of the Western Highlands Province.

Marquesas Islands

Identification.

Marshall Islands

Mejbrat

Identification. The Mejbrat are swidden cultivators of the Bird's Head Peninsula of Irian Jaya.

Mekeo

Identification. The Mekeo peoples live in village communities on the coastal plain of southeast Papua New Guinea.

Melpa

Identification. The Melpa people live in the Western Highlands Province of the independent state of Papua New Guinea.

Mendi

Identification. "Mendi" refers to the people of the Mendi valley.

Mimika

Identification. The Mimika people are named after the Mimika River in the central district of Irian Jaya Province of Indonesia (formerly Netherlands, or Dutch, New Guinea).

Miyanmin

Identification. The Miyanmin live in Telefomin District of Sandaun (West Sepik) Province and Ambunti District of East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea.

Motu

Identification. At the time of their first recorded contact with Westerners, in 1872, the Austronesian-speaking people known as Motu lived in thirteen nucleated seaside villages on the south coast of the New Guinea mainland, immediately east and west of Port Moresby (9°29′ S, 147°8′ E), the first center of European settlement and the present capital of Papua New Guinea.

Mountain Arapesh

Identification. The name "Mountain Arapesh" is used today to designate speakers of the three eastern dialects of the Arapesh language in the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea.

Mundugumor

Identification. The Mundugumor live in the area of the central Yuat River in the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea.

Murik

Identification. The term "Murik" is generally used to refer to people living in five villages (Kaup, Big Murik, Darapap, Karau, Mendam) along the north coast of Papua New Guinea, west of the mouth of the Sepik River.

Murngin

Muyu

Identification. The Muyu live just south of the central mountains of Irian Jaya, just along the border with Papua New Guinea.

Namau

Identification. "Namau" is a term used to designate both the region and its inhabitants by the people who live in the Purari River delta region of the south coast of Papua New Guinea.

Nasioi

Identification. The name "Nasioi" has been employed by Europeans since the beginning of the twentieth century, and it is best thought of as a linguistic term.

Nauru

Identification. Nauru is an independent republic, an associate member of the British Commonwealth, and a member of the South Pacific Commission and the South Pacific Forum.

New Georgia

The New Georgia group of islands is located in the south-central Solomon Islands between 8-9° S and 156-158° E. The group consists of the main island of New Georgia, nine other large islands, and numerous atolls.

Ngatatjara

Nguna

Identification. "Ngunese" is the name for the inhabitants of the island of Nguna, Vanuatu (formerly the New Hebrides).

Ningerum

Identification. "Ningerum" is the name for the people living to the northeast of Ningerum Station (Kiunga District of Western Province, Papua New Guinea).

Nissan

Identification. The Nissan Islanders live on Nissan Atoll and Pinipel Atoll, which together form the Nissan or Green Island Group in the North Solomons Province of Papua New Guinea.

Niue

Niue is a 260-square-kilometer raised coral atoll. Culturally and linguistically it is very similar to Tonga.

Nomoi

Nomoi includes the cluster of Etal, Lukunor, and Satawan atolls in the Mortlocks and the lone Namoluk Atoll 56 kilometers to the northwest. Nomoi is located in the central Carolines at approximately 5° N and 153° E.

Ontong Java

Orokaiva

Orokolo

Identification. The term "Orokolo" generally refers to all of the Western Elema people living around Orokolo Bay in Papua New Guinea, although the name also refers to one of the five languages in the Eleman Language Family, to the major dialect of this language, and also to one of the five major Orokolo villages (Arihava, Yogu, Orokolo, Auma, and Vailala).

Pentecost

Pintupi

Identification. The term "Pintupi" refers to a group of Australian Aboriginal hunting and gathering people originally from the Western Desert region of Australia.

Pohnpei

Identification. Pohnpei is a high island in the Eastern Caroline island group of Micronesia.

Pukapuka

Identification. Pukapuka is a small Polynesian atoll located among the northern atolls of the Cook Islands.

Rapa

Raroia

Rennell Island

Both Rennell and its twin island Bellona (Munggiki) are Polynesian outliers in the central Solomon Islands. Rennell is a raised coral atoll, with a large lake in its southeastern end, located between 11°34′ and 11°47′ S and 159°54′ and 160°37′ E.

Rossel Island

Identification. The Rossel Islanders live on the eastern-most island of the Louisiade Archipelago in the Massim Culture region (Milne Bay Province) at the east end of New Guinea.

Rotuma

Identification. Rotuma lies approximately 480 kilometers north of Fiji, on the western fringe of Polynesia.

Sambia

Identification. The Sambia, a congeries of historically and socially integrated phratries that speak the Sambia language, live in the fringe areas of the Eastern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea.

Samoa

Identification. There is no generally agreed upon explanation of the meaning of the name "Sāmoa." According to one Samoan version, the name is compounded of "Sā," meaning "tribe, people of," and "Moa," which means "chicken," referring to the "family" of the Tui Manu'a, the highest-ranking titleholder of eastern (American) Samoa.

San Cristobal

Four groups totaling about 10,000 individuals live on the high volcanic island of Makira or San Cristobal: the Arosi, Bauro, Kahua, and Tawarafa. San Cristobal is located in the southeastern Solomon Islands at approximately 10° S and 160° E.

Santa Cruz

Identification. The Santa Cruz Islanders are Melanesians who are in most respects fully integrated, as a constituent Ethnic society, into the national political and economic system of the Solomon Islands.

Selepet

Identification. The name "Selepet" is derived from the sentence "Selep pekyap," meaning "The house collapsed," an event recounted in the story of the people's dispersal from their primordial residential site.

Sengseng

Identification. To outsiders, the Sengseng tend to identify themselves simply as "Arawe," a term designating all the People of southwest New Britain, including Arawe Islanders, who practice artificial deformation of the skull.

Siane

Siane refers to a number of ethnic groups located in the highlands of Eastern Highlands Province, Goroka SubProvince, Papua New Guinea. In 1975 the Siane numbered some 18,000.

Sio

Identification. "Sio" is the name of a Papua New Guinea people, of their group of four villages, and of their language (also spoken in Nambariwa, a small coastal village to the east).

Siwai

Identification. The word "Siuai" originally applied to a cape on the southern coast of Bougainville, but it later came to identify a wider area of the coast, its hinterland, and the people who lived there.

Tahiti

Identification. The name "Tahiti"—or, as Bougainville first wrote it in 1768, "Taiti," and Cook in 1769, Otaheite"—was the name the natives gave their island and which Europeans came to apply to the indigenes.

Tairora

Identification. The Tairora live in the Kainantu District of the Eastern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea.

Tangu

Identification. The term "Tangu" generally refers to one of several culturally similar communities living in the Bogia Region of the Madang Province of Papua New Guinea.

Tanna

Identification. Tanna island is part of the Southern District of Vanuatu, a southwestern Pacific archipelago once called the New Hebrides.

Tasmanians

Identification. The term "Tasmanians" refers to the native inhabitants of the island of Tasmania.

Tauade

Identification.

Telefolmin

Identification. Telefolmin are one of a group of related peoples known as the Mountain Ok or "Min" (after the Common suffix for group names).

Tikopia

Identification. The name "Tikopia" (sometimes written "Tucopia" by early European voyagers), given to a small Island in the Solomon group, is also applied by the inhabitants to themselves.

Tiwi

Identification. The word "Tiwi" means "people" in the language of the Aboriginal inhabitants and owners of Melville and Bathurst islands of north Australia.

Tokelau

Identification. "Tokelau" (Anglicized as "Tokelauan") refers both to the people and to their distinctive Polynesian language, as well as to their homeland which consists of three atolls: Atafu, Nukunonu, and Fakaofo.

Tolai

Identification. "Tolai" is the modern name for the indigenous people who live within a radius of about 32 kilometers of the port town of Rabaul in the northeast corner of New Britain known as the Gazelle Peninsula.

Tonga

Identification. The Kingdom of Tonga, located in the South Pacific Ocean, was under the protection of Great Britain from 1900 to 1970.

Tongareva

Identification. In 1853, the brig Chatham ran aground on a reef off the southwest coast of Tongareva (Penrhyn Island), marooning fourteen crew members and passengers, some for more than a year.

Tor

Torres Strait Islanders

Identification. The Torres Strait Islanders are a Melanesian group who live on the islands of Torres Strait and in coastal communities of Queensland, Australia.

Trobriand Islands

Truk

Identification. Truk is in the Caroline Islands of Micronesia.

Tuvalu

Identification. The name "Tuvalu" is apparently traditional and refers to the original "cluster of eight" islands.

Ulithi

Identification. Ulithians are Micronesians living on an atoll in the west-central Caroline Islands.

Usino

Identification. The name "Usino" refers to the inhabitants of four lowland social and territorial units (parishes), each corresponding to a dialect of the Usino language.

Uvea

Wamira

Identification. "Wamira" is the name for both the village and its residents, and it is used by Wamirans as well as by outsiders.

Wantoat

Identification. Like many ethnic groups in Papua New Guinea the people of the Wantoat Valley had no need to name themselves.

Wape

Identification. "Wape" is a designation given by Western-ers to the culturally similar Olo-speaking people on the inland side of the Torricelli Mountains of Papua New Guinea.

Warlpiri

Identification. Warlpiri country lies in central Australia, with its center about 180 kilometers northwest of Alice Springs.

Waropen

The Waropen are an Austronesian group in the Vogelkop of Irian Java, New Guinea. They numbered some 6,000 in 1982 and are located along the eastern part of Geelvink Bay, on the south coast of Yapen Island, and on the mainland from the Kerome River, south of the Mamberamo, to the mouth of the Woisimi River at Wandamen Bay.