The cultural sea change in Oceania, away from Europe and toward Asia and the Pacific, has been accompanied by new respect for indigenous peoples. Increasing economic interdependence with Asia has diminished historic discrimination against Asians in this region.

Until very recently, most people of European descent in Australia and New Zealand thought of themselves as Europeans in exile. Many considered their lives incomplete until they had made a pilgrimage to the British Isles or the European continent. In her book An Australian Girl in London (1902), Louise Mack wrote: “[We] Australians [are] packed away there at the other end of the world, shut off from all that is great in art and music, but born with a passionate craving to see, and hear and come close to these [European] great things and their home[land]s.”

These longings for Europe were accompanied by racist attitudes toward both indigenous peoples and Asians. Most histories of Australia written in the early twentieth century failed to even mention the Aborigines, and later writings described them as amoral. At midcentury there were numerous projects to take Aboriginal children from their parents and acculturate them to European ways in boarding schools known for abuse and brutality. From the 1920s to the 1960s, whites-only immigration policies barred Asians, Africans, and Pacific Islanders from migrating to Australia and discouraged them from entering New Zealand. As we have seen, trading patterns in that era further reinforced connections to Europe.

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Weakening of the European Connection When migration from the British Isles slowed after World War II, both Australia and New Zealand began to lure immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, many of whom had been displaced by the war. Hundreds of thousands came from Greece, Italy, and what was then Yugoslavia. The arrival of these non-English-speaking people began a shift toward a more multicultural society. The whites-only immigration policy was abandoned and people began to arrive from many places. There was an influx of Vietnamese refugees in the early 1970s during the frantic exodus that followed the United States’ withdrawal from Vietnam. More recently, skilled workers from India and elsewhere in Asia have been helping meet the growing demand for information technology (IT) specialists throughout the service sector.

As of 2010, more than one-fourth of the Australian population was foreign born. The fastest-growing group was from India. Nevertheless, while new immigration policies are increasing the numbers of immigrants from China, Vietnam, and India, people of Asian birth or ancestry remain a small percentage of the total population in both Australia and New Zealand. In 2006, the latest year for which complete statistics are available, 42 percent of Australia’s foreign-born residents were from Europe and 15 percent were from Asia (Figure 11.21). New Zealand has similar proportions among its foreign-born residents, and most immigrants continue to come from Europe. Although (because of low birth rates and high immigration rates) Europeans are decreasing as a percentage of the population in both Australia and New Zealand, they are projected to still constitute two-thirds or more of both countries’ populations by 2021 (see http://tinyurl.com/7ejcmp3).

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The Social Repositioning of Indigenous Peoples in Australia and New Zealand Perhaps the most interesting population change in Australia and New Zealand is one of identity. For the first time in 200 years, the number of people in both countries who claim indigenous origins is increasing. Between 1991 and 1996, the number of Australians claiming Aboriginal origins rose by 33 percent. By 2009, the Aboriginal population was estimated at 528,600. In New Zealand, the number claiming Maori background rose by 20 percent to 652,900 between 1991 and 2009.

These increases are due to changing identities, not to a population boom. More positive attitudes toward indigenous peoples have encouraged the open acknowledgment of Aborigine or Maori ancestry. Also, marriages between European and indigenous peoples are now more common. As a result, the number of people with a recognized mixed heritage is increasing.

As society has acknowledged that discrimination has been the main reason for the low social standing and impoverished state of indigenous peoples, respect for Aboriginal and Maori culture has also increased. The Australian Aborigines base their way of life on the idea that the spiritual and physical worlds are intricately related (Figure 11.22). The dead are present everywhere in spirit, and they guide the living in how to relate to the physical environment. Much Aboriginal spirituality refers to the Dreamtime, the time of creation when the human spiritual connections to rocks, rivers, deserts, plants, and animals were made clear. However, very few Aboriginal people continue to practice their own cultural traditions or live close to ancient homelands. Instead, many live in impoverished urban conditions. In New Zealand, where the Maori constitute about 15 percent of the country’s population and Auckland has the largest Polynesian population (including Native Maori) of any city in the world, there are now many efforts to bring Maori culture more into the mainstream of national life.

Aboriginal Land Claims In 1988, during a bicentennial celebration of the founding of white Australia, a contingent of some 15,000 Aborigines protested that they had little reason to celebrate. During the same 200 years, they were assumed to have no prior claim to any land in Australia, they had lost basic civil rights, and they had effectively been erased from the Australian national consciousness. Into the 1960s, it was even illegal for Aborigines to drink alcohol.

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British documents indicate that during colonial settlement, all Australian lands were deemed to be available for British use. The Aborigines were thought to be too primitive to have concepts of land ownership because their nomadic cultures had “no fixed abodes, fields or flocks, nor any internal hierarchical differentiation.” The Australian High Court declared this position void in 1993. After that, Aboriginal groups began to win some land claims, mostly for land in the arid interior previously controlled by the Australian government. Figure 11.23 shows the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in 2012, versions of which have stood on the grounds of Parliament in Canberra for more than 40 years. The Aboriginal Tent Embassy was instrumental in raising public awareness of injustices and remains a national symbol of Aboriginal civil rights. Court cases and other efforts to restore Aboriginal rights and lands continue (see Figure 11.17D).

Maori Land Claims In New Zealand, relations between the majority European-derived population and the indigenous Maori have proceeded only somewhat more amicably than in Australia. In 1840, the Maori signed the Waitangi Treaty with the British, assuming they were granting only rights of land usage, not ownership (see Figure 11.24B). The Maori did not regard land as a tradable commodity, but rather as an asset of the people, used by families and larger kin groups to fulfill their needs. The geographer Eric Pawson writes: “To the Maori the land was sacred … [and] the features of land and water bodies were woven through with spiritual meaning and the Maori creation myth.” The British assumed that the treaty had given them exclusive rights to settle the land with British migrants and to extract wealth through farming, mining, and forestry.

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By 1950, the Maori had lost all but 6.6 percent of their former lands to European settlers and the government. Maori numbers had shrunk from a probable 120,000 in the early 1800s to 42,000 in 1900, and the Maori came to occupy the lowest and most impoverished rung of New Zealand society. In the 1990s, however, the Maori began to reclaim their culture, and they established a tribunal that forcefully advances Maori interests and land claims through the courts. Since then, nearly half a million acres of land and several major fisheries have been transferred back to Maori control. Nonetheless, the Maori still have notably higher unemployment, lower education levels, and poorer health than the New Zealand population as a whole.

Although wide ocean spaces and the great diversity of languages in the region sometimes make communication difficult, travel, sports, and festivals (Figure 11.24) are three forces that help bring the people of Oceania closer together.

Languages in Oceania The Pacific islands—most notably Melanesia—have a rich variety of languages. In some cases, the islands in a single chain have several different languages. A case in point is Vanuatu, a chain of 80 mostly high volcanic islands to the east of northern Australia. At least 108 languages are spoken by a population of just 180,000—an average of 1 language for every 1600 people.

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Languages are both an important part of a community’s cultural identity and a hindrance to cross-cultural understanding. In Melanesia and elsewhere in the Pacific, the need for communication with the wider world is served by a number of pidgin languages that are similar enough to be mutually understood. Pidgins are made up of words borrowed from several languages by people involved in trading relationships. Over time, pidgins can grow into fairly complete languages, capable of fine nuances of expression. When a particular pidgin is in such common use that mothers talk to their children in it, then it can literally be called a “mother tongue.” In Papua New Guinea, a version of pidgin English is the official language.

Interisland Travel One way in which unity is manifested in Oceania is interisland travel. Today, people travel in small planes from the outlying islands to hubs such as Fiji, where jumbo jets can be boarded for Auckland, Melbourne, and Honolulu. Cook Islanders call these little planes “the canoes of the modern age,” and people travel for many reasons. Dancers from across the region attend the annual folk festival in Brisbane; businesspeople from Kiribati, Micronesia, can fly to Fiji to take a short course at the University of the South Pacific; a Cook Islands teacher can take graduate training in Hawaii; and sports fans can visit multiple locations over time.

Sports as a Unifying Force Sports and games are a major feature of daily life throughout Oceania. The region has shared sports traditions with and borrowed them from cultures around the world. Surfing evolved in Hawaii and, like outrigger sailing and canoeing, derives from ancient navigational customs that matched human wits against the power of the ocean. On hundreds of Pacific islands and in Australia and New Zealand, rugby, volleyball, soccer, and cricket are important community-building activities. Baseball is a favorite in the parts of Micronesia that were U.S. trust territories. Women compete in the popular sport of netball (similar to basketball but without a backboard).

Pan-Oceania sports competitions are the single most common and resilient link among the countries of the region. Attendance at regional sports events is so desirable that low-income islanders will hold yard sales and raffles to amass the cash necessary to make the trip. The centrality of such competitions in daily life encourages regional identity and provides opportunities for ordinary citizens to travel extensively around the region and to other parts of the world.

The haka (Figure 11.25) is an example of how, in the post-colonial modern era, indigenous culture in Oceania is being revived, celebrated, and appropriated in new places by those who wish to project a multicultural image. The haka is a highly emotional and physical dance traditionally performed by the Maori to motivate fellow warriors and intimidate opponents before entering battle. Dances like this have historically been a part of many cultures in the islands of Oceania, but the haka has now become an integral part of rugby, the region’s most popular sport (Figure 11.26). Before almost every international match for the past century, the All Blacks (the New Zealand men’s rugby team) have performed the haka: chanting, screaming, jumping, stomping their feet, poking out their tongues, widening their eyes to show the whites, and beating their thighs, arms, and chests.

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Outside Oceania, those who perform the haka include the rugby teams at Jefferson High in Portland, Oregon, and Middlebury College in Vermont, and the football teams at Brigham Young University and the University of Hawaii. All these teams have players who are of Polynesian heritage. Most practitioners speak of the haka as filling them with the necessary exuberance, aggression, and spirituality to play a vigorous and successful game. To see videos of a haka, go to http://www.YouTube.com and type in haka.

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