Oceania

Area : 8,252,989 km
2
(3,291,903 sq mi)
Population : 36,659,000 (2010, 6th)
Pop. Density : 4.19/ km
2

Demonym : Oceanian
Oceanic
A demonym or gentilic, is a term for the residents of a locality and is usually but not always derived from
the name of a locality. For example, the demonym for the people of Britain is British; the demonym for the
people of Canada is Canadian; the demonym for the people of Norway is Norwegian; the demonym for
the people of Germany isGerman; the demonym for the people of Switzerland is Swiss; while the most
common English language demonym for the people of the Netherlands is Dutch.

Countries : 14
Australia
Fiji
Kiribati
Marshall Islands
Federated States of Micronesia
Nauru
New Zealand
Palau
Papua New Guinea
Samoa
Solomon Islands
Tonga
Tuvalu
Vanuatu

CULTURE





LANGUAGE
(official and unofficial)

Bislama
Carolinian
Chamorro
Cook Islands Maori
English
Fijian
French
Futunan (unofficial)
Gilbertese
Hawaiian
Hindi
Hiri Motu
Mori
Marshallese
Nauruan
Niuean
Palauan
Pitkern (unofficial)
Rotuman (unofficial)
Samoan
Spanish
Tahitian (unofficial)
Tokelauan
Tongan
Tok Pisin
Tuvaluan
Wallisian (unofficial)

Native languages of Oceania fall into three major geographic groups:
The large Austronesian language family, with such languages
as Malay (Indonesian), Tagalog (Filipino), and Polynesian languages such as Maori and Hawaiian
The Aboriginal Australian languages, including the large PamaNyungan family
The Papuan languages of New Guinea and neighbouring islands, including the large TransNew
Guinea family
The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands
of Southeast Asia, Madagascar and the Pacific, with a few members on continental Asia, that are spoken
by about 386 million people. It is on pair with Indo-European, NigerCongo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one
of the best-established ancient language families.
The Australian Aboriginal languages comprise up to twenty-seven language
families and isolates native to the Australian Aborigines of Australia and a few nearby islands, but by
convention excluding the languages of Tasmania and the eastern Torres Strait Island languages. The
relationships between these languages are not clear at present, although substantial progress has been
made in recent decades.
The Papuan languages are those languages of the western Pacific island of New Guinea, and
neighbouring islands, that are neither Austronesian nor Australian. The term does not presuppose
a genetic relationship. The concept of Papuan peoples as distinct from Melanesians was first suggested
and named by Sidney Herbert Ray in 1892.
Contact between Austronesian and Papuan resulted in several instances in mixed languages such
as Maisin.
Colonial languages include English in Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and many other
territories; French in New Caledonia and French Polynesia, Portuguese in East Timor,Japanese in
the Bonin Islands, Spanish on Easter Island.
There are also Creoles formed from the interaction of Malay or the colonial languages with indigenous
languages, such as Tok Pisin, Bislama, Chavacano, various Malay trade and creole languages, Hawaiian
Pidgin, Norfuk, and Pitkern.
Finally, immigrants brought their own languages, such as Mandarin, Italian, Arabic, Cantonese, Greek
and others in Australia,


HERITAGE
Under certain conditions, a Heritage must have the ff. : Sites that are being conserved with Cultural or
Natural importance.
A World Heritage Site is a location that is listed by UNESCO as having
outstanding cultural or natural value to the common heritage of humanity. The World Heritage
Committee has designated 32 World Heritage Sites in Oceania. These are in 11 countries, with the
majority of sites being located in Australia. The first three inscriptions from the region, the Great Barrier
Reef, Kakadu National Park and the Willandra Lakes, were in 1981three years after the list's
creation. The region contains the world's three largest sites: Phoenix Islands Protected
Area, Papahnaumokukea and the Great Barrier Reef. In addition, the Tasmanian Wilderness is one of
only two sites in the world that meet seven out of the ten criteria for World Heritage listing (Mount Tai in
China being the other).

Each year, the World Heritage Committee may inscribe new sites on the list, or delist sites that that no
longer meet the criteria. Selection is based on ten criteria: six for cultural heritage (ivi) and four for
natural heritage (viix). Some sites, designated "mixed sites", represent both cultural and natural heritage.
In Oceania there are 7 cultural, 19 natural and 5 mixed sites. UNESCO may also specify that a site is in
danger, stating "conditions which threaten the very characteristics for which a property was inscribed on
the World Heritage List." In 2013, the Committee added East Rennell to the List of World Heritage in
Danger because of the threat of logging activities to the site's outstanding universal value

The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system composed of over 2,900 individual
reefs and 900 islands stretching for over 2,300 kilometres (1,400 mi) over an area of approximately
344,400 square kilometres (133,000 sq mi). The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast
of Queensland, Australia.
The Great Barrier Reef can be seen from outer space and is the world's biggest single structure made by
living organisms. This reef structure is composed of and built by billions of tiny organisms, known
as coral polyps. It supports a wide diversity of life and was selected as a World Heritage Site in
1981. CNN labeled it one of the seven natural wonders of the world. The Queensland National Trust
named it a state icon of Queensland.
A large part of the reef is protected by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, which helps to limit the impact
of human use, such as fishing and tourism. Other environmental pressures on the reef and
its ecosystem include runoff, climate change accompanied by mass coral bleaching, and cyclic population
outbreaks of the crown-of-thorns starfish. According to a study published in October 2012 by
the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the reef has lost more than half its coral cover
since 1985.
The Great Barrier Reef has long been known to and used by the Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait
Islander peoples, and is an important part of local groups' cultures and spirituality. The reef is a very
popular destination for tourists, especially in the Whitsunday Islands and Cairns regions. Tourism is an
important economic activity for the region, generating over $3 billion per year

Kakadu National Park is a protected area in the Northern Territory of Australia, 171 km southeast
of Darwin.
Kakadu National Park is located within the Alligator Rivers Region of the Northern Territory of Australia. It
covers an area of 19,804 km
2
(7,646 sq mi), extending nearly 200 kilometres from north to south and over
100 kilometres from east to west. It is the size of Slovenia, about one-third the size of Tasmania, or nearly
half the size of Switzerland. The Ranger Uranium Mine, one of the most productive uranium mines in the
world, is surrounded by the park.

The Willandra Lakes Region is a World Heritage Site that covers 2,400 square kilometres in south-
western New South Wales, Australia.
The Region contains important natural and cultural features including exceptional examples of past
human civilization including the world's oldest cremation site. A small section of the region is protected by
the Mungo National Park.
The Willandra Lakes Region was added to the Australian National Heritage List in May 2007.









RELIGION
The predominant religion in Oceania is Christianity. Traditional religions are often animist and prevalent
among traditional tribes is the belief in spirits (masalai in Tok Pisin) representing natural forces. In recent
Australian and New Zealand censuses, large proportions of the population say they belong to "No
religion" (which includes atheism, agnosticism, secular humanism, and rationalism). In Tonga, everyday
life is heavily influenced by Polynesian traditions and especially by the Christian faith.
The Ahmadiyya mosque in Marshall islands is the only mosque in Micronesia. Another one
in Tuvalu belongs to the same sect. The Bah' House of Worship in Tiapapata, Samoa is one of seven
designations administered in the Baha'i faith.

Animism (from Latin animus, -i "soul, life") is the worldview that non-human entities (animals, plants, and
inanimate objects or phenomena) possess a spiritual essence.

Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense,
atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Most inclusively, atheism is the absence of
belief that any deities exist. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which in its most general form is the belief
that at least one deity exists.
The term atheism originated from the Greek (atheos), meaning "without god(s)", used as a
pejorative term applied to those thought to reject the gods worshipped by the larger society. With the
spread of free thought, skeptical inquiry, and subsequent increase in criticism of religion, application of
the term narrowed in scope. The first individuals to identify themselves using the word "atheist" lived in
the 18th century.

Agnosticism is the view that the truth values of certain claimsespecially claims about the existence or
non-existence of any deity, as well as other religious and metaphysical claimsare unknown or
unknowable. According to the philosopher William L. Rowe, in the popular sense, an agnostic is someone
who neither believes nor disbelieves in the existence of a deity or deities, whereas atheist and
an atheist believe and disbelieve, respectively.
Thomas Henry Huxley, an English biologist, coined the word agnostic in 1869. However, earlier thinkers
have written works that promoted agnostic points of view. These thinkers include Sanjaya Belatthaputta,
a 5th-century BCE Indian philosopher who expressed agnosticism about any afterlife, Protagoras, a 5th-
century BCE Greek philosopher was agnostic about the gods. The Nasadiya Sukta in the Rigveda is
agnostic about the origin of the universe.


Tonga ([toa]; Tongan: Puleanga Fakatui o Tonga), officially the Kingdom of Tonga, is
a Polynesian sovereign state and archipelago comprising 176 islands with a surface area of about 750
square kilometres (290 sq mi) scattered over 700,000 square kilometres (270,000 sq mi) of the
southern Pacific Ocean, of which 52 are inhabited by its 103,000 people.
Tonga stretches over about 800 kilometres (500 mi) in a north-south line about a third of the distance
from New Zealand to Hawaii. It is surrounded by Fiji and Wallis and Futuna (France) to the
northwest, Samoa to the northeast, Niue to the east, Kermadec (part of New Zealand) to the southwest,
and New Caledonia (France) and Vanuatu to the west.
Tonga became known as the Friendly Islands because of the congenial reception accorded to Captain
James Cook on his first visit in 1773. He arrived at the time of the inasi festival, the yearly donation of
the first fruits to the Tui Tonga (the islands' paramount chief) and so received an invitation to the
festivities. According to the writer William Mariner, the chiefs wanted to kill Cook during the gathering but
could not agree on a plan.

Polynesian culture refers to the indigenous peoples' culture of Polynesia who share common traits in
language, customs and society. Chronologically, the development of Polynesian culture can be divided
into four different historical eras:
Exploration and settlement (c. 1800 BC - c. 700 AD)
Development in isolation (c. 700 - 1595)
European discovery and colonization until World War II (1595 - 1946)
Modern times/After World War II (1945 to present)

Ahmadiyya is an Islamic religious movement founded in British India near the end of the 19th century. It
originated with the life and teachings of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (18351908), who claimed to have fulfilled
the prophecies of the world's reformer during the end times, who was to herald the Eschaton as predicted
in the traditions of various world religions and bring about the final triumph of Islam as per Islamic
prophecy. He claimed that he was the Mujaddid (divine reformer) of the 14th Islamic century, the
promised Messiah and Mahdi awaited by Muslims. The adherents of the Ahmadiyya movement are
referred to as Ahmadis or Ahmadi Muslims.


Sport
Pacific Games
The Pacific Games (formerly known as the South Pacific Games) is a multi-sport event, much like the
Olympics on a much smaller scale, with participation exclusively from countries around the Pacific. It is
held every four years and began in 1963. Australia and New Zealand do not compete at the Pacific
Games.
The Pacific Games (formerly known as the South Pacific Games) is a multi-sport event, much like
the Olympics (albeit on a much smaller scale), with participation exclusively from countries around
the South Pacific. It is held every four years and began in 1963, hosted by Suva, Fiji.