BROKENSHIRE COLLEGE

Madapo Hills, Davao City

Group Reporting on

Decent Work Employment and Transcultural Nursing

(NCM 120 Lecture)

Submitted to:

Mr. Louie Uy, RN, MN

Submitted by:

Otagan, Kyle Gillian G.

Phillips, Sheila Mae

Pepito Melissa

Ortega, Juliza

Ong, Karl

October 10, 2022

Oceania’s Culture and Cultural Values

Oceania is a geographical region that includes Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia,

and Polynesia. Spanning the Eastern and Western hemispheres, Oceania is estimated
to have a land area of 8,525,989 square kilometres and a population of around 44.5
million as of 2021.

Australasia is a term used to describe a region within Oceania. The physical countries,

islands or regions that comprise Australasia include the nations of Australia and New
Zealand islands of the South Pacific, including Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea,
and adjacent islands

Melanesia is a subregion of Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It extends

from Sumba in the west to Tonga in the east, and includes the Arafura Sea and a few
thousand islands. The region includes the four independent countries of Fiji, Vanuatu,
the Solomon Islands, and Papua New Guinea.

The Federated States of Micronesia is a country spread across the western Pacific
Ocean comprising more than 600 islands. Micronesia is made up of 4 island states:
Pohnpei, Kosrae, Chuuk and Yap. The country is known for palm-shaded beaches,
wreck-filled dives and ancient ruins, including Nan Madol, sunken basalt temples and
burial vaults that extend out of a lagoon on Pohnpei.

Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, made up of more than 1,000 islands scattered

over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. Polynesia may be described as the
islands within a triangle with its corners at Hawaiian Islands, New Zealand,
and Easter Island. A Polynesian island group outside of this great triangle is Tuvalu.
There are small Polynesian enclaves in the Solomon Islands and in Vanuatu.

Social Organization
A system of government is the structure by which a country is run. Some examples
are democracy, communism, dictatorship, monarchy and republic. Australia has a
mixed system of government; it is a representative democracy and a constitutional
monarchy. It is also a federation of states.

Under the 1979 constitution, the government of the Federated States

of Micronesia consists of executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Micronesians
were indulgent with infants. Children were inducted into adult life gradually, through
observation and participation. There was little in the way of formal schooling or
initiation ceremonies in most Micronesian societies.

The societies of precolonial Melanesia characteristically organized themselves into

local groups that were based on kinship and descent and linked together by
intermarriage. Under this system, domestic groups or individuals typically held rights
over gardens and cultivated trees, while local kin groups held corporate title to
the land itself.
Polynesian governments vary. The independent nations replaced hereditary chiefs
with constitutions providing for executives and legislatures. In Tonga, politics are
controlled by a hereditary king, who serves as head of state and appoints the head of
government. In the nations that have entered pacts with the United States or New
Zealand, the pattern is for local self-government with matters of defense overseen by
the foreign power.

Ethnocentrism
The Pacific Islands, home to the world's most diverse range of indigenous cultures,
continue to sustain many ancestral life-ways. Fewer than 6.5 million in all, the
peoples of Oceania possess a vast repository of cultural traditions and ecological
adaptations.

Papua New Guinea is home to one-third of the world's languages- Oceania thus has
the most to lose, culturally speaking, from the pressures of global political and
economic change.

Pacific Island peoples occupy an array of environments, from Papua New Guinea's
massive mountains to the atolls and lagoons of European fantasy to Auckland New
Zealand's urban jungles

Pacific societies are small and vulnerable. A typical linguistic group consists of only a
few thousand people, for example, can have drastic consequences for cultural
survival. Indeed, many cases of "language death"- the disappearance of not only a
spoken language but the cultural memory that goes with it.

Politics of Culture
Oceanic peoples are anything but typical. The Pacific Islands are the most
aiddpendent region in the world. Foreign-owned multinational companies extract
timber, minerals, oil, fish, and other natural resources. Economic dependence has
forced many island governments to promote large-scale development, rapidly expand
tourism, and accede to the military ambitions of past and present colonial powers.

Migration and Cultural Identity

Islanders whose seafaring ancestors discovered and settled remote archipelagos
remain enthusiastic travelers. Migration beyond the Pacific began when Cook and
other explorers took curious Islanders to Europe.

Some people migrate within Pacific Islands states. Competition for land along with
educational and economic opportunities push Islanders toward urban centers. Other
migrants travel further within the Pacific or beyond to Australia, the United States,
and Canada. Auckland has become the world's largest Polynesian city, with
immigrants from Somoa, Tonga, and the Cook Islands. Some host countries have
endeavored to limit immigration, yet migration remains necessary.
Development and Cultural Survival
Economic circumstance encourages island states to open themselves up to another,
perhaps equally polluting, import. Pacific states capitalize on the beauty of their
islands and the diversity of their cultures to attract tourists, turning themselves and
their land and seascapes into commodities.

Islanders now encounter the world through videotape and television. In most Pacific
Islands, these technologies are too recent to judge their effects. Their spreading
popularity, however, and the appearance of Rambo and Kung Fu on the most remote
atolls and reefs, testify to the importance of concerns for the state of the indigenous
peoples of Oceania.

Oceania’s Concept of Time

Oceania is the second-smallest continent after Antarctica, covering approximately 8.5

million km2. Oceania is geographically divided
intoAustralasia, Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia. The World Time Zone Map
shows that 12 time zones are used throughout the region, ranging from UTC-9 to
UTC+14. Some countries and territories offset their time from UTC by partial hours,
meaning that they do not use full-hour time zones. Australia, the region’s largest
country, uses up to three time zones. Most Oceanian countries do not observe
Daylight Saving Time.

Australasia Time Zones

Australasia comprises New Zealand, Australia, and the surrounding islands. Australia

observes three time zones ranging from UTC+8 to UTC+10. These time zones are
Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST), Australian Central Standard Time
(ACST), and Australian Western Standard Time (AWST). 

Melanesia Time Zones

Three time zones are observed in this region, ranging from UTC+10 to UTC+12.
Papua New Guinea uses two time zones (UTC+10 and UTC+11), while the Solomon
Islands and Vanuatu observe UTC+11. Fiji uses UTC+12.

Micronesia Time Zones

Micronesia has four time zones, ranging from UTC+10 to UTC+13. The Mariana
Islands, comprising Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, use Chamorro Time
Zone (UTC+10), while the Caroline Islands (Papua and FSM) observe UTC+10 and
UTC+11. Kiribati uses UTC+12 to UTC+14 and has the latest time on Earth. Nauru
uses UTC+12.

Polynesia Time Zones

The time zones in the region range from UTC+12 to UTC-9. While Tuvalu
(Polynesia’s westernmost island) observes UTC+12, Easter Island, the region’s
easternmost island, uses UTC-6.
Oceania’s Culture and Cultural Beliefs

Oceanian culture encompasses the collective and diverse customs and traditions of art,
architecture, music, literature, lifestyle, philosophy, politics and religion that have
been practiced and maintained by the numerous ethnic groups of the geographical
region of Oceania since prehistory.

Christianity is the largest religion in Australia. Culture is heavily influenced by

British colonization. Most practice some form of Christianity The official language is
Australian English. Pastimes also influenced by the British but still, they have things
of their own. Rugby, brought by the British, is a very popular (and violent) sport in
Australia Australians main values support equal rights and equal opportunity. Aussie's
are known for being open-hearted and open-minded and think that everyone has the
right to get a fair go

New Zealand is a multicultural country with the five largest ethnic groups being New
Zealand European, Māori, Chinese, Samoan and Indian.As a multicultural society, its
people are very welcoming and friendly towards visitors from other ethnicities,
making it easy to make friends, build relationships and assimilate into society. As
well as its ethnic diversity, the country is also home to many different religions.
Although Christianity is the predominant religion in New Zealand, many also follow
Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, as well as Ringatū and Rātana.

Melanesians had a strong orientation to ancestors and the past, but it was a
past manifested in the present, with ancestral ghosts and other spirits participating in
everyday social life. he presence and effects of ghosts and spirits were manifested in
dreams, revealed in divination, and inferred from human success or failure, prosperity
or disaster, and health or death. In such a world, religion was not a separate sphere of
the transcendental but a part of everyday life. Melanesian art is highly varied. In much
of highland New Guinea, the body itself becomes a focus for art; face and body
painting, wigs and headdresses, and elaborate costumes are all used.

Traditional Micronesian life was characterized by a belief in the stability of society

and culture. People suffered occasional natural disasters, such as cyclones or
droughts, but their goal after encountering one of these was to reconstitute the
previous state of affairs. Traditionally, the most important property among the
Micronesians was land. Prominent art forms include body painting and
ornamentation, singing, dancing, and the recitation of myths, tales, and poetry.

Polynesian belief systems emphasized animism, a perspective in which all things,

animate and inanimate, were believed to be endowed to a greater or lesser degree with
sacred supernatural power. Polynesian performance art was highly developed and,
like the region’s indigenous languages and literature, enjoyed a resurgence in the late
20th century. Of sculpture, painting, textiles, and many other freestanding art forms,
little of what once existed has survived to the present day. Polynesians have acquired
a reputation as great navigators—their canoes reached the most remote corners of the
Pacific, allowing the settlement of islands as far apart as Hawaii, Rapanui and
Aotearoa.