Tokelauan people

Last updated
Tokelauan people
Tokelau dancers (7754981394) (2).jpg
Tokelauan dancers
Total population
c.10,000
Regions with significant populations
Flag of Tokelau.svg  Tokelau

Flag of New Zealand.svg  New Zealand

Flag of Samoa.svg  Samoa
Languages
Tokelauan, English
Religion
Congregationalism, Roman Catholic
Related ethnic groups
Other Polynesians

Tokelauan people are a Polynesian ethnic group native to Tokelau, a Polynesian archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, who share the Tokelauan Polynesian culture, history and language.

Contents

The group's home islands are a dependent territory of New Zealand. 77% of Tokelau's population of 1,650 claims Tokelauan ancestry, [1] while 8,676 Tokelauans live in New Zealand. [2] A small number also live in Samoa.

Language

The Tokelauan language is part of the Polynesian language family. Most Tokelauans are fluent in both English and Tokelauan. [3] There are approximately 4,000 speakers, the majority of whom live in New Zealand. [4]

Diaspora

The majority of Tokelauans live in New Zealand, concentrated in the large Wellington suburbs of the Hutt Valley and Porirua, [5] as well as Auckland. [2] They are the sixth largest Pacific Islander ethnic group in New Zealand, and one of the most socio-economically deprived. [5] Migration to New Zealand began in the 1950s and increased in the 1960s under a government resettlement scheme driven by fears of overpopulation and a tropical cyclone striking the islands. [6] The New Zealand-based population exceeded that of Tokelau in 1976, and immigration declined after that point. [6]

Culture

Religion

As of 2019, 50.4% of people belong to Congregational Christian Church while 38.7% belong to Catholic Church. The rest of the population adhere to various Christian denominations, such as Presbyterianism. [1] Roman Catholicism is mostly practiced in Nukunonu, whereas inhabitants of the islands of Atafu and Fakaofo adhere to the Congregationalism. Prior to the arrival of Christianity, Tokelauans worshiped a god named Tui Tokelau.

Sports

Netball, rugby, football and cricket are popular in Tokelau. Tokelau Games are held yearly.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Demographics of New Zealand</span>

The demographics of New Zealand encompass the gender, ethnic, religious, geographic, and economic backgrounds of the 5.1 million people living in New Zealand. New Zealanders predominantly live in urban areas on the North Island. The five largest cities are Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Hamilton, and Tauranga. Few New Zealanders live on New Zealand's smaller islands. Waiheke Island is easily the most populated smaller island with 9,390 residents, while Great Barrier Island, the Chatham and Pitt Islands, and Stewart Island each have populations below 1,000. New Zealand is part of a realm and most people born in the realm's external territories of Tokelau, the Ross Dependency, the Cook Islands and Niue are entitled to New Zealand passports.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tokelau</span> Dependent territory of New Zealand in the southern Pacific Ocean

Tokelau is a dependent territory of New Zealand in the southern Pacific Ocean. It consists of three tropical coral atolls: Atafu, Nukunonu, and Fakaofo. They have a combined land area of 10 km2 (4 sq mi). The capital rotates yearly among the three atolls. In addition to these three, Swains Island, which forms part of the same archipelago, is the subject of an ongoing territorial dispute; it is currently administered by the United States as part of American Samoa. Tokelau lies north of the Samoan Islands, east of Tuvalu, south of the Phoenix Islands, southwest of the more distant Line Islands, and northwest of the Cook Islands.

The culture of New Zealand is a synthesis of indigenous Māori, colonial British, and other cultural influences. The country's earliest inhabitants brought with them customs and language from Polynesia, and during the centuries of isolation, developed their own Māori and Moriori cultures. British colonists in the 19th century brought Western culture and had a dramatic effect on the indigenous inhabitants, spreading Western religious traditions and the English language. Over time, a distinct Pākehā or New Zealand European culture emerged.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pacific Islander</span> Person from the Pacific Islands

Pacific Islanders, Pasifika, Pasefika, Pacificans or rarely Pacificers are the peoples of the Pacific Islands. As an ethnic/racial term, it is used to describe the original peoples—inhabitants and diasporas—of any of the three major subregions of Oceania.

Polynesians form an ethnolinguistic group of closely related people who are native to Polynesia, an expansive region of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean. They trace their early prehistoric origins to Island Southeast Asia and form part of the larger Austronesian ethnolinguistic group with an Urheimat in Taiwan. They speak the Polynesian languages, a branch of the Oceanic subfamily of the Austronesian language family. The Indigenous Māori people constitute the largest Polynesian population, followed by Samoans, Native Hawaiians, Tahitians, Tongans and Cook Islands Māori

Tokelauan is a Polynesian language spoken in Tokelau and on Swains Island in American Samoa. It is closely related to Tuvaluan and is related to Samoan and other Polynesian languages. Tokelauan has a co-official status with English in Tokelau. There are approximately 4,260 speakers of Tokelauan, of whom 2,100 live in New Zealand, 1,400 in Tokelau, and 17 in Swains Island. "Tokelau" means "north-northeast".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Zealanders</span> People from New Zealand

New Zealanders, colloquially known as Kiwis, are people associated with New Zealand, sharing a common history, culture, and language. People of various ethnicities and national origins are citizens of New Zealand, governed by its nationality law.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atafu</span>

Atafu, formerly known as the Duke of York Group, is a group of 52 coral islets within Tokelau in the south Pacific Ocean, 500 kilometres north of Samoa. With a land area of 2.5 square kilometres, it is the smallest of the three islands that constitute Tokelau. It is an atoll and surrounds a central lagoon, which covers some 15 km2 (5.8 sq mi). The atoll lies 800 kilometres south of the equator at 8° 35' South, 172° 30' West.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Zealand</span>

New Zealand is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island and the South Island —and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island country by area and lies east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and south of the islands of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga. The country's varied topography and sharp mountain peaks, including the Southern Alps, owe much to tectonic uplift and volcanic eruptions. New Zealand's capital city is Wellington, and its most populous city is Auckland.

Loimata Ahela Iupati is a senior administrator and educator from the Pacific territory of Tokelau.

Pitcairn Islanders, also referred to as Pitkerners and Pitcairnese, are the native inhabitants of the Pitcairn Islands, a British Overseas Territory including people whose families were previously inhabitants and maintaining cultural connections. Most Pitcairn Islanders are descendants of the Bounty mutineers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Māori people</span> Indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand

Māori are the indigenous Polynesian people of mainland New Zealand. Māori originated with settlers from East Polynesia, who arrived in New Zealand in several waves of canoe voyages between roughly 1320 and 1350. Over several centuries in isolation, these settlers developed their own distinctive culture, whose language, mythology, crafts, and performing arts evolved independently from those of other eastern Polynesian cultures. Some early Māori moved to the Chatham Islands, where their descendants became New Zealand's other indigenous Polynesian ethnic group, the Moriori.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Foua Toloa</span> Tokelauan politician

Foua Toloa was a Tokelauan politician who served as the Head of the Government of Tokelau, or Ulu, from 21 February 2009, to 21 February 2010. He was a member of the Council for the Ongoing Government of Tokelau, and was a faipule on Fakaofo. As the office of Ulu rotates on an annual basis, Toloa resumed office on 21 February 2011. For a time in 2011-2012, he was also Tokelau's minister for Finance, Telecommunication, Energy and Transport.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Languages of Tokelau</span>

Tokelau has two official languages: Tokelauan and English. Over 90% of the population speaks Tokelauan, and just under 60% speak English. Also, 45.8% of the population speak Samoan, and small percentages of the population speak Tuvaluan and Kiribati.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Polynesian Leaders Group</span>

The Polynesian Leaders Group (PLG) is an international governmental cooperation group bringing together four independent countries and eight self-governing territories in Polynesia.

Japanese New Zealanders are New Zealand citizens of Japanese ancestry, which may include Japanese immigrants and descendants born in New Zealand. Japanese people first began immigrating to New Zealand in the 1890s. Until 1920, 14 Japanese citizens resided in New Zealand. Japanese immigration was halted during the period of the Pacific War and recommenced around the 1950s. From this period onwards, Japanese immigration remained small until the 1990s. In 1997, Japanese peoples were the 19th-largest ethnic group in New Zealand. As of the 2018 census, 18,141 New Zealand residents identify themselves as Japanese New Zealanders.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Religion in Tokelau</span>

The vast majority of people in Tokelau are Christians and Christianity plays a significant role in the Tokelauan way of life.

Momoe Malietoa Von Reiche is a Samoan poet, artist, sculptor, photographer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Susana Lemisio</span>

Susana Tetane Lemisio is a community organiser and educator from Tokelau.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pasifika New Zealanders</span> Ethnic group in New Zealand

Pasifika New Zealanders are a pan-ethnic group of New Zealanders associated with, and descended from, the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Islands outside of New Zealand itself. They form the fourth-largest ethnic grouping in the country, after European-descended Pākehā, indigenous Māori, and Asian New Zealanders. There are over 380,000 Pasifika people in New Zealand, with the majority living in Auckland. 8% of the population of New Zealand identifies as being of Pacific origin.

References

  1. 1 2 "Tokelau". CIA World Factbook. Retrieved 18 August 2021.
  2. 1 2 "Tokelauan ethnic group". Statistics New Zealand. Retrieved 18 August 2021.
  3. Huntsman, Judith. "Culture of Tokelau". World Culture Encyclopedia. Advameg.
  4. John Middleton (28 October 2020). "Is Tokelauan facing extinction?". University of Auckland. Retrieved 18 August 2021.
  5. 1 2 "Living the Tokelauan Way in New Zealand". Social Policy Journal of New Zealand (35). 2009. Retrieved 18 August 2021.
  6. 1 2 Carl Walrond (25 March 2015). "Tokelauans - Immigration". Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Retrieved 18 August 2021.