BACKGROUND AND SUMMARY
THE PACIFIC
YOU MAY BE AWARE OF...
THE POLYNESIAN KINGDOM OF TONGA
CONCLUSIONS (of a Sort!)
SELECTED REFERENCES
BACKGROUND and SUMMARY
"My last Anthropology Forum was on September 23, 2021 and this is my 43rd Forum presentation. At the beginning of the 1973 Academic Year, Professor Turhon Murad made the first Forum presentation and I did the second one on November 7, 1973. Today's presentation deals with changes in the South Pacific. The Polynesian Kingdom of Tonga was the location of my Ph.D. research and my wife, Sadie, and I lived there in 1970 and again 1971. Between residency in Tonga, archival research was conducted in Australia and New Zealand. Since 2004, as a result of providing lectures on numerous Pacific cruises, Sadie and I have been fortunate to return to Tonga many times since 1971. We have also been fortunate to see some of the many physical and cultural changes that have taken place on certain islands in the South Pacific since 1970!
THE PACIFIC
The Pacific Ocean is the largest geographical feature on the planet. Not only have the islands of the Pacific undergone numerous physical changes over thousands of years but the culture of the human inhabitants of those islands has also changed over time. You may be aware of the event in mid-January 2022, centered on the Kingdom of Tonga, which rippled around the globe. I shall try to summarize events since then as best as I can. Changes in the Pacific have occurred in the physical realm as well as the cultural realm and there are undoubtedly more changes to come!
YOU MAY BE AWARE OF...
On 15 January 2022 a volcanic eruption occurred on the island of Hunga-Tonga Hunga-Ha'apai, located some 40 miles (65 kilometers) northwest of the island of Tongatapu. Modest volcanic activity on Hunga-Tonga Hunga-Ha'apai began on 20 December 2021 and was being followed by the Tonga Geological Services.
In January 2022, after the volcano erupted (sending ash ~24 miles or ~39 kilometers above the surface of the Earth), a tsunami spread throughout the Pacific Ocean and various recording stations were able to document the impact of the tsunami. Experts were also able to follow the air pressure wave from the volcanic explosion and the pressure wave reached the United Kingdom some14.5 hours after the eruption, ~10,200 miles (~16,500 kilometers) from Tonga!
THE POLYNESIAN KINGDOM OF
TONGA
When Sadie and I lived in Nuku'alofa in 1970 and 1971, the population of the entire Kingdom was ~100,000 individuals (distributed among 169 islands). The majority of Tongans lived on Tongatapu, location of the capital of Nuku'alofa, and still continue to do so. In 2022, current information indicates that ~105,000 individuals still reside throughout the Tongan islands with ~60,000 Tongans living in either Australia or New Zealand and ~30,000 Tongans living in the United States of America or elsewhere. The January 2022 volcanic explosion did not do a tremendous amount of extreme damage to this Polynesian Kingdom and only three individuals died as a direct result of the eruption but there was damage.
Donations have been coming into the Kingdom from various sources, including Australia, New Zealand, the United States of America, and the People's Republic of China.
CONCLUSIONS (OF A SORT!)
The Polynesian Kingdom of Tonga has survived, and will survive the effects of the volcanic explosion of 15 January 2022, but what will the future bring? According to a very recent World Bank report (The January 15, 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai Eruption and Tsunami, Tonga) , the Kingdom's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will decline by 18.5% as a result of the explosion. In addition to the loss of income from exports and the devastation to the tourism section of the economy, one must speculate about the result of increased dependence on "donations" and "loans" as a result of the volcanic explosion. Tonga is not the only Pacific island group that receives aid from other nations and the People's Republic of China is a major player in Pacific affairs. The celebrated "Belt and Road Initiative" (or BRI), which you should be aware of, has global implications and hence, the title of this presentation about "South Pacific Changes." Any "conclusions" presented this day are strictly speculative!
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SELECTED REFERENCES
In our 21st Century world your attention should obviously be drawn to a variety of "search engines" to gather additional information about today's presentation. Two web locations well worth looking into include Matangi Tonga (matangitonga.to), the excellent on-line newspaper website (published in Nuku'alofa) with Tongan news (and appropriate world news) as well as XINHUANET (englishnews.cn), the Xinhua News Agency (or the New China News Agency), the official state press agency of the People's Republic of China.
The Urbanowicz links for the following web pages were all working as of this presentation and could be of some interest to you.
2021 https://curbanowicz.yourweb.csuchico.edu/FORUMSeptember2021.html [Fifty Years An Anthropologist!] For the Anthropology
Forum at CSU, Chico, September 23.]
2005 https://curbanowicz.yourweb.csuchico.edu/Tahiti2005.html[Tahiti: From 1971 To 2004/2005! For the Anthropology Forum at CSU, Chico, May 5, 2005.]
1991b https://curbanowicz.yourweb.csuchico.edu/UrbanowiczOnTonga-1991.pdf[Tonga. Encyclopedia of World Cultures, edited by D. Levinson (Boston:
Hall-Macmillan), pp. 336-339].
1989a https://curbanowicz.yourweb.csuchico.edu/Tourism_in_Tonga_revisited.pdf[Tourism in Tonga Revisited: Continued Troubled
Times? Hosts And Guests: The
Anthropology of Tourism,
edited by V. Smith, 2nd Edition (University of Pennsylvania), pp. 105-117.]
1977a https://curbanowicz.yourweb.csuchico.edu/Tourism_in_Tonga.pdf [Tourism in Tonga: Troubled Times. Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology
of Tourism, edited by V.
Smith (University of Pennsylvania), pp. 83-92.]
1977b https://curbanowicz.yourweb.csuchico.edu/MotivesAndMethods.pdf [Motives and Methods: Missionaries in Tonga in the Early 19th
Century. The Journal of the
Polynesian Society, Vol. 86, No. 2:
245-263.]
1976 https://curbanowicz.yourweb.csuchico.edu/Pub_Papers/John_Thomas.html[John
Thomas, Tongans, and Tonga! The
Tonga Chronicle (July 15, 1976), Nuku'alofa, Tonga, Vol. 13, No. 7: 7.]
1975 https://curbanowicz.yourweb.csuchico.edu/ChangeInRankAndStatus.pdf[Change in Rank and Status in the Polynesian Kingdom
of Tonga.] Psychological
Anthropology, edited by T. R.
Williams (Mouton), pp. 559-575.
1973 https://curbanowicz.yourweb.csuchico.edu/TonganAdoption.pdf[Tongan
Adoption Before The Constitution of 1875. Ethnohistory, Vol. 20, No. 2: 109-123.]
1972 https://curbanowicz.yourweb.csuchico.edu/1972TonganPaper.html [Tongan Social Structure: Data From An Ethnographic Reconstruction. For
the 71st Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Toronto,
Canada, December 2, 1972].
OTHER REFERENCES of interest:
United Nations, 2022, Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai Volcano Eruption.
World Bank Staff, 2022, THE JANUARY 15, 2022 HUNGA TONGA-HUNGA HA'APAI ERUPTION AND TSUNAMI, TONGA: GLOBAL RAPID POST DISASTER DAMAGE (GRADE) REPORT [https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/GRADE-Report-Tonga-Volcanic-Eruption.pdf]
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