Popular Culture Review 30.2
gles . About 85 percent of the population is rural and often nearly self-sufficient . Still , over one-fourth of the more than 2 million Micronesians , Melanesians , and Polynesians live in cities or move to metropolitan centers in Australia , New Zealand , and the United States ( Lindstrom 5 – 6 ).
Despite diversity , all Pacific societies are small and vulnerable . A typical native group consists of only a few thousand people , and this has drastic consequences for cultural survival ( Lindstrom 6 ). Before contact with the West in 1778 , an estimated 1 million Native Hawaiians lived in the Hawaiian archipelago . By 1892 , this number had diminished to 40,000 ( Dudley & Agard 87 ). In 1990 , there were a mere 8,244 full-blooded Native Hawaiians left , 992,000 less people than before Western contact , a decrease of more than 99 percent ( Dudley & Agard 88 ). Declining numbers of the Native Hawaiian population threatens the legacy of Hawaiian identity , culture , and livelihood . Environmental forces also pose a major threat to island communities . In Fiji and Samoa , the damage from recent major storms to villages and national infrastructure will take years to rebuild ( Lindstrom 6 ).
As observed , to Oceanic people , culture and nature play hand-in-hand with each other . It is a distinct relationship in which the suffering of one affects the other . This idea of the culture – nature relationship has been embedded at the inception of Pacific culture . For example , Hawaiians cherish a value called aloha aina ( caring for the land ). Aloha aina is spiritually recognized during the course of life and death . Hawaiian cultural historian and practitioner Rita Knipe states that , “ the land is religion . It is alive , respected , treasured , praised , and even worshipped . The land is one Hawaiian , sands of our birth , and resting place for our bones . The land lives as do the spirits of our ancestors who nurtured both physical and spiritual relationships with the land ” ( 33 ).
168