The Pacific Islands consist of thousands of islands of varying sizes in the Pacific Ocean. Together, the region encompasses about one-third of the earth’s surface. The Pacific Islands are organized into three ethnogeographic groupings: Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia.

The Melanesian islands are located north and east of Australia and south of the Equator. This region includes the independent nations of Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Fiji, and Vanuatu, as well as other islands including but not limited to the Indonesian part of New Guinea, New Caledonia, and the Torres Strait Islands.

The Micronesian islands are north of Melanesia and the Equator and east of the Philippines. This region consists of about 2,000 islands, many of which are part of four main archipelagos: the Caroline Islands, the Gilbert Islands, the Mariana Islands, and the Marshall Islands. The U.S. territories of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands are part of Micronesia.

The Polynesian islands are located in the central and southern Pacific Ocean and include over 1,000 islands. Geographically, the Polynesian islands form a triangle with the Hawaiian islands in the north, New Zealand to the southwest, and Easter Islands to the southeast. Within the triangle, island groups include but are not limited to Tonga, Samoa, and Cook Islands.

The names Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia were given by Europeans. Polynesia, which means “many islands,” was named first and referred to all of the islands in the Pacific. Later explorers further grouped the islands into Melanesia, which refers to the dark skin of the islands’ inhabitants, and Micronesia, referring to the many tiny islands in the region.

For centuries, Pacific Islanders have established effective governing and economic systems. Most Pacific Island societies relied on systems of reciprocity. The islands in close proximity may have developed regular trade. Voyagers in the Pacific Islands had developed sophisticated systems of seafaring and navigation.

During the 16th and 17th centuries, European explorers began to arrive on the Pacific Islands. These trips generally only lasted a few months, and the explorers engaged in simple barter with the islanders. By the 18th century, Europeans began to establish permanent settlements in the Pacific Islands, ultimately leading to colonial rule by France, Great Britain, Germany, Australia, Japan, and the United States.

U.S. colonization changed the Pacific Islands. Most Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities have a complex relationship with the United States due to colonization and militarization. Under the concept of Manifest Destiny in the 19th century, many Americans believed the United States was “destined” for expansion across North America and beyond, which empowered the United States government to claim lands as their own, often without the consent of the people who were already living there.

Because of their strategic location in the Pacific Ocean, the Pacific Islands were considered desirable military locations. For example, the Marshall Islands were used for nuclear weapons testing during World War II (1939-1945), which destroyed land, drove people away from their homes, and exposed people to radiation, leading to increased rates of various cancers.

Hawaiʻi is one Pacific Island that has been greatly impacted by U.S. colonization. It became the fiftieth U.S. state in 1959, after it was annexed in 1898 following the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy by American sugar planters. Native Hawaiians have had mixed responses to statehood. Many in the Native Hawaiian sovereignty movement view the annexation of Hawaiʻi and overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi as illegal, and believe that statehood has led to the loss of their indigenous land and culture. Goals within the movement vary, ranging from federal recognition of Hawaiians as Native people to seeking the reestablishment of an independent nation. Others recognize some of the benefits of statehood, such as the right to vote, representation in the federal government, and economic growth. Today, Native Hawaiians continue to fight for sovereignty and self-determination.

Territories have a different relationship with the United States. Three of the Pacific Islands are U.S. territories: Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa. (The two other U.S. territories are Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.) People who live in U.S. territories are American citizens, but unlike U.S. states, territories do not have a vote in Congress. While they send a delegate to the House of Representatives and to political conventions, they have no voting rights for legislation and no electoral votes in presidential elections.

Guam had been a Spanish colony since the 1500s, and came under the United States control with the signing of the 1898 Treaty of Paris between Spain and the United States. During World War II, Japan occupied Guam for 2.5 years, before control was returned to the United States in 1944. Also under the 1898 Treaty of Paris, Spain sold the Mariana Islands to Germany. The Mariana Islands then came under Japanese control at the start of World War I in 1914. When Japan surrendered to the United States in World War II, the United States took control over the Northern Mariana Islands in 1945. American Samoa came under U.S. control in 1899 under the Treaty of Berlin, which separated the Samoan Islands and gave the eastern islands to the United States. These complex relationships with the United States have created various pathways for these Pacific Islanders to come to the Continental United States.

Because of these dynamics, many Pacific Islanders who live in the United States have a complicated relationship with the United States. Despite having distinct cultures, languages, histories, experiences, and concerns, Pacific Islanders are often grouped with Asian Americans in the United States. For some, this feels like another form of marginalization.

From 1960 to 1990, the U.S. Census counted Pacific Islanders and Native Hawaiians with Asians. In 1990, they introduced the term “Asian or Pacific Islander.” In 1997, the Office of Management and Budget (the federal office responsible for creating racial categories used on the Census) created two different groups: “Asian” and “Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander.” These groupings first appeared in the 2000 Census and are still used today.

Despite the Census separating the two groups in 1997, they are still commonly combined today. For example, the term “Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islanders (AANHPI)” is commonly used. While Hawaiʻi is part of the Pacific Islands, Native Hawaiians are explicitly named, most likely due to Hawaiʻi being a state. After Hawaiʻi became a state in 1959, the U.S. Census included “Hawaiian” in the 1960 Census, then began using the term “Native Hawaiian'' in the 2000 Census.

Native Hawaiians, or Kānaka Maoli, are the indigenous people of Hawaiʻi. This means they have indigenous ancestry to the islands, as opposed to being a resident of Hawaiʻi. Residents refer to people who have moved there, including those whose families have been there for generations.

“Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI)”* is another term frequently used today. The term gained prominence in the 1980s and was meant to broaden the umbrella of “Asian American” by including Pacific Islanders to show unity and increase political power. However, it can be limiting and lead to erasure of Pacific Islander communities. While the term is meant to be inclusive of many communities, it can actually lead to conflating these communities and assuming a monolithic identity and experience for everyone under the AAPI label.

The AAPI grouping can also hide disparities between the two groups in data. When grouped together, differences in areas such as health, education, and income can get lost, and the unique concerns of small, vulnerable groups can be ignored or minimized. This can have serious consequences when it comes to the distribution of funding and resources. For example, later data showed that COVID disproportionately impacted Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander populations. But early data masked these disparities by combining Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, so funding and resources were not equitably distributed to the communities being hardest hit by the pandemic.

In recent years, the term “Pasifika” has gained traction amongst Pacific Islanders as an identifier. This term was created in Aotearoa (the Māori language name for New Zealand) in the 1980s to describe Indigenous migrants from the Pacific Islands. It was created to distinguish these migrants from the Māori, who are the tangata whenua, or “people of the land.” Use of the term is part of a growing movement to name their own community, rejecting terms such as Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia, which were invented by Europeans. Pasifika also seeks to empower Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders as distinct from Asian Americans.

While there are many issues with grouping Pacific Islanders with Asian Americans, there are some arguments for maintaining the label. Because the Pacific Islander population in the United States is very small, being a part of the AAPI label can have some positive impacts for visibility. There is also power in numbers, as Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders can unite to voice shared concerns and work in solidarity.