ABSTRACT
The term "Oceania" generally means the region of the tropical Pacific that includes Australia, Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia. Fiji belongs to a grouping of cultures known as Melanesia, which has as its westernmost point Papua New Guinea and spreads east with Fiji as the point furthest east. Vilsoni Hereniko comes from the island of Rotuma, a small island far-flung from the rest of Fiji. The plot of The Monster, which Hereniko wrote in response to the coup, involves two allegorical characters, a Fijian beggar and an Indian beggar. After the first people settled Australia, they remained relatively isolated from other groups of people. Open conflict between white Australians and Aboriginal Australians died down in the early twentieth century, but racial tension continued to exist. By the mid-nineteenth century, Australians successfully lobbied for voting rights. Jack Davis led various cultural organizations and wrote poetry. Polynesians began settling Aotearoa/New Zealand in the late thirteenth century and continued into the fourteenth century.
