ABSTRACT
Oceanic languages are spoken by people who live in a wide variety of social, political and economic circumstances. We find people living in fully independent political entities such as Tonga (which was never formally colonised), recently independent states such as Samoa and Solomon Islands, self-governing but not fully independent territories such as the Cook Islands (associated with New Zealand) and the Federated States of Micronesia (associated with the United States of America), still dependent territories of various kinds such as Tokelau (a New Zealand dependency), New Caledonia (a French dependency) and Easter Island (a Chilean dependency), as well as the politically fully integrated Maori in New Zealand, Hawaiians in Hawai'i, and Melanesians in Irian Jaya (which is now an integral part of Indonesia).
