Gilbert Islands in the context of "List of islands of Kiribati"

Micronesia (UK: /ˌmaɪkrəˈniːziə/, US: /-ˈniːʒə/ ) is a subregion of Oceania, consisting of approximately 2,000 small islands in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean. It has a close shared cultural history with three other island regions: Maritime Southeast Asia to the west, Polynesia to the east, and Melanesia to the south—as well as with the wider community of Austronesian peoples.

The region has a tropical marine climate and is part of the Oceanian realm. It includes four main archipelagos—the Caroline Islands, the Gilbert Islands, the Mariana Islands, and the Marshall Islands — as well as numerous islands that are not part of any archipelago.

Kiribati, officially the Republic of Kiribati, is an island country in the Micronesia sub-region of Oceania in the central Pacific Ocean. The state comprises 32 atolls and other islands and one remote raised coral island, Banaba. Its total land area is 811 km (313 sq mi) dispersed over 3,441,810 km (1,328,890 sq mi) of ocean. The spread of the country's islands, from Banaba in the west to Kiritimati in the east straddles the equator and the 180th meridian. The International Date Line goes around Kiribati and swings far to the east, almost reaching 150°W. This brings Kiribati's easternmost islands, the southern Line Islands south of Hawaii, into the same day as the Gilbert Islands and places them in the most advanced time zone on Earth: UTC+14.

The permanent population of Kiribati is over 119,000 as of the 2020 census, and more than half live on Tarawa. There is also a significant number of I-Kiribati forming a diaspora, the largest of which still growing via emigration is probably in New Zealand; historically, diasporic communities were created through over-population resettlement in the Solomon Islands on Ghizo and Wagina, and through intermarriage in the United Kingdom and United States. Another country with growing diasporic communities born of recent labour immigration is Australia.

Banaba (/bəˈnɑːbə/; formerly Ocean Island) is an island of Kiribati in the Pacific Ocean. A solitary raised coral island west of the Gilbert Island Chain, it is the westernmost point of Kiribati, lying 185 miles (298 km) east of Nauru, which is also its nearest neighbour. It has an area of six square kilometres (2.3 sq mi), and the highest point on the island is also the highest point in Kiribati, at 81 metres (266 ft) in height. Along with Nauru and Makatea (French Polynesia), it is one of the important elevated phosphate-rich islands of the Pacific.

South Sea Islanders, also known as Australian South Sea Islanders (ASSI) and formerly referred to as Kanakas, are the Australian descendants of Pacific Islanders from more than 80 islands – including the Oceanian archipelagoes of the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji, the Gilbert Islands, and New Ireland – who were kidnapped or recruited between the mid to late 19th century as labourers in the sugarcane fields of Queensland. Some were kidnapped or tricked (or "blackbirded") into long-term indentured servitude or slavery, despite the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 criminalising slavery in Australia and other parts of the British Empire. At its height, the recruiting accounted for over half the adult male population of some islands.

Today, the majority of South Sea Islanders are also Aboriginal Australians or Torres Strait Islanders. As of the 2021 census, there were 7,228 people who claimed South Sea Islander ancestry in Australia, 5,562 of whom lived in Queensland. However, this is lower than the actual number of people with South Sea Islander heritage, with the true number estimated to be as high as 20,000 in Queensland alone as of 2022. The largest South Sea Islanders community is in the city of Mackay, where approximately 5,000 South Sea Islanders reside (approximately 5.93% of Mackay's population).

Tarawa is an atoll and the capital of the Republic of Kiribati, in the Micronesia region of the central Pacific Ocean. It comprises North Tarawa, which has 6,629 inhabitants and much in common with other more remote islands of the Gilbert group, and South Tarawa, which has 56,388 inhabitants as of 2015, half of the country's total population. The atoll was the site of the Battle of Tarawa during World War II.

Ambilineality is a form of kinship affiliation of cognatic descent that relies on self-defined affiliation within a given social system, meaning individuals have the choice to be affiliated with their mother's or father's group. Common features of societies that practice ambilineality are a shared set of land, communal responsibilities, and collective ownership of some segments of wealth and debt in their societies. This system of descent is distinct from more common genealogical structures in that rather than determining affiliation and descent using the standard determinants of biological and genealogical relation, it instead relies heavily on voluntary affiliation with one's group, oftentimes being determined by factors including residence.

Societies practicing ambilineal descent are especially common in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. Polynesian cultures and Micronesian cultures are often ambilineal, including, for example, Samoans, Māori, Hawaiians and people of the Gilbert Islands. The indigenous peoples of Northwestern North America are also followers of ambilineality; and it is also found among the Southern Yoruba people residing in West Africa.

The Phoenix Islands, or Rawaki, are a group of eight atolls and two submerged coral reefs that lie east of the Gilbert Islands and west of the Line Islands in the central Pacific Ocean, north of Samoa. They are part of the Republic of Kiribati. Their combined land area is 28 square kilometres (11 sq mi). The only island of any commercial importance is Canton Island (also called Abariringa). The other islands are Enderbury, Rawaki (formerly Phoenix), Manra (formerly Sydney), Birnie, McKean, Nikumaroro (formerly Gardner), and Orona (formerly Hull).

The Phoenix Islands Protected Area, established in 2008, is one of the world's largest protected areas and is home to about 120 species of coral and more than 500 species of fish. The Phoenix Islands are uninhabited, except for a few families who live on Canton Island.

Blackbirding was the trade in indentured labourers from the Pacific in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It is often described as a form of slavery, despite the Slave Trade Act 1807 and the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 abolishing slavery throughout the British Empire, including Australia. The trade frequently relied on coercion, deception, and kidnapping to transport tens of thousands of indigenous people from islands in the Pacific Ocean to Australia and other European colonies, often to work on plantations in conditions similar to the Atlantic slave trade. These blackbirded people, known as Kanakas or South Sea Islanders, were taken from places such as Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Niue, Easter Island, the Gilbert Islands, Tuvalu and the islands of the Bismarck Archipelago, amongst others.

The owners, captains, and crews of the ships involved in the acquisition of these labourers were termed blackbirders. Blackbirding ships began operations in the Pacific from the 1840s and continued, in some cases, into the 1930s. The demand for this kind of cheap labour principally came from sugar cane, cotton, and coffee plantations in New South Wales, Queensland, Samoa, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tahiti, and Hawaii. In Auckland, a small group of South Sea Islanders worked in flax mills. Examples of blackbirding outside the South Pacific include the early days of the pearling industry in Western Australia at Nickol Bay and Broome, where Aboriginal Australians were blackbirded from the surrounding areas. In Peru, Mexico, Guatemala, and elsewhere in the Americas, blackbirders sought workers for their haciendas and to mine the guano deposits on the Chincha Islands.