Pacific Islands in the context of "Time (magazine)"

Medical missions is the term used for Christian missionary endeavors that involve the administration of medical treatment. As has been common among missionary efforts from the 18th to 20th centuries, medical missions often involves residents of the "Western world" traveling to locales within Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, or the Pacific Islands.

Pasifika New Zealanders (also called Pacific Peoples) are a pan-ethnic group of New Zealanders associated with, and descended from, the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Islands (also known as Pacific Islanders) outside New Zealand itself. They form the fourth-largest ethnic grouping in the country, after European descendants, indigenous Māori, and Asian New Zealanders. Over 380,000 people identify as being of Pacific origin, representing 8% of the country's population, with the majority residing in Auckland.

Outrigger boats are various watercraft featuring one or more lateral support floats known as outriggers, which are fastened to one or both sides of the main hull. They can range from small dugout canoes to large plank-built vessels. Outrigger boats can also vary in their configuration, from the ancestral double-hull configuration (catamarans), to single-outrigger vessels prevalent in the Pacific Islands and Madagascar, to the double-outrigger vessels (trimarans) prevalent in Island Southeast Asia. They are traditionally fitted with Austronesian sails, like the crab claw sails and tanja sails, but in modern times are often fitted with petrol engines.

Unlike a single-hulled vessel, an outrigger or double-hull vessel generates stability as a result of the distance between its hulls rather than due to the shape of each individual hull. As such, the hulls of outrigger or double-hull boats are typically longer, narrower and more hydrodynamically efficient than those of single-hull vessels. Compared to other types of canoes, smaller outrigger canoes can be quite fast, yet are also capable of being paddled and sailed in rougher water. This paddling technique, however, differs greatly from kayaking or rowing. The paddle, or blade, used by the paddler is single sided, with either a straight or a double-bend shaft.

The spread of the Latin script has a long history, from its archaic beginnings in Latium to its rise as the dominant writing system in modernity. The ancestors of Latin letters are found in the Phoenician, Greek, and Etruscan alphabets. As the Roman Empire expanded in classical antiquity, the Latin script and language spread along with its conquests, and remained in use in Italy, Iberia, and Western Europe after the Western Roman Empire's disappearance. During the early and high Middle Ages, the script was spread by Christian missionaries and rulers, replacing the indigenous writing systems of Central Europe, Northern Europe, and the British Isles.

In the Age of Discovery, the first wave of European colonization saw the adoption of Latin alphabets primarily in the Americas and Australia, whereas sub-Saharan Africa, maritime Southeast Asia, and the Pacific were Latinised in the period of New Imperialism. Realizing that Latin was now the most widely used script on Earth, the Bolsheviks made efforts to develop and establish Latin alphabets for all languages in the lands they controlled in Eastern Europe, North and Central Asia. However, after the Soviet Union's first three decades, these were gradually abandoned in the 1930s in favour of Cyrillic. Some post-Soviet Turkic-majority states decided to reintroduce the Latin script in the 1990s, following the 1928 example of Turkey. In the early 21st century, non-Latin writing systems were only still prevalent in most parts of the Middle East and North Africa, the post-Soviet states, Asia, and some Balkan countries.

The Australian dollar (sign: $; code: AUD; also abbreviated A$ or sometimes AU$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; and also referred to as the dollar or Aussie dollar) is the official currency and legal tender of Australia, including all of its external territories, and three independent sovereign Pacific Island states: Kiribati, Nauru, and Tuvalu. In April 2022, it was the sixth most-traded currency in the foreign exchange market and as of Q1 2024 the sixth most-held reserve currency in global reserves.

The Australian dollar was introduced as a decimal currency on 14 February 1966 to replace the non-decimal Australian pound, with the conversion rate of two dollars to the pound (£A1 = A$2). It is subdivided into 100 cents. The $ symbol precedes the amount. On the introduction of the currency, the $ symbol was intended to have two strokes, but the version with one stroke has also always been acceptable.

Oceanic art or Oceanian art comprises the creative works made by the native people of the Pacific Islands and Australia, including areas as far apart as Hawaii and Easter Island. Specifically it comprises the works of the two groups of people who settled the area, though during two different periods. They would in time however, come to interact and together reach even more remote islands. The area is often broken down into four separate regions: Micronesia, Melanesia, Polynesia and Australia. Australia, along with interior Melanesia (Papua), are populated by descendants of the first waves of human migrations into the region by Australo-Melanesians. Micronesia, Island Melanesia, and Polynesia, on the other hand, are descendants of later Austronesian voyagers who intermixed with native Australo-Melanesians; mostly via the Neolithic Lapita culture. All of the regions in later times would be greatly affected by western influence and colonization. In more recent times, the people of Oceania have found a greater appreciation of their region's artistic heritage.

The artistic creations of these people varies greatly throughout the cultures and regions. The subject matter typically carries themes of fertility or the supernatural. Art such as masks were used in religious ceremonies or social rituals. Petroglyphs, Tattooing, painting, wood carving, stone carving and textile work are other common art forms. Contemporary Pacific art is alive and well, encompassing traditional styles, symbols, and materials, but now imagined in a diversity of contemporary forms, revealing the complexity of geographic, cultural and individual interaction and history.

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.

Drift to the north is a term used in New Zealand to refer to the internal migration of people from the South Island to the country's main metropolitan area, Auckland, in the North Island. The term is especially common in the cities of Christchurch and Dunedin, university cities whose graduates frequently head either to Auckland or the country's capital, Wellington, which is also in the North Island, after they complete their studies.

Historically, the South Island's population has accounted for an increasingly small proportion of the country's population. In the late 19th century, especially after the Otago gold rush, the majority of the country's population was in the South Island. Since then, the South's population has climbed more slowly than the North's, with the latter increasing at a greater rate at least in part from the influx of migrants from the Pacific Islands, for many of whom Auckland is a port of entry. The South Island now accounts for only 24% of the country's population. The use of the term "drift to the north" for that phenomenon dates from at least 1916 and possibly much earlier.

Acacia s.l. (pronounced /əˈkeɪʃə/ or /əˈkeɪsiə/), known commonly as mimosa, acacia, thorntree or wattle, is a polyphyletic genus of shrubs and trees belonging to the subfamily Mimosoideae of the family Fabaceae. It was described by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1773 based on the African species Acacia nilotica, now classified as Vachellia nilotica. Many non-Australian species tend to be thorny. Most Australian acacias are not. All species are pod-bearing, with sap and leaves often bearing large amounts of tannins and condensed tannins that historically found use as pharmaceuticals and preservatives.

The genus Acacia constitutes, in its traditional circumspection, the second largest genus in Fabaceae (Astragalus being the largest), with roughly 1,300 species, about 960 of them native to Australia, with the remainder spread around the tropical to warm-temperate regions of both hemispheres, including Europe, Africa, southern Asia, and the Americas (see List of Acacia species). The genus was divided into five separate genera under "Mimosoideae". The genus now called Acacia represents the majority of the Australian species and a few native to Southeast Asia, Réunion, and the Pacific Islands. Most of the species outside Australia, and a small number of Australian species, are classified into Vachellia and Senegalia. The two final genera, Acaciella and Mariosousa, each contain about a dozen species from the Americas (but see "Classification" below for the ongoing debate concerning their taxonomy).