Portal:Oceania

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The Oceania Portal

Map of Oceania

Oceania is a geographical (often geopolitical) region consisting of numerous countries and territories—mostly islands—in the Pacific Ocean. The exact scope of Oceania is controversial, with varying interpretations including East Timor, Australia, and New Zealand.

The primary use of the term Oceania is to describe a continental region (like Europe or Africa) that lies between Asia and the Americas, with Australia as the major land mass. The name Oceania is used, rather than Australasia, because unlike the other continental groupings, it is the ocean rather than the continent that links the nations together. Oceania is the smallest continental grouping in land area and the second smallest, after Antarctica, in population.

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Ile des Pins.

New Caledonia (French: Nouvelle-Calédonie; popular names: Kanaky, Le caillou) is a French dependency made up of a main island (Grande-Terre de la Nouvelle-Calédonie) and several smaller islands. It is located in the region of Melanesia in the southwest Pacific. It has a land area of 18,575.5 km² (7,172 sq. miles).

The population at the 2004 census was 230,789 inhabitants. It has an Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) of .nc. The capital and largest city of the territory is Nouméa. The currency is the CFP franc.

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KPhotograph of Mau Piailug in 1999

Pius "Mau" Piailug (pronounced /ˈpəs ˈm pˈləɡ/; 1932 – July 12, 2010) was a Micronesian navigator from the Carolinian island of Satawal, best known as a teacher of traditional, non-instrument wayfinding methods for deep-sea voyaging. Mau's Carolinian navigation system—which relies on navigational clues using the sun and stars, winds and clouds, seas and swells, and birds and fish—was acquired through rote learning passed down through teachings in the oral tradition.

He earned the title of master navigator (palu) by the age of eighteen, around the time the first American missionaries arrived in Satawal. As he neared middle age, Mau grew concerned that the practice of navigation in Satawal would disappear as his people became acculturated to Western values. To preserve the navigational tradition for future generations, Mau shared his knowledge with the Polynesian Voyaging Society (PVS). With Mau's help, PVS created the Hōkūle‘a, a modern reconstruction of a double-hulled Hawaiian voyaging canoe to test lost navigational techniques. The successful, non-instrument sailing of Hōkūle‘a to Tahiti in 1976, proved the efficacy of Mau's navigational system to the world.

Later in life, Mau was respectfully known as a grandmaster navigator, and he was called "Papa Mau" by his friends with great reverence and affection. He received an honorary degree from the University of Hawaii, and he was honored by the Smithsonian Institution and the Bishop Museum for his contributions to maritime history.

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