Tikopia Religion
TIKOPIA RELIGION. Tikopia is a small island, three miles long and a mile and a half wide. It is part of the political grouping of the Solomon Islands, a thousand-mile chain of islands in the Pacific Ocean. It is also the peak of an old volcano, now largely sunk beneath the sea, and the original vent of the mountain has become a small brackish lake. To the northeast of the island the sacred mountain Reani rises; to the southwest are flat swamplands. The population of around fourteen hundred lives mainly around the western and southern coast of the island. Another six hundred Tikopia have migrated either temporarily or permanently to other parts of the Solomons. Whereas the island is theoretically controlled by the central government of the Solomon Islands, its distance from the seat of government and its general isolation have meant a degree of autonomy in retaining traditional practices and beliefs. The effect of this isolation on its religious practices will be discussed below.
While the majority of islands in the Solomons are peopled by Melanesians, Tikopia is a Polynesian outlier. That is, while it lies outside the true Polynesian triangle in the Pacific Ocean, it shares genetic, linguistic, and cultural traits with Polynesian islands such as Samoa, Tonga, and with the Maori of New Zealand.
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