Polynesian Questions and Answers - Essay Example

allotted $15 million annually to aid them. This brought about the sudden change in the people and had significantly impacted on their culture but did nothing to enable them to implement a self-sustaining economy (Dunford and Ridgell, 1996, p. 60-62). The people came to be overly dependent on the financial aid extended to them and started the commotion fuelled by greed and disparity primarily because of the mismanaged resources that landed constantly on an ill-prepared group of people. The concept of family before the advent of dependency in Micronesia had drastically changed over the last decades.

The social unit was characterized by nuclear families that lived together in a compound with harmonious relations with each other. Hezel describes this community where in Chuuk for example dwellings would be in a single cluster of land where extended family units live and in this area there would be what is called a fanang which is basically a cookhouse where the families would take turns in cooking the meal enough for every member of the nuclear family. The will also be an uut which serves many purposes such as a meetinghouse or a dormitory for the unmarried men as well as a place for them to learn.

Other islands would entail similar practices such as Chuuk where most would be centrally matrilineal such as Marshalls and Pohnpei. This would take its turn and change when Western imposition found its way to them (Hezel, 2001, p.9-10). It was in 1991 after having been bona fide member of the United Nations when the Federated States of Micronesia had to elect their own government officials in a legislature who will choose among themselves the person to represent them as president. The people were allowed to migrate to the United States of America where approximately 2,000 flocked to Guam, Hawaii and mainland United States, a great block settling in the two previously mentioned U.S. territories (Dunford and Ridgell, 1996, p. 90-91). The people found this mass migration to be a necessity in order to provide for their underprivileged families by sending them remittances from foreign land instead of staying in a direly impoverished country.

With many of its productive citizens abroad labouring on foreign land, Micronesia suffered continued economic immobility for lack of effective economic policy carried over from its years as a trust territory. The islands became excessively dependent on the annual budget provided by the United States and they were not able to cultivate a sense of economic stability since aid regularly comes their way. Father Hezel maintains that though a great number of Micronesians have settled in U.S. soil, many still find themselves deeply rooted to their native land.

“Anyone who thinks that Micronesian emigrants abroad simply vanish one day never to be seen again need only to scan the departure area of a return flight to the islands to discover that this is far from the case (Hezel, 2001, p.159). The mass of Micronesians who were able to immigrate to the United States affects health care and education in the sense that they add up to the government expenditure necessary to finance public education and health care. Most of them have found a permanent home far from their native land and this equates to additional families that rely on government support to live according to decent