Las palabras ne g ativas o hablar mal ofe nde a los ang e le s.

The third key research question of this study examines how multiple ethnicity has been treated in official census statistics over the study period. The underlying assumption being that ethnic enumeration will follow distinct regional patterns and trends. The literature review that informed this research demonstrated the discursive influence of racial mixing/miscegenation in colonial Oceania. How to count such identities often causes official consternation, and the approaches eventually adopted reflect contemporary racial/ethnic logics (Hochschild & Powell, 2008).

Figure 5.4 shows how the censuses of Oceanic countries have classified residents who identify (or are identified) with more than one ethnic group over the focal period of this study. It relates to principal ethnicity questions, and is restricted to those which explicitly use the nomenclature of ethnicity, origins, ancestry, race or community of affiliation. It excludes ancillary questions about indigenous status, tribe or home island, as well as language or mother tongue questions.

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“If of more than one origin give particulars e.g. 1/2 Niuean, 1/4 Tongan, 1/4 Samoan. If of Niuean descent state home village. If not applicable write NA.”

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Nauru was a United Nations mandate from 1947, officially administered by New Zealand, Australia and Great Britain, although Australia was in effective administrative control (Highet & Kahale, 1993).

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These questions capture ‘ethnic’ characteristics, broadly defined, but cannot be operationalised in ways that allow for ‘mixed’ or hybrid responses of interest here.12 Note that the multiple ethnicity approaches identified, which are concerned with the response options or answer prompts printed on census forms for such questions, are considered irrespective of how the principal ethnic question is operationalised or the particular question format used. For instance, no distinction has been made between questions measuring ethnic origin and ethnicity, or between tick-box response categories and write-in prompts.

Table 5.4: Approaches toward multiple ethnicities by ethnically enumerating Oceanic countries, by census round

1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 n % n % n % n % % No mixed ethnicities 2 29% 9 55% 4 29% 9 46% 8 47% Fractional reporting 2 29% 2 13% - - - - Partial-identity 3 42% 2 13% 3 21% 6 32% 5 29% Specific combination - - 3 19% 2 14% 2 11% 2 12% Multiple responses - - - - 5 36% 2 11% 2 12%

Note: Where countries have adopted two different approaches within one round, the approach of the earlier census has been counted in this analysis. Percentages sum to the number of countries enumerating by ethnicity in each round.

As the table suggests, the enumeration of multiple ethnicities has been approached in a number of ways. The most common approach taken has been to require respondents to choose one single ethnicity, or for national statistics offices to subsequently allocate them a single identity. This practice, termed no

mixed identities in the table, has been the most common approach adopted in

each of the five census rounds examined in this study. Though used in all sub- regions, apart from Australia and New Zealand, it is particularly prevalent in

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Note too that countries that do not ask ethnic questions in each round avoid conceptual issues related to the classification of those of mixed ethnicity and are excluded from this analysis.

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Micronesia, which accounted for half of all countries that did not recognise multiple ethnicities in the most recent round.

Fractional reporting was the approach adopted in the 1966 Australian census

and in New Zealand censuses until 1986. This approach asks for the respondents race (or later, ethnic origins), and for respondents of mixed origins to “give particulars” (Australia 1966, New Zealand 1966, 1971, 1976, 1981), meaning specific racial fractions or proportions of descent, examples of which were given. Of all the approaches recognising mixed ethnic identities, it is the most conservative and pernicious, and such blood quantum measurements are notably absent from elsewhere in the region, with the only other recorded instance of such fractionalised reporting having occurred in the Niuean census of 1976 (which appears to have been heavily based on the New Zealand census of the same year). It does not appear to have been used at all after 1981.

Partial identities and specific combinations are specific types of mixed identity

included as prompts or response options to ethnicity questions. Partial identities refer to ‘part-something’ identities such as the ‘Part-European’, included in the Fijian census of 1966 or the ‘Part-Tongan’ in Tongan censuses of 1986, 1996 and 2006. In ignoring the other identity and implying that respondents are not ‘full’ members of the named ethnic group these ‘part’ identities are more conservative than the other type of named mixed identity, specific ‘/’ combination groups such as ‘iKiribati/Tuvalu’ (included as a response option in Kiribati censuses since independence), with the named groups typically referring to the local dominant ethnicity and either identities of neighbouring countries or those of colonial-era national associations.

Of the two approaches, providing partial identities has been more common than specific combinations as a way of recording mixed ethnicity, having been in every round been the most common approach used which recognises the existence of multiple, or shared affiliations. Both approaches have been used by PICTs from all over the region and appear to be becoming more common over time, with at

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least 7 countries from across the region (the Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Niue, Tokelau, Tonga and Vanuatu) including such identities as response options or answer prompts in the 2010 census round. Part-identities have been used exclusively in Fiji and Tonga across the study period and in Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and Niue in later rounds. Specific combinations have been utilised in all available Tokelauan and Kiribati censuses as well as in Tuvalu in recent times. In terms of the combinations provided, a limited trend seems to be occurring toward towards recognition of geographically, rather than colonially linked groups (similarly with general response options given). For instance, early Tokelauan census reports record other New Zealand territories as ‘Tokelauan/Western Samoan’ and ‘Tokelau/Cook Island’ ethnic origins, whereas census forms from 2001 onward have dropped the mixed Cook Island category and included ‘part Tokelauan/Tuvaluan’, with Tuvalu, a former British colony, being of greater proximity than the more distant Cook Islands which was like Tokelau a New Zealand territory.

Multiple responses refers to the practice of allowing respondents to signal more

than one ethnic affiliation in ethnic questions, exemplified by New Zealand (1981): “What ethnic group do you belong to? Tick the box or boxes which apply to you.” This approach, the most permissive of those identified, has not been widely adopted in Oceania. It has been used in New Zealand (from 1981) and Australia (from 2001), but was not elsewhere, except for the 1990 census of the US Pacific territories, which instructed respondents to “print no more than two groups.” This provision was subsequently dropped but accounts for the temporary increase in numbers of countries using this approach in the 1990 round.

Generally, Table 5.4 shows a high level of stability in the enumeration of multiple ethnic affiliations over the period. New Zealand and Australia followed remarkably similar trajectories, making dramatic leaps from being essentially the only countries measuring fractional ethnicity (the most conservative approach recognising multiple affiliations) to being the only countries recording multiple

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ethnic groupings (the most permissive). In their located forms Kiribati, Tuvalu and Tokelau consistently took the specific combination approach while partial identities were recorded by Fiji and Tonga over the entire period and by Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and Niue in more recent rounds. While the Cook Islands earlier provided specific combinations, from at least 199613 they provided the partial identity of part-Cook Island Maori. Where countries enumerated by ethnicity elsewhere in the region they recognised no mixed identities.