filipino americans who call themselves pacific islander instead of southeast asian want to seem more exotic than being grouped together with other asians so they are choosing to appropriate another marginalized identity but lemme know when y’all ready for that conversation

there’s nothing wrong with being southeast asian sksjdkd

“Pacific Islander” refers to the indigenous inhabitants of Oceania. Oceania consists of Melanesia (Fiji, Solomon Islands, etc.), Micronesia (Guam, Marshall Islands, etc.), and Polynesia (Hawai’i, Sāmoa, Tonga, etc)

Not all Pacific Islanders are Polynesian. That’s important

I see Fil-Ams comparing “Filipino culture” to Samoan or Hawaiian cultures CONSTANTLY which is so funny to me bc out of all the Oceania islands, Polynesia is the FURTHEST away from the Philippines lmao. Taiwan, China, Indonesia are WAY closer to the Philippines than Polynesia is

Palau is probably the closest Oceania island to the Philippines however our indigenous cultures are much more similar to the indigenous cultures of Taiwan, Indonesia, and Malaysia. (see: Southeast Asia)

Upper Row: Philippines
Bottom Left: Indonesia
Bottom Right: Taiwan

I want to emphasize to Fil-Ams who have never been to the homeland: The Philippines has HUNDREDS of dialects, languages, cultures, and ethnolinguistic groups. Tagalog is the national language however it is NOT the native language for TONS of people throughout the PH

It IS true that Filipino languages and cultures share some similarities to that of Pasifika people. That is a result of the something called ‘The Austronesian Expansion’ from *Taiwan*, however “Austronesian” and “Pacific Islander” are not interchangeable.

In ~3000 BC, a small group of indigenous people from Taiwan (ethnically diff from the modern ethnic majority of Han Chinese) set out off the coast of Taiwan to explore new lands. The first island they came across was what is now known as Northern Luzon in the Philippines

They settled in various regions in the Cordilleras Mountains and Northern Luzon. Igorots and Ilokanos: these are ur people lmao

(photos below are of Igorot people, who were never successfully colonized by Spain which is why we’ve managed to maintain our cultures until recently)

These people built entire boats without a single nail and traveled across the Pacific Ocean WAY before the Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire and before the Egyptians even built the pyramids. Incredible, isn’t it?

invented navigation and seafaring omg skinny legends

Different groups separated and set off to explore and settle throughout the archipelago and the expansion BOOMED across the Pacific from Indonesia to Guam to Hawaii to New Zealand. They even reached MADAGASCAR off the east coast of Africa!!!

https://iwri.org/taiwan-birthplace-of-austronesian-languages/

Note that it took THOUSANDS of years for Austronesian people to migrate from Taiwan to the rest of Oceania. They originally settled in the Philippines in ~2500 BC & it wasn’t until ~500 AD that they reached Hawaii and ~1200 AD to colonize New Zealand, which was uninhabited

So this explains some of the cultural and linguistic similarities however note that our cultures are literally thousands of years and miles apart. While similar and related, they’re not the same.

A criticism SE Asians often have about Asian representation is the erasure of brown/SE Asians in favor of East Asians. However it’s also important to point out that Pacific Islanders are among the most marginalized of groups in the US (next to NDNs) & are nearly erased from media

This is why the conflation of Filipino & Pacific Islander is harmful—it’s literally contributing to the erasure of Pacific Islanders and their own unique issues & history with American imperialism and it’s even erasure of Filipino history, culture, & identity at the same time

The Philippines has such RICH, DIVERSE cultures and history and there is so much to learn about our own country. There’s no need to co-opt and appropriate other cultures.

Check out the “ history” highlight on my IG for some cool facts about Filipino history IG: @aasian

know history, know self.
no history, no self.

Apologies for not clarifying: “Filipino” is the official language of the Philippines, which is a essentially a Tagalog variation. I only specified Tagalog bc I used “Filipino languages” a lot in the thread and didn’t want it to get too confusing! My bad y’all