"Onwards"

Onwards suggests movement into the future. This chapter looks at present-day situations (at the time of interviews) in these communities, with particular focus on the preservation and perpetuation of cultural knowledge, environmental practices, and historical sites. How is this community changing, both in terms of people and environment, and how is it working to preserve and perpetuate its cultural and material resources?

People considers population changes. In these times of greater mobility, many communities are affected both by in-migration and out-migration, both of which have impacts on the society and the land.

Village, on the other hand, focuses more on the environment, and the issues and challenges faced in terms of land and sea management and the preservation of cultural uses—or not. The term "village" is used because there is no consistent form of land division across the Pacific, and no English term for "land" divisions that also include the sea. So here we mean "village" as a geographical, rather than a social, entity.

Community looks more at social organization, and follows from the Society page of the Visitors chapter. What forces are at work to bring the community together, or to pull it apart? This page might also look at groups forming to address particular issues, or to preserve particular traditions.

Replanting can be interpreted either of two ways. It can look to environmental management, and the physical replanting—of crops, of useful plants, of forest or sea management. This goes hand-in-hand with cultural replanting, in the form of education or consciousness raising. Either or both topics may be considered here.

Sacred Sites returns us to the places described in the earlier chapters, those sites of cultural importance for legendary, historical, or even contemporary reasons. We look at how these sites figure within the community today, and how the community might be working to preserve or present these sites, for themselves and for others.

Farewell: This page is reserved for closing thoughts by the community guides. Here you will find the most thoughtful and profound reflections of these guides, about their culture and their village, past, present and future.

This is the conclusion of a community website. But we remind our readers that while each website presents a continuous story from start to finish, you can jump in anywhere and focus on a particular theme, or more importantly, follow a theme across the pages and chapters of different communities within the Pacific Worlds project.