Nauru
A tiny coral island in the central Pacific, the world's smallest republic, marked by twelve ancient clans, a deep Christian faith, and the extraordinary story of the phosphate that briefly made it one of the richest nations on earth. The complete guide.
Nauru is a tiny island nation in the central Pacific Ocean, a single small coral island just south of the Equator, home to only about ten thousand people, and the smallest republic in the world. To understand it, begin with the twelve ancient clans into which the Nauruan people have long been divided, traced through the mother's line, and shown in the twelve-pointed star on the flag; with the deep Christian faith that fills island life; with the extraordinary and bittersweet story of phosphate, the mineral that made Nauru briefly one of the richest countries on earth and then, mined out, left much of the island a barren waste; with the loss and the revival of the old island traditions; and with the resilient, close-knit community of a people living through dramatic change on a very small island. From these flow the customs that follow: the warm greeting, the island food, the song and dance, and the close family. This guide walks through each in turn.
Overview
Nauru is one of the smallest countries in the world, a single tiny island in the central Pacific Ocean, an oval of coral just south of the Equator and far from any neighbour, its nearest being a small island of Kiribati some way to the east. It is a raised coral island, ringed by reef and rising to a central plateau, and it covers only about twenty-one square kilometres, making it the third smallest nation on earth and the smallest republic of all. About ten thousand people live there, most of them indigenous Nauruans, along with workers and residents from other Pacific islands and beyond, nearly all of them living in the narrow ring of settlement around the island's coast. Nauru has no official capital, its government offices lying in the district of Yaren.
The country is an independent democratic republic, with a president and a parliament, one of the smallest sovereign states and parliaments in the world. The Nauruan language, a distinct tongue of the Pacific whose roots are not fully understood, is the national language and the heart of Nauruan identity, while English is the language of government and business and is widely spoken. The island's history and economy have been dominated, more than by anything else, by phosphate, the mineral that for a century was its great wealth and is now nearly gone, leaving the country to seek a new way forward with help from Australia and other partners.
A few deep forces shape life in Nauru. There are the twelve ancient clans, traced through the mother's line, that order Nauruan society and identity. There is the deep Christian faith that fills island life. There is the extraordinary, bittersweet story of phosphate, which made and then unmade the island's fortunes and scarred its land. And there is the resilience of a small, close-knit island people, holding to family, faith, and community, and working to revive their traditions, through dramatic change. The sections that follow trace these forces and then walk through the customs of daily life.
The twelve clans
At the foundation of Nauruan society lie the clans, the ancient kin groups into which the Nauruan people have been divided since long before any outsider came. Traditionally there were twelve clans or tribes, each with its own lineage and identity, and they are so central to who the Nauruans are that they are honoured on the national flag itself, in the twelve-pointed star that stands for the twelve original clans. To belong to a clan is the deepest mark of Nauruan identity, and even today a person's clan is recorded at birth and at death, a lasting bond that ties each Nauruan into the web of the island's kinship.
Nauruan descent is traced through the mother's line, in the matrilineal way common to the islands of the region, so that a person belongs to the clan of their mother, and women stand at the centre of the kin group. Mothers are the anchors of the family and the clan, the bonds between sisters and brothers run strong, and women have long held a central place in the life of the household and the community, even as men have traditionally led in politics and public affairs. This matrilineal order, with its strong place for women and its web of clan kinship, is one of the oldest and deepest features of Nauruan culture.
From the clans flow the values that have long ordered island life: the bonds of kinship and mutual obligation, the sharing of food and resources, the respect for elders, and the strong sense of community on a small and crowded island where everyone is, in some way, connected. Much of the old clan structure and custom has been worn away by the great changes of the last century, by colonial rule, by Christianity, and above all by the upheavals of the phosphate age, yet the clans endure as a mark of identity and belonging, and the bonds of family and kin remain at the heart of Nauruan society. To understand Nauru is to understand that a Nauruan is, before all else, a member of a clan and a family, bound by the matrilineal ties of the island.
The phosphate story
No country has been shaped by a single resource quite as Nauru has been by phosphate, and its story is one of the most extraordinary and cautionary in the modern world. Beneath the island's central plateau lay one of the richest deposits of phosphate rock on earth, formed over ages from seabird droppings, and when it was discovered at the start of the twentieth century, the mining of it came to dominate everything. For decades, under foreign control, the phosphate was dug out and shipped away to fertilise the farms of Australia and New Zealand, while the Nauruans saw little of the wealth, until independence in 1968 and the takeover of the mines gave the island control of its own great resource at last.
For a brief and dizzying time, phosphate made Nauru fabulously rich. In the years after it gained control of the mines, this tiny island enjoyed one of the highest incomes per person in the entire world, its people supported by the royalties of the phosphate trade, and for a moment Nauru was a byword for sudden Pacific wealth. But the riches rested on a resource that could not last and a land that was being destroyed to extract it, and the boom carried the seeds of its own undoing, for the phosphate was finite and the wealth was not always wisely kept.
The reckoning came hard. By the turn of the century the phosphate was nearly exhausted, the wealth had largely gone, through depletion and misfortune, and the island faced near ruin, while the mining had left a terrible scar: some four-fifths of Nauru, the mined-out interior the islanders call Topside, was reduced to a barren wilderness of jagged limestone pinnacles, uninhabitable and uncultivable, a stark monument to the cost of the boom. Nauru has since worked to recover and to find new ways forward, with help from Australia and others, and to begin the long task of healing the land. The phosphate story is the central drama of modern Nauru, a lesson, written across the island's own broken interior, in the perils of a wealth that does not last. To understand Nauru is to understand this rise and fall.
The Christian island
Nauru is a deeply Christian country, and the faith fills the life of the island. Christianity came to Nauru with missionaries in the late nineteenth century and was embraced thoroughly, so that today nearly all Nauruans are Christian, the majority Protestant, many belonging to the Nauru Congregational Church, with a substantial Roman Catholic minority and smaller communities of other faiths. The church stands at the centre of community life, Sunday worship is widely kept, and the Christian calendar, with its great feasts of Christmas and Easter, shapes the rhythm of the year.
The faith is woven through the customs and milestones of Nauruan life. The great events of life, the baptism, the church wedding, and above all the funeral, follow Christian rites, and a Nauruan funeral is a significant communal occasion, marked by church services, days of feasting, burial in the home district, and the rhythmic singing that honours the departed. The churches are well supported, religious holidays are observed across the island, and Christian values are woven into the conduct of family and community life, blended in the island way with older customs of feasting, song, and the honouring of kin.
As across much of the Pacific, the Christian faith took the place of the older island beliefs, the worship of ancestral and natural spirits that came before, though traces of the old ways linger quietly in custom, song, and ceremony. Today the faith is firmly and openly Christian, and the church is a pillar of community, identity, and daily life on the island. A visitor does well to treat the faith with respect, to behave and dress modestly, especially on Sundays, and to honour the central place the church holds in the life of the Nauruan people. To understand Nauru is to understand the depth of its Christian faith and the central place of the church in its small and close community.
Greetings and island life
Nauruans are warm, friendly, and easygoing, and their greetings are relaxed and welcoming in the manner of the Pacific islands. A friendly handshake and a warm smile are the common greeting, given without ceremony, and greetings come in Nauruan among islanders, with English readily understood and used. The tone of social life is informal, warm, and personal, the neighbourliness of a tiny island where, in a community of only a few thousand, nearly everyone knows nearly everyone else, and bonds of family, clan, and acquaintance run through the whole of the population.
Life on Nauru is shaped by the smallness and closeness of the island. Everyone lives within the narrow ring of coastal settlement, the single community divided into its districts, and daily life is lived very much in common, bound by the dense web of kinship and the strong sense of belonging that a tiny island fosters. The pace is relaxed and unhurried in the island way, the values are those of community, sharing, and respect for elders and family, and hospitality is warm and generous, offered as a matter of course to kin, neighbour, and visitor alike.
For a visitor, the keys are friendliness, respect, and an easy patience. Greet people warmly; be respectful of elders, of the church, and of local custom; dress and behave modestly, in keeping with the island's strong Christian sensibility; and meet the relaxed island pace with patience and good humour. Nauruans are a welcoming people, and a friendly, respectful, unhurried manner is warmly returned. To be received into the close community of the island, offered food and a welcome, is to feel the genuine, generous hospitality of the Nauruan people.
The island table
The traditional food of Nauru is the food of a Pacific island, drawn from the sea and from the few crops that the coral island could grow. The sea was always the great larder, giving fish and seafood as the heart of the diet, caught from small boats and the reef, and the Nauruans were known for distinctive old ways of fishing, including the raising of fish in the island's inland lagoon and the use of trained frigatebirds to help catch them. From the land came coconut in all its forms, the fruit of the pandanus, and the few root crops and fruits the island could bear, simply prepared and shared.
A cherished traditional dish is coconut fish, fresh fish, often tuna, served with coconut, the very taste of the island. But the diet of modern Nauru has been transformed, and not for the better, by the changes of the phosphate age. As the old subsistence life of fishing and gardening gave way to a cash economy and the land was torn up for mining, Nauruans came to depend heavily on imported food, much of it processed and unhealthy, and this dramatic shift in diet has brought serious health problems to the island, a hard legacy of the upheavals of the last century that the country now works to address.
For all the changes, food remains central to Nauruan hospitality and to the great communal occasions of island life. At the feasts that mark weddings, funerals, festivals, and family gatherings, food is prepared and shared in abundance, in the island tradition of generosity and communal eating, and the sharing of food remains a deep expression of kinship, respect, and community. A guest is welcomed warmly and offered food as a matter of course, and there is a growing effort to revive the healthier traditional island foods of fish, coconut, and local produce. To share a meal on Nauru is to be received into the warmth of the island community.
Song, sport, and festival
The traditional arts of Nauru, though worn by the great changes of the last century, live on most strongly in music, and above all in song. Traditional Nauruan music centres on rhythmic singing and chanting, often accompanied by clapping or simple percussion and by dance, performed at festivals, ceremonies, and special occasions, and these songs, carrying the stories and spirit of the island, are a cherished part of the heritage. Much of the old culture was lost to colonialism, Christianity, and the upheavals of mining, but the singing endures, and there is a real and growing effort to preserve and revive the songs, the language, the crafts, and the customs of old Nauru.
The festival calendar weaves together the Christian, the national, and the communal. The Christian feasts of Christmas and Easter are kept with devotion and with the singing the island loves, and the great milestones of family life, the weddings and the funerals, are major communal events marked by feasting and song. The nation has its own holidays too, chief among them the deeply meaningful Angam Day, which celebrates the survival and recovery of the Nauruan people, marking the times when the population, twice driven low by war and hardship, climbed back to the number thought needed for the people to endure, a holiday that speaks to the resilience at the heart of Nauruan identity.
Sport, too, holds a beloved place in Nauruan life, and the island is passionate above all about Australian rules football, the national sport, a legacy of the long connection with Australia, played and followed with great enthusiasm. Weightlifting is another point of national pride, with Nauruan lifters winning honours on the world stage out of all proportion to the island's tiny size. Through the festivals, the songs, and the sport run the bonds of community and the resilient spirit of the Nauruan people. A visitor who shares in a Nauruan celebration, hears the singing, or joins the passion for the football sees the warmth and the endurance of island life.
Family and community
Family and community lie at the foundation of Nauruan life, bound together by the clan ties and the closeness of a tiny island. The family, reaching well beyond the household to the wider clan and kin, is the first source of belonging, identity, and support, and the matrilineal bonds traced through the mother give women a central place at the heart of family life. On an island of only a few thousand people, the web of kinship and acquaintance runs through the whole community, and the bonds of family, clan, and neighbour weave a close and supportive, if at times crowded, social world.
Life is lived in common on Nauru, in the narrow ring of settlement where nearly the whole population dwells, divided into its districts but bound into a single close community. The values are those of kinship and sharing, of respect for elders, of communal celebration and mutual help, the values of a small island people who have always depended on one another. The great occasions of life, the weddings, the funerals, the festivals, draw the community together in feasting and song, renewing the bonds of family and clan that hold the island together.
Modern Nauru carries deep challenges, the legacy of the phosphate age: a scarred and largely ruined land, a small and struggling economy seeking new footing now that the phosphate is gone, dependence on outside aid, and the health and social strains that came with the dramatic changes of the last century. Yet through it all the Nauruan people show a striking resilience, holding to family, faith, and community, and working to recover their land, their health, and their heritage. To understand Nauru is to see, beneath the hard modern story, a small, close-knit, resilient island people bound together by clan, family, faith, and the enduring spirit of survival that their own Angam Day celebrates.
The nation today
Nauru today is a tiny, independent island republic of about ten thousand people, a single small coral island in the central Pacific, the smallest republic in the world, with its government seated in the district of Yaren and no official capital. It is a democratic republic with a president and one of the world's smallest parliaments, independent since 1968 and a member of the United Nations since 1999. The Nauruan language is the national tongue and the heart of identity, with English the language of government and business. Recently the country has moved to adopt the Nauruan form of its name, Naoero, a change reflecting pride in the island's own language and identity, pending the approval of its people.
The nation faces hard economic realities in the aftermath of the phosphate age. The great wealth is gone, the deposits nearly exhausted, and much of the island ruined by mining, so that Nauru depends heavily on outside aid, especially from Australia, and on a narrow and uncertain range of revenues, including, controversially, the hosting of an Australian centre for asylum seekers. The land must be healed, the economy rebuilt, and a new way found, and the country also stands among the small island nations most exposed to the rising seas and changing climate of the age, a serious threat to its low coastal ring of settlement.
Through its challenges, Nauru holds firmly to the identity that defines it. The twelve clans and the matrilineal bonds still mark Nauruan society; the Christian faith still fills island life; the songs, the customs, and the language are being revived and cherished; and the close ties of family and community, and the resilient spirit of survival celebrated on Angam Day, remain strong. To know Nauru is to meet one of the world's smallest and most remarkable nations, a tiny island people who lived through sudden wealth and its loss, who carry the scars of that history in their very land, and who endure, bound by clan, faith, and family, on their small coral island in the wide Pacific.