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Much of the U.S. Tongan community resides in California. In San Mateo County (0.7% of the county's population) in the San Francisco Bay Area, there are over 5,000 Tongan Americans, mainly concentrated in Daly City, East Palo Alto, San Mateo, and San Bruno. There is a Tongan community in Oakland, of about 1,500 people (0.3% of Oakland's population).
Tongans or Tongan people are a Polynesian ethnic group native to Tonga, a Polynesian archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. Tongans represent more than 98% of the inhabitants of Tonga. The rest are European (the majority are British ), mixed European, and other Pacific Islanders .
Tonga is about 1,800 km (1,100 mi; 970 nmi) from New Zealand's North Island. Tonga was first inhabited roughly 2,500 years ago by the Lapita civilization, Polynesian settlers who gradually evolved a distinct and strong ethnic identity, language, and culture as the Tongan people.
The state of Utah has a large presence of Tongan Americans, and a significant Pacific Islander population in general. Utah has the highest population of Tongan Americans in the United States. There are over 18,330 Tongan Americans in Utah, including those of mixed ethnicity, making up 0.6% of the state population. [7]
Any description of Tongan culture that limits itself to what Tongans see as anga fakatonga would give a seriously distorted view of what people actually do, in Tonga, or in diaspora, because accommodations are so often made to anga fakapālangi. The following account tries to give both the idealized and the on-the-ground versions of Tongan culture.
Tongan New Zealanders are Tongan immigrants in New Zealand, their descendants, and New Zealanders of Tongan ethnic descent. They constitute one of New Zealand's most sizeable ethnic minorities. In the 2013 census, 60,336 New Zealanders identified themselves as being of Tongan ethnicity with 22,413 stating that they were born in Tonga. [2]
At the 2018 census, 59.4% of Pasifika reported belonging to a single ethnic group. [13] The largest Pacific Peoples ethnic groups – immigrants from a particular Pacific nation and their descendants – are Samoan New Zealanders (182,721 people), [14] Tongan New Zealanders (82,389), [15] Cook Island Māori (80,532), [16] and Niueans (30,867). [17]
A Tongan American is an American who is of ethnic Tongan descent. Utah has the largest Tongan American population, followed by Hawaii. Many of the first Tongan Americans came to the United States in connection to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.