Tongan

The Tongan people are the Indigenous Polynesian population of the Kingdom of Tonga, an archipelago in the South Pacific that stands as one of the few states in Oceania never formally colonized by a European power, preserving a continuous monarchy today headed by the Tu'i Kanokupolu royal line. Historically the center of a wide-ranging maritime empire and tributary network across parts of Fiji, Samoa and other Pacific island groups between roughly the tenth and thirteenth centuries CE, Tonga later adopted Christianity broadly in the nineteenth century following Wesleyan missionary activity, which today remains central to Tongan communal and family life alongside customs of rank and chiefly title. A substantial Tongan diaspora lives in New Zealand, Australia and the United States.