Bellona Island
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Bellona Island (indigenous name Mungiki) is an island within Rennell and Bellona Province, in Solomon Islands. Its length is about Template:Convert and its average width Template:Convert. Its area is about Template:Convert. It is almost entirely surrounded by Template:Convert high cliffs, consisting primarily of raised coral limestone.
Population
Bellona Island is one of the Polynesian islands of the Solomon Islands archipelago, located over 100km South of the island of Guadalcanal. There are three districts namely Matangi (East), Ghongau (Central) and Sa'aiho (West). The island has seven original tribes in the center of the island namely: Nuku'Angoha, Ngikobaka, Baitanga, Tongaba, Sa'apai, Hangekumi, and Ghongau, with two subregions namely Ngutuanga Bangitakungu and Ngutuanga Bangika'ango. There are over ten traditional villages on Bellona Island namely:
- Matahenua/Matamoana (west)
- Honga'ubea
- Tongomainge
- Saukapoi
- Matabaingei
- Ngotokanaba
- Pauta
- Nuku'Angoha (Nuku clinic)
- Ngongona
- Ghongau
- Ahenoa
- Matangi
- NukuTonga (East)
- Tehakapaia
- Pangangiu
- Peka
Bellona Island is the sister island of Rennell Island. It is a Polynesian-inhabited outlier island of the Solomons, a predominantly Melanesian country with two ethnic minority groups of Polynesian and Micronesian communities. It is thus counted among the Polynesian outliers. The nearby Bellona Shoals were the site of several shipwrecks.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> On the western end of the island there were sacred stone-gods, at a place called Ngabenga- west Bellona. The stone-gods were destroyed by Seventh-day Adventist missionaries in 1938. This island was named in 1792 after Capt. Mathew Boyd's ship The Bellona. However, its original name is Mungiki.
See also
Literature
- Subsistence on Bellona Island (Mungiki): A Study of the Cultural Ecology of a Polynesian Outlier in the British Solomon Islands Protectorate by Sofus Christiansen. Publisher: Aarhus University Press, Pub. Date: January 1975, Template:ISBN
References
External links
- pictures
- Cultural Ecology
- Beliefs and Rites of Pre-Christian Bellona
- Map of Bellona Island
- Bellona Travel Guide
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