The photograph shows Maori men, women, and children arranged for a group portrait on the porch of a whare or wharenui (meeting house) in New Zealand. This ceremonial structure, also called a talking house, and the marae (grassy area in front of it) are central to Maori social order and culture. These typical sacred structures are monuments to tribal ancestors and places that bridge past and present generations. The gathering of children shown in the photograph represents the transmission of a sense of belonging to the lineage and cultivation of that linkage in the new generation. The house represents the sheltering, physical or bodily presence of the family's ancestors in the life of their living descendants. Each part of the structure symbolizes a tribal ancestor's being. At the apex of the gable is a carving called the koruru, or "face of the ancestor." The ridgepole represents the spine. The carved ends of the bargeboards represent the hands of the ancestor, with its design split into fingers. The roof with its outstretched arms embraces the generations of the family within.The interior rafters holding up the roof are the ribs, and the interior space represents the chest and belly where people gather. Carvings and woven wall decorations are also symbolic of the ancestral lineage, recording history through their art. The meeting of the family in the house is an act of remembrance and solidarity extended to all of its members. In the shadow of the ancestors, children would witness important family celebrations and discussion of important decisions.

This historic photograph is featured on a New Zealand postage stamp because of its importance as an element of indigenous cultural heritage. It was taken between 1880 and 1920 by Frank G. Carpenter (1855-1924) or Frances Carpenter (1890-1972). He was an American traveler and writer on cultural anthropology and geography and his daughter Frances illustrated his writings with photographs. Their collection of about 16,800 photographs and 7,000 glass and film negatives is currently housed at the Library of Congress, Washington DC.

The object in the photograph is a gope, or spirit board (also called kwoi or hohao). This example is from Papua New Guinea near the Wapo Creek on the Gulf of Papua. Carved from an old canoe, this art form derives from the protective splashboard of the outrigger canoe, which was carved with a human face and was believed to have protective qualities. Human faces represent ancestors, and carving the boards was thought to provide a home for the protective spirit. Most gope boards have symmetrical, curved, linear designs, with recognizable faces and very stylized body parts. Gopes were made in different sizes, the largest being owned by the clan and stored out of sight in the men's longhouses. Smaller gope boards guarded entrances to clan sections of communal houses. Young, uninitiated men owned a third type of small gope. These were hung on the walls where young boys slept, believing it would protect them and help them to grow strong.

This mask worn by boys during initiation rituals in Papua New Guinea is made of painted bark cloth and canvas stretched over a cane frame. The long fiber fringe adds movement to the mask, which is worn during dances and other secret rituals that that comprise boyhood initiation rites. These rituals often involve disguises, as initiates endure trials, receive food and drink from villagers, and accept the knowledge of elders. The mask form is also a reference to the spirits of ancestors who have come through these life stages and continued on. The long, oval masks are similar to the gope spirit boards that represent the ancestors at home, protecting its inhabitants. This mask is from the Wapo Creek or Era River area near the Gulf of Papua, though there are many other styles and forms of initiation masks as well as face and body paint used by the numerous tribes in the region.

On the Micronesian island of Satawal, north of Papua New Guinea (about 2000 miles east of the island group of Hawaii), children sit on a canoe watching a ceremony related to the heritage of traditional navigation. The children are witnesses to a Pwo ceremony—the first held in over 50 years—inducting master navigators into a select group of Micronesians. Five Polynesians, including several Hawaiians, earned this honor by continuing the tradition of "wayfinding" on the Pacific Ocean that was responsible for the settlement of nearly all habitable islands in the vast ocean as much as 1000 years ago. Mau Piailug, a 76-year-old master navigator, conducted the ceremony as one of the last who inherited the skill marked by the journey of the Hawaiian double-hulled canoe Hokule'a on a Hawaii to Tahiti voyage of more than 2,200 miles, in 1976. The canoe was built from 400-year-old logs donated by a group of native Alaskans because there are no more suitable trees in Hawaii’s forests. It was built in the traditional manner by more than 1000 volunteers. The voyage to Tahiti proved that centuries prior to European oceanic voyages, Polynesians navigated in such canoes merely by reading nature: stars, clouds, waves, and the behavior of sea birds. More than 16 such voyaging canoes have since been built, and one of them, the double-hulled canoe Alingano Maisu, was sailed to Satawal and presented to Mau Piailug to recognize his role in transmitting his skill to the next generation of navigators. Piailug’s teaching has taken the canoe Hokule'a across the Polynesian triangle from Hawaii to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) to Aotearoa (New Zealand)—voyages equal to circumnavigating the globe twice.

"Today [the ceremony] was not about us. Today was about our children continuing their tradition, culture and ancestry," said Nainoa Thompson, one of the navigator-inductees and members of the 1976 voyage. A Hawaiian language aphorism, Kapu Na Keiki meaning "Hold Sacred the Children" expresses Thompson’s vision as a navigator and educator. Training the next generation of navigatores to uphold this tradition involves more than just skills of sailing. It addresses the multiple problems faced by many indigenous groups today: healthy nutrition, avoiding drug and alcohol abuse, and securing education and employment skills, as well as caring for the environment. The Polynesian Voyaging Society, which built and maintains the voyaging canoe Hokule`a, carries out programs for exposing youth to the pleasures and challenges of sailing and wayfinding as a means of teaching character and sound living practices as well as carrying on the sacred indigenous tradition of the peoples of the Pacific. Among the programs carried out in Hawaii, high school students paddle one- and two-man canoes about 100 miles along Hawaii’s coastline in the shadow of the Hokule‘a, to hone and test their wayfinding skills.

In 1928, Martha Mead published Coming of Age in Samoa, an anthropological work based on field work she had conducted on female adolescents in Samoa. In Mead's book that became a best seller and unleashed a storm of controversy, she argued that it was cultural factors rather than biological forces that caused adolescents to experience emotional and psychological stress.

Mead's work had taken shape against a backdrop of broader anxieties about American youth generally and female adolescents specifically who were openly challenging social and sexual mores. Many contemporaries believed that the "storm and stress" of adolescence was biologically determined following a three-volume study of largely male adolescents by American psychologist G. Stanley Hall in 1904. Under the direction of her mentor, the anthropologist, Franz Boaz, Margaret Mead sought to study whether adolescence was a "period of mental and emotional distress for the growing girl as inevitably as teething is a period for the small baby? Can we think of adolescence as a time in the life history of every girl which carries with it symptoms of conflict and stress as surely as it implies a change in the girls' body."

In 1925, Mead observed, interviewed, and interacted with 68 girls between the ages of 9 and 20 living in three villages on the island of Ta‘ū in American Samoa. After 9 months of study, Mead concluded that unlike stressed American girls, the well-balanced and carefree nature of sexually-active Samoan girls was due to the cultural stability of their society free of conflicting values, expectations, and shameful taboos. Largely relieved of the baby-tending responsibilities that had burdened them as little girls, Samoan adolescents reveled in their freedom and deferred marriage during this "best period" in their lives.

This is a photograph of Margaret Mead (center) and two Samoan adolescents. Mead donned a Samoan wedding dress woven by Makelita, the last Queen of Manu'a. (Mead's Samoan name was also Makelita). This photograph was one of three included in a letter to Ruth Benedict (dated February 10, 1926) in which she commented about her appearance, "I look very prim and proper and unpolynesian."

The definition of an orphan for statistical purposes is a child under 18 years old who has lost one or both parents. A single orphan is a child who has lost one parent, a double orphan is a child who lost both parents. A maternal orphan is a child whose mother died, while a paternal orphan has lost the father. Crises such as disease or famine that affect children increase the rate of growth of orphans in the population. For statistical purposes, children are no longer considered orphans after they reach 18 years of age. Therefore, the number of orphans in a population group increases if the number of children losing their parents exceeds the number of orphans turning 18, causing the percentage of orphans in that population to rise also.

The data in the two charts were compiled and published by UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, drawn from numerous organizations concerned with the global AIDS/HIV epidemic. As the bar graph shows, while the number of orphans in Asia has declined during the period from 1990 to 2010 (the latter based on projections), and has remained fairly stable in Latin America and the Caribbean, there has been a steady increase in the number of orphans in Sub-Saharan Africa. Data is not given for the number of children in Asia who have been orphaned by HIV and other causes, but that figure is likely significant.

Figures for Africa show that in the benchmark years of 1990, 1995, 2000, and 2005, the percentage of children orphaned in sub-Saharan African countries as a result of AIDS rose sharply from 1% to 7% to 17% to 25%, and is projected to reach 30% of all orphans by 2010. Among them are over 10 million children who have lost both parents. AIDS is the leading cause of death among adults ages 15-59, and it has produced 12 million orphans in the region. The rates of HIV deaths are not uniform across Sub-Saharan Africa, but are much higher in southern Africa, where as many as 15% of all children are orphans. Behind these figures is a tremendous toll of human suffering. Older children may act as caregivers for their parents or siblings who are ill, or grandparents may have to raise their grandchildren. Poor nutrition, inability to attend school, inability to concentrate, emotional trauma and depression are among the most serious effects, and children whose families have been touched by AIDS may also be stigmatized by others, further worsening these effects.

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The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight goals related to poverty, education, gender equality, health, environmental sustainability and development set in the year 2000 at the UN Millennium Summit, and adopted by 189 nations. The eight MDGs are associated with 21 quantifiable targets, tracked by 60 statistical indicators in annual reports issued by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The goals target attainment in the year 2015. Country-by-country data is also available.

This chart tracks infant mortality according to the rate of infant (under five years old) deaths per 1000 live births in most world regions, except Northern America. Aggregate figures for developed and developing regions highlight the stark disparity in infant mortality rates. More than 12 times as many children die young in developing regions as in developed regions. In 1990, child mortality was 9 times higher than in 2007. While the total number of young children who died early in life decreased from 12.6 million in 1990 to about 9 million today, some regions show little progress during that period. In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, nearly 1 in 7 children dies before the age of five, amounting to half of all such deaths worldwide. According to experts in public health, most of these deaths are from preventable causes.

Significant gains have been achieved worldwide by increasing immunization for childhood diseases and use of vitamins, treating mothers to prevent transmission of the HIV virus to their infants, encouraging mothers to breastfeed, and providing insecticidal bednets to prevent malaria. Other measures include improving access to clean water and improving sanitation, especially in rural areas. Improved pre-natal and birthing care, and education for mothers are other important factors that can help support further declines in infant mortality.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight goals related to poverty, education, gender equality, health, environmental sustainability and development set in the year 2000 at the UN Millennium Summit, and adopted by 189 nations. The eight MDGs are associated with 21 quantifiable targets, tracked by 60 statistical indicators in annual reports issued by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The goals target attainment in the year 2015. Country-by-country data is also available.

This chart shows a key indicator for malnutrition—underweight children from birth to five years. In developing regions, the proportion of children under five years old who are undernourished declined from 33 per cent in 1990 to 26 per cent in 2006, but 140 million children in developing countries were recorded as underweight in 2006. According to public health experts, undernourishment among young children is a sound indicator of inadequate nutrition in the population as a whole. As the 2009 MDG report states, "Adequate nutrition is vital for building children's immune systems and for their motor and cognitive development…The consequences can be fatal: more than one third of child deaths worldwide are attributable to undernutrition." (p. 12) Eastern Asia, and China in particular, reduced the percentage of underweight children between 1990 and 2006 by more than half. In Southern Asia, despite progress since 1990, almost half of young children are underweight. In Sub-saharan Africa, there has been insufficient progress, where more than a quarter of the region's children are underweight. Urban children are half as likely to be underweight as rural children in the same country. In Eastern Asia, where improvement has occurred, inadequate nutrition is still almost five times as high in rural areas. Notable in these statistics is the progress recorded for Latin America and the Caribbean, Northern Africa, and parts of Asia. There has been no significant progress in Western Asia, a likely result of the large number of refugees and conflict.

Overall worldwide progress is already insufficient to achieve the MDG goal to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by 2015. In developing regions between 1990 and 2007, a 5 percentage point decline in the proportion of underweight children under five years of age was achieved, leaving over a quarter of all children in these regions underfed. Progress in reducing hunger is being slowed or reversed by rising food prices due to changing diets, economic growth, a population increases, urbanization, poor agricultural policies, and use of food crops for biofuel.

In this excerpt, an adult Horeta Te Taniwha recounts childhood memories of a cultural encounter with Europeans for a Pakeha researcher. Te Taniwha, as an indigenous child of Aotearoa/New Zealand, participated in one of the first meetings between coastal tribes and the British maritime explorer, Captain James Cook, and his crew. These interactions were written up contemporaneously in Cook's journals and recorded by the artists and gentlemen of science on board Endeavour during its first voyage to New Zealand (November 1769 – March 1770). The published accounts and images would have influenced subsequent European perceptions of Maori people, just as later indigenous responses on island communities throughout the Pacific Ocean would have probably been affected by oral stories of earlier events. Early 19th-century missionaries and linguists successfully developed Maori as a written language but narratives such as this one by Te Taniwha would still be told in Maori and then translated, sometimes with a choice of English terms that had no Maori equivalent. Hence monsters (taniwha) and gods (atua) were part of traditional Maori cosmology but goblins were not. Horeta Te Taniwha recounted his boyhood experiences several times for different researchers with very little inconsistency.

This source extract can invite discussion about the issues to be considered when using adult recollections of childhood, or the influence of a translator's choice of words. Primarily, though, it provides scope for analyzing a relatively rare glimpse of how an indigenous child of Aotearoa/New Zealand first experienced cultural encounter. His frame of reference is Polynesian, of the Pacific, not European. The norms against which he notices similarities and differences are those of his Maori culture (as it had evolved within Aotearoa) and his particular tribe. Auditory perceptions are noticeable: his was a society with no written language but great mastery of detail since the transmission of tribal knowledge and tradition was primarily through chants, oratory, and song.

This extract from an annual report on Native Affairs reflects two realities of the 1870s: the on-going disruption of indigenous communities caused by settler and state demand for land acquisition; and the diversity of Maori experience, even within one tribal territory. The colonial commentator is clearly critical of "Natives" who, acting as representatives for their tribe, squandered the proceeds of land sales, rather than sharing them. Traditionally, land was communally owned. Government legislation to encourage individualization of land tenure caused deep divisions within tribes between those in favor and those opposed to alienating their land. Moreover, the initial legislation did not recognize the rights of more than 12 owners for any block of land. The operations of the Native Land Court exacerbated a complicated and difficult situation, with Maori owners generally disadvantaged in the process.

In the colonial context, progress was defined in terms of Maori adoption of European practices. Many observers believed that this was the only option facing the "dying race." Initiatives that promoted the "Europeanization" of Maori were therefore applauded by the colonial government, as is apparent here with the reference to the "industrious" group which has provided schooling for its children.