SOLOMON ISLANDS RELIGIONS. Peoples of the Solomon Islands have been somewhat arbitrarily divided by convention into "Melanesian" (Guadalcanal, Malaita, Isabel, San Cristobal or Makira, Gela, New Georgia, Choiseul, Shortlands, Santa Cruz) and "Polynesian" (Rennell, Bellona, Tikopia, Anuta, Sikaiana, Ontong Java). The Melanesians of Bougainville and Buka, in the northern Solomons chain, are often included, although they are separated by a political border and by gulfs of language (because Papuan languages, as opposed to Oceanic-Austronesian languages, are mainly spoken in the northern Solomons). Solomons religions may be mapped for convenience onto "Melanesian" and "Polynesian" features, despite modern linguistic and ethnographic evidence showing close relationships between the Oceanic languages and cultures of the Solomons and those of eastern Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia.

The so-called Polynesian Outliers in the Solomons have religions of the western Polynesian type, of which Raymond Firth, Richard E. Feinberg, Ian Hogbin, and...