Qualla: Carteret Islands

Carteret Islands: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit EVS-Islands, CC BY 2.0. The highest point on the Carteret Islands is about a meter and a half above the sea. Stand anywhere on Han, the main island, and you are never more than a short walk from saltwater closing over the garden beds. The islanders call themselves the Tuluun, speak a language related to the Halia of nearby Buka, and have lived on this horseshoe of sand and coral for generations - long enough that their grandmothers' grandmothers would have heard the same surf, watched the same palms bend in the same winds. Now the wind and the sea are bringing something else. The taro gardens are going brackish. The well water tastes of the ocean. The shoreline where children used to play is underwater at high tide. Ursula Rakova, who has spent years leading her community's slow, painful search for new land, tells interviewers that she wants the world to know one thing first: the Tuluun are not victims. They are survivors.

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Image: EVS-Islands | CC BY 2.0

Carteret Islands: A Horseshoe in the Pacific

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The Carteret atoll lies 86 kilometers northeast of Bougainville, a scatter of islets - Han, Jangain, Yesila, Yolasa, and Piul - arranged in a horseshoe about 30 kilometers long. The total land area is roughly 0.6 square kilometers, smaller than many university campuses, and the h...

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Image: Public domain

Carteret Islands: The People Who Call Themselves Tuluun

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit EVS-Islands, CC BY 2.0. Oral tradition says the islands were first settled by Polynesians, likely related to the people of Takuu and Nukumanu, who lived here until the early 18th century when the Halia of Hanahan Bay arrived from Buka in a flotilla of canoes. What followed was a conquest, remembered dif...

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Image: EVS-Islands | CC BY 2.0

Carteret Islands: When the Sea Stopped Staying Put

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit EVS-Islands, CC BY 2.0. Climate change did not arrive at the Carterets as a single event. It came as a series of small, cumulative losses that could, at first, be attributed to a bad season or a strong storm. Gardens that had grown swamp taro for generations began to die at the roots from salt. The fres...

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Image: EVS-Islands | CC BY 2.0

Carteret Islands: The Hardest Decision

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit EVS-Islands, CC BY 2.0. In November 2003, the Papua New Guinea government authorized a full evacuation, ten families at a time. Funding lagged. Plans stalled. In October 2007, the government committed two million kina (about US$736,000) through an organization called Tulele Peisa, based in Buka and led ...

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Image: EVS-Islands | CC BY 2.0

Carteret Islands: A Message in a Rising Tide

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit EVS-Islands, CC BY 2.0. Ursula Rakova puts it plainly in interviews: if her community does not move, they will be washed away, and the rest of the world will eventually have to ask whether enough was done. The Carteret Islanders did not produce the emissions that are taking their islands. They are carry...

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Image: EVS-Islands | CC BY 2.0