Pacific Islander Americans

Pacific Islander Americans (also colloquially referred to as Islander Americans) are Americans who are of Pacific Islander ancestry (or are descendants of the Indigenous peoples of Oceania). Pacific Islander Americans make up 0.5% of the US population including those with partial Pacific Islander ancestry, enumerating about 1.4 million people. The largest ethnic subgroups of Pacific Islander Americans are Native Hawaiians, Samoans, and Chamorros. Much of the Pacific Islander population resides in Hawaii, Alaska, California, Utah, Texas, and Minnesota.

Pacific Islanders may be considered Oceanian Americans, but this group may include Australians and New Zealander-origin people, who can be of non-Pacific Islander ethnicity. Many Pacific Islander Americans are mixed with other races, especially Europeans and Asians, due to Pacific Islanders being a small population in several communities across the mainland US.

For its purposes, the United States census also counts Indigenous Australians as part of this group. The category is not defined to include Filipino Americans, Indonesian Americans, Japanese Americans or Taiwanese Americans, who are categorized as Asian American. It also does not include indigenous peoples of the Aleutian Islands, who are categorized as Alaskan Natives. Pacific Islander Americans are often grouped with Asian Americans under the wider Asian Pacific American umbrella.

American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands are insular areas (US territories), while Hawaii is a state.