Malaita Province to the bride's parents. The people of the main island are of Melanesian ethnicity. The outer islands of Ontong Java and Sikaiana are of a Polynesian ethnicity and are recognised as Polynesian outliers of Polynesian culture. Malaitan shell-money, manufactured in the Langa Langa Lagoon, is the traditional currency used in Malaita and throughout the Solomon Islands. The money consists of small polished shell disks which are drilled and placed on strings. It can be used as payment for bride price, funeral feasts and compensation, with the shell-money having a cash equivalent value. It is also worn as an adornment and
Choiseul Island under both protectorates, converting most of the population to Christianity. In the early 20th century several British and Australian firms began large-scale coconut planting. Choiseul was visited by Austrian anthropologist and photographer Hugo Bernatzik in 1932. Bernatzik documented some of the few remaining ancestral customs of the island people which are included in an ethnography that he published a few years later. He also took some photographs of the islanders and brought back a stone urn with carvings, reflecting a culture that he deemed was dying in contact with the modern world. During World War II, the Choiseul was occupied