South Pacific’s Naoero is reaffirming heritage with revised spelling, its president says.
His voice forceful and proud, he rose in front of the world’s largest gathering of leaders on behalf of his nation and announced that he had something important to say.
The tiny South Pacific island nation long known as Nauru, its president said, had altered its name — and reclaimed its heritage in the process.
“I have traveled far,” David Adeang said Tuesday at the United Nations.
What was known to the world for many years as Nauru, Adeang said, was returning to the name and pronunciation of its past: Naoero.
“There are moments in the life of a nation when its people are called to remember who they have always been,” Adeang said in his speech at the U.N. General Assembly in New York. “This is such a moment for us.”
