TERRITORIES of the USA (Geography Now!)

Hey everybody, so this is going to be a filler week episode. Now I've done a video on the states of the United States. I did a video on the largest cities of the United States and by popular demand now we're going to do the territories of the United States. And just want to quickly say we've worked with these people before. The good people at Skillshare have decided they would like to sponsor this video. Skillshare is a website where you can learn skills. Learning is fun. Clearly you subscribe to this channel, so I'm pretty sure you can agree. Make 2020 the year where you explore great new skills. Skillshare is an online learning community that offers membership meaning with so much to explore, they offer classes designed for real life. They have everything from health and Wellness, culinary arts, animation, game design, languages. I'm actually getting more interested in entrepreneurship and business, which fortunately, Skillshare offers classes in everything from brand strategy, investing and time management. Like this video right here Investing basics for millennials. What is all this? What are these graphs? Compound interest. What is that? Housing and alternative investments. I'd be watching this type of video. It's good stuff. Annual subscriptions to Skillshare are less than $10 a month. If you click in the link in the description, you can get two months of premium membership for free. Check out Skillshare. Great people. Thank you Skillshare for sponsoring this video. Now, a lot of people think the USA is just 50 states, but we got a little bit more than that. Besides the Federal district of Washington DC, our capital, we also have 5 inhabited island territories across the Caribbean and Pacific. In addition, we also have 10 uninhabited or temporarily inhabited islands and two disputed ones, but we'll get to that later. In this episode, we're going to talk about the inhabited territory of the United States. What is a territory? A territory is not a state, but it still falls under the overarching sovereignty of the United States. All these territories kind of have their own level of self home rule, but the US government and the military and a lot of their social services still apply to these places. And they're divided kind of weirdly, Like there's Commonwealth, there's organized, unorganized, incorporated, unincorporated territories. We'll get to that in a bit. In the meantime, let's start off American Samoa, capital Pagal Pagal. It is located in the region of Polynesia. This territory is made-up of five main islands, the largest ones being Tatuila and Manua. They have two official languages, obviously English and Samoan, and it is an unincorporated, unorganized territory. Out of all the territories, this is probably the weirdest one because the people here are not born as citizens, but rather USA nationals, which basically means they're almost like citizens. They can pretty much move about to the US and anywhere they want for an indefinite period of time, and if they want citizenship they can get it after like 3 months. It's really not hard for these people to become citizens. They have a representative delegate in the House of Representatives, but they cannot vote on presidential elections. Basically, this territory kind of fell under the US at the end of the 19th century. Essentially, Germany took over the West part and the US took over the east part. And in 1966, the UN actually kind of threw out the option if they wanted to join the independent state of Samoa, but surprisingly, they actually said no, and they preferred to stick with the US. So that's kind of how this territory stuck with the US instead of joining Samoa. And it's really weird because they sit on the international dateline, so Western Samoa is an entire day ahead of American Samoa even though they're only like less than 100 miles away. Fun fact, the law of Aiga applies to Samoa, which means that nobody who has less than half Samoan blood can own land in this area. They have a lot of self rule autonomy. They even have their own legislative community called the phono. They can make their own laws, but large scale policies have to be approved by the USA. They are the cousins of the independent state of Samoa basically. And fun fact, Samoans are kind of like the strong powerful weapon of Americans. We love using them in like athletics. According to Forbes, a Samoan male is about 56 times more likely to be drafted in the NFL than non Samoan players. They're known for just being very big strong people. I mean, come on Dwayne the Rock Johnson is half Samoan. Its strength is just in their blood. A lot of them join the military. These guys are like the Pacific Islander Spartan Polynesians of the USA and we love them. Love you Samoa, Guam, capital Haganya. This is located in the Pacific region of Micronesia. The people are Micronesians and it is an unincorporated organized territory, so that means the people here do have citizenship. It's basically one Big Island with a few small rock islets divided into 19 municipal villages. There are multiple U.S. military bases on the island. The motto is it's the place where America's Day begins due to the fact that it is in the 10 plus UTC zone. So it's technically the earliest time zone area of US territory. They do have a delegate to the House of Representatives, and they can vote on committee meetings, but not floor votes. They can vote for U.S. presidential elections, but they don't really have a seat in the Electoral College, so it doesn't really matter. Kind of. But anyway, yeah, they have a strong Micronesian culture and heritage. The language of Guam and the Mariana Islands is Chamorro, and it's actually really diverse. There's a lot of Asians here as well. It's a strong military presence island with Micronesian culture and heritage. The Northern Mariana Islands, the capital being Saipan. It is an unincorporated organized Commonwealth of the US, basically the cousins to Guam. Again, it is located in the Pacific region of Micronesia. These people are Micronesians. It is the most recent territory to join. Back in 1986, Nineteen 75, they were given the option for independence, but they decided to stick with the US. And then in the 80s they decided to be fully integrated. You know, back when all that whole free association state thing was happening with Palau and Micronesia, Marshall Islands. The 80s was a weird time for territories and a lot of Yeah, and then this happened. Basically there are 14 islands divided into 15 municipalities. It is trilingual territory with English, Chamorro and Carolinian being the three main languages. And The funny thing is, they actually kind of wanted to join Guam like four times as one unified territory. I mean, they are on the same archipelago. They're basically the cousins. They're like the same people. But Guam was kind of like, hey, you do your own thing. I'll do my own thing. Anyway, funny thing is, there's actually more Filipinos here than there are Micronesians. The southern islands are limestone and the northern islands are volcanic, just like all the other territories. They have a delegate to the House of Representatives, but they cannot vote on the floor. A really cool place. I kind of want to go there. So interesting. That's part of my country, Puerto Rico. Pretty sure you all have heard of this one capital, San Juan. This is the largest and most populous of all the territories with over 3.3 million people. It is an unincorporated organized Commonwealth territory located in the Caribbean. These people are known as Boriquas, and along with the Cubans and Dominicans, they make up the trifecta of Latin Caribbeans. They come in all different shades and colors. You got the white Puerto Ricans, black Puerto Ricans, Mestico Puerto. I mean, we all know that music video Despacito, that was basically a clear depiction of how the populist looks like. Now, here's the thing. Puerto Rico is pretty much in every logical sense its own country, but it still falls under US territory status. If you ask any Puerto Rican though, the vast majority of them will say they identify as being Puerto Rican 1st and maybe with like a little American touch, flavor, spice added into the mix. Puerto Ricans are like the Unicorn of the Latin world. Like when Latinos meet Puerto Ricans, they're like, oh, you're Puerto Rican. Dang, can I buy you a drink? Say something in Boricua? And the Puerto Rican is like Ibendito. Oh my God, you thought? I mean, let's be for real. I mean, I know it's kind of like a generalization, but come on. We all kind of know Puerto Ricans are kind of sexy. It's like, come on, come on. And I know they talk a lot about, like, independence and stuff like that, but it's like, come on, you guys are like the coolest Latinos ever. We like giving you citizenship. Maybe stick with us one day. I should just do a whole video on Puerto Rico because it's just so complex. But for now, sorry, got to move on. In the last US territory, the US Virgin Islands capital, Charlotte Amelie, located in the Caribbean. It is an unincorporated organized territory, so the people here are citizens as well. The territory is made-up of three main islands, Saint Thomas, St. John, and Saint Croix. Basically, we bought these islands from Denmark back in 1917. This was like the last thing the Danes had in the Caribbean, and we kind of just took it from them. Sorry Denmark but you still see some leftover residue of Danish culture and influence like some of the people still have like Danish last names and some of the street signs are still in Danish. They are also non self governed and The funny thing is it's also kind of known for being like a tax haven. They act as a customs territory with free ports and the residents are not subject to federal income taxes and they basically just pay their taxes to the territory at a similar ratio. About 3/4 of the population are black and the rest are mostly whites with a few Asians and Latinos mixed in. They have their own Creole, especially on the island of Saint Cloud. And it's also like a honeymoon destination. You know, a lot of people go here for their weddings and honeymoons afterwards. And you know, it's tropical, Caribbean, beautiful, romantic. So if you're going to go here for your honeymoon, it's definitely not a place where you going to be a virgin anymore. Anywho, those are all of the inhabited territories. As we mentioned in all the previous episodes, we already did Palau, Micronesia, Marshall Islands. Those three countries are in free association with the US and the US still has military bases on those countries. But we have an agreement where it's like they can move to our country freely and like they're they're they're privileged. They can like become American citizens very easily, kind of like American Samoa. You know, we give them social service and they give us, you know, areas for our military bases. It's like we have a very good close connection with them. And on top of that, we have 10 other uninhabited or temporarily inhabited by military personnel. Island territories. They are Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnson Atoll, which is weird because it's an incorporated unorganized territory. I don't even get that. That's like, how is it incorporated but unorganized? Kingman Reef, Midway Atoll, Navasa Island, Palmyra Atoll and Wake Island. In addition, we have two disputed island territories, Baja Nuevo and Sara NIA. And in addition to that, it gets even more complicated because the US has over 560 recognized Native American Indian tribes, and there are 326 Indian reservations that most of them either live on or have land on. Not all the tribes have reservations. Some of the tribes have more than one reservation. Some of them share a reservation. Some of them have reservations within other reservations. It's weird, but yeah, the US has a lot of interesting confusion when it comes to administrative divisions, and it's fascinating when you kind of dive deeper into it. That's my country. We got states, a federal district, We have territories we have reservations we have. It's a big, huge, crazy puzzle of the United States. Anyway, this was fun. Hope you learned something. If not, at least you could get a Geography Now T-shirt at geography.com. All right, hope you have a good one. Stay cool. Stay tuned the.