They reassembled on the beach later in the morning to celebrate their country's place as the first nation on Earth to witness the dawn of the millennium. They danced in the glow of early morning, then greeted the cloudy sunrise with a call through a conch shell. It is midsummer there, and the sun actually had not completely set. New Zealand's Chatham Islands were the first permanently inhabited lands to see the sun rise Saturday morning. There, islanders and descendents of the Maori and the Moriori, the area's original inhabitants, and descendents of European settlers performed dances, traditional chants and prayers for peace and love on the side of the mountain.
Daylight is near.
Kiribati moved the international date line in 1995 so it no longer bisected the country. The move positioned Caroline Island to be among the first to see the new year, and it was renamed Millennium Island in 1997. No one lives here and today's celebration had been planned for months. The events on Millennium Island and the nation of Tonga, which went on daylight-saving time in October, putting it in the same zone with Kiribati, started a succession of millennial celebrations in the South Pacific. About 25 journalists were on the Kiribati island to beam the ceremony to televisions around the globe.