"Tahiti is far famed yet too little known." Thus wrote J. M. Orsmond in 1848, and the same assertion can be made in 1972. Thousands of pages had been published about Tahiti and its neighboring islands when Orsmond uttered his judgment, and tens of thousands have been published since that time, but a unified, comprehensive, and detailed description of the pre-European ways of life of the inhabitants of those Islands is yet to appear in print. The present work, lengthy as it is, makes no such claim to comprehensiveness; rather, it is concerned mainly with the social relations of those inhabitants, and it serves up only enough about their technology, their religion, their aesthetic expressions, and so forth to place descriptions of their social relations in context and render them more comprehensible. Volumes 1 and 2 of this work are a reconstruction of the Islanders' way of life as it was believed to have been just before it began to be transformed by European influence-a period labeled the Late Indigenous Era. Volume 3 covers events in Tahiti and Mo'orea from about 1767 to 1815-a period labeled the Early European Era.

“Tahiti is far famed yet too little known.” Thus wrote J. M. Orsmond in 1848, and the same assertion can be made in 1972. Thousands of pages had been published about Tahiti and its neighboring islands when Orsmond uttered his judgment, and tens of thousands have been published since that time, but a unified, comprehensive, and detailed description of the pre-European ways of life of the inhabitants of those Islands is yet to appear in print. The present work, lengthy as it is, makes no such claim to comprehensiveness; rather, it is concerned mainly with the social relations of those inhabitants, and it serves up only enough about their technology, their religion, their aesthetic expressions, and so forth to place descriptions of their social relations in context and render them more comprehensible. Volumes 1 and 2 of this work are a reconstruction of the Islanders’ way of life as it was believed to have been just before it began to be transformed by European influence—a period labeled the Late Indigenous Era. Volume 3 covers events in Tahiti and Mo‘orea from about 1767 to 1815—a period labeled the Early European Era.

Race and Redemption is the latest volume in the Studies in the History of Christian Missions series, which explores the significant, yet sometimes controversial, impact of Christian missions around the world. In this historical examination of the encounter between British missionaries and people in the Pacific Islands, Jane Samson reveals the paradoxical yet symbiotic nature of the two stances that the missionaries adopted--"othering" and "brothering." She shows how good and bad intentions were tangled up together and how some blind spots remained even as others were overcome. Arguing that gender was as important a category in the story as race, Samson paints a complex picture of the interactions between missionaries and native peoples--and the ways in which perspectives shaped by those encounters have endured.

In one of his last published papers, Te Rangi Hiroa (Sir Peter Buck), the only Polynesian director of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, asked what happened to Hawaiian oratory and speech making. Oratory is renowned throughout the Pacific, especially in Polynesia. But who were, and are, the great Hawaiian orators? What are the most memorable of the traditional speeches, and why are they remembered and recited today? Malcolm Naea Chun takes up this Maori challenge, describing the historical roots of Hawaiian oratory, and its eventual decline. He adds to this his personal experience as a speech writer and as a speech maker to kings and queens, indigenous tribunals, conferences, and gatherings to recreate a formidable picture of Hawaiian oratory, finishing with a discussion of what can be done today to revive this forgotten art form. This book is one of eleven short volumes of the Ka Wana series, which is part of the Pihana Na Mamo Native Hawaiian Education Program.

Aotearoa New Zealand is frequently viewed as the most advanced country in the world when it comes to reconciliation processes between the state and its colonised Indigenous people. The fact that this book’s contributions are written by scholars who are all engaged in such processes is alone testament to this alone. But despite all that has been achieved, the processes need to be critically evaluated. This book offers an up-to-date analysis of the reconciliation processes between Māori and the Crown by leading and emerging scholars in the field. It is the first attempt to grasp the link between contemporary politics, the notion of activist research, and historical and anthropological analysis. The argument this collection is based on is that reconciliation processes are manifested in much more than government policies, legal decisions and law-making. Both research and political efforts fully involve Indigenous scholars, legal and historical academics, communities, tribes, engaged Pākehā (settlers and immigrants of European descent) and national institutions. Among other things, such negotiation processes are tangibly represented by (new) rituals, by open and media-streamed debates, and by public institutions such as the Waitangi Tribunal.

First published in 1978. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.