The distinguished authors of this handsome work of immaculate scholarship are virtually synonymous with Tokelau, three sparsely populated Pacific atolls north of Samoa. Since 1967 they have researched the history, social organization, and distinctive language and culture of this remote territory, now part of New Zealand. Their efforts have made Tokelau one of the best understood societies in the Pacific Islands. Judith Huntsman is associate professor of social anthropology at the University of Auckland. Antony Hooper is now engaged in independent research in Polynesia. Together they translated and edited the English version of the Tokelau islanders’ considered view of their own lives and homeland: Matagi Tokelau (1990)[1].
The Preface and Introduction outline the history and aims of Tokelau studies over three decades. The first three chapters describe and explain Tokelau social organization in about 1970: atolls and villages, te nuku (the village), and kaiga (kinship order). This is a brilliant, near‐definitive presentation, not likely ever to be bettered. The remaining six chapters constitute a fascinating narrative of “Tokelau pasts” and the many transformations experienced.
Tokelau history from 1765 to about 1971 is discussed in such detail as to make this book an authoritative work of reference. I was particularly impressed by the authors’ account of “The Ancient Orders”, from Tui Tokelau onwards to 1846. Huntsman and Hooper then write vividly of the coming of Christianity, Peruvian slavers, British colonial rule, the New Zealand “solution” and the “colonial villages” on Fakaofo, Nukunonu, and Atafu. History and ethnography are subtly and expertly intertwined, to illuminate complex societal transformations.
This impressive historical ethnography is soundly based on Tokelau oral and written narratives and local records, complemented by documents in the archives of the several countries involved in nearly three centuries of exploitation and domination of the Pacific Islands. Comprehensive and impeccably scholarly in all respects, sturdily bound and well printed in New Caledonia, Tokelau abounds with maps, figures, ethnographic photographs by Marti Friedlander and the authors, and historical images from the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. The extensive, informative notes and the wide‐ranging bibliography are splendid.
An essential reference work for all libraries concerned with colonial history, anthropology, and Pacific islands, it is beautifully and entertainingly written, to appeal also to a wider readership.
