ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book has been just over 30 years in the making. While indigenous Hawai‘i holds a central place in much Pacific archaeological and anthropological discourse, this extraordinarily lengthy gestation was not due to the magnitude of the literature and sources to master. Indeed, my conclusions in this volume are essentially the same as my first full MA draft in the early 1990s, subsequently enriched by decades of exposure to wider circles of context. Rather, this length of production is more of a tribute to the incredible support I have received from a tight circle of friends, colleagues and family that carried me through some very rough times. This study began in the mid-1980s at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (UH Mānoa) as a comparative study of indigenous state formation in Hawai‘i, Tonga and Tahiti. The sudden death of my younger brother, Nick; severe spinal damage from an association football injury; and becoming diabetic all in the space of two years ended my time at Hawai‘i and saw me return to Aotearoa New Zealand. Many of my note cards, prepared in that pre-laptop era, were lost in transit from Hawai‘i and so I had to revisit many of my sources and submit my study as an MA, focused solely on Hawai‘i, at the University of Otago in 1992.