"'Being there' lets Huntsman and Hooper make a living history of Tokelau. Images grace nearly every page. Past and present stand together. They make their ethnographic history as much art as science, intertwining description, story, reflection and analysis. The reader can choose which way to read Tokelau, they say. I chose the way they wrote it and found satisfaction to the end." --Greg Dening, Professor Emeritus of History, University of Melbourne

Tokelau is the outcome of over two decades of intensive and wide-ranging research in and about the three tiny Polynesian atolls of Tokelau. It is both a comparative ethnographic study of the islands and a narrative record of their past. The ethnographic study is set in the years around 1970. The combined stories of the atolls' traditional, contact, and colonial pasts are told through foreign documents that complement local narratives and records. Throughout, the differences and interrelationships between the three places are highlighted.