"Alice Te Punga Somerville’s Once Were Pacific is the first major study of how Māori and Pacific people talk to each other in Aotearoa/New Zealand and Oceania. It is a splendid book, remarkably lucid, insightful, comprehensive, and accessible."—Albert Wendt, author of Leaves of the Banyan Tree "Once Were Pacific will help us to push beyond orthodox understandings of complex and contemporary Indigenous identities and representational practices through rigorous scholarship that is Māori focused."—Chadwick Allen, Ohio State University "Alice Te Punga Somverville has writtem a scintillating text that explores the relationship between Maori and our Pacific forebears... "—Ella Henry, Interface "Critical yet imaginative, formalist, and specifically indigenist, the analyses throughout this work are informative, entertaining, and engaging. Ultimately, Once Were Pacific explores works and spaces never before addressed critically."—College Literature "Alice Te Punga Somerville has contributed an outstanding and challenging text to contemporary literary studies in Aotearoa and beyond. With new readings of existing texts, Once Were Pacific offers an impressive depth of analysis about the trade in cultural identity that has evolved in the Polynesian world. This book should be read repeatedly for the insights and understandings the author has carefully presented in its pages."—Journal of New Zealand Literature "Concerned with webs of connections and disconnections across a life as migrants, Once Were Pacific is a literary study of Māori writers writing in English in and across an ocean of islands."—American Quarterly