Field data were collected on Fatato Island, Funafuti Atoll, Tuvalu, to understand contemporary wave transformation processes on a previously unstudied atoll. Subsequently, a fully nonlinear Boussinesq model was used to simulate wave processes on Fatato and other reefs with variable morphology to evaluate the impact of sea level rise (SLR) on shoreline wave energy, runup...

Cook Islands Māori is an endangered East Polynesian language closely related to but distinct from Tahitian and New Zealand Māori. This project focusses specifically on the varieties of Cook Islands Māori originating from, and spoken in, the Southern Group of the Cook Islands, that is, the islands of Rarotonga, Aitutaki, Atiu, Maꞌuke , Mitiꞌaro and...

This thesis offers a reappraisal of Earth as presented in Gen. 1:1-2:4a from a Samoan gafataulima (accomplish/fulfil/capable) hermeneutical perspective. The inspiration for the study arose out of a personal dilemma concerning my religious beliefs and the reality that I am experiencing in the world today, specifically, the tensions between Earth's perfect portrait in Gen. 1:1-2:4a...

As the primary site for development of all herbicide-tolerant corn seed and with more experimental field trials of genetically engineered crops than anywhere else in the world, Hawai‘i is placed at the epicenter of the agrochemical-seed-biotechnology industry’s global chains of production. It is also a node of powerful resistance along that chain. This thesis contributes...

The study examines how place meanings have been recontested, recontextualised and renewed through the Cook Islands’ coral churches continued use. The study supports earlier scholarship and local perspectives suggesting that churches were conceptualised and constructed as the island’s “new marae,” their presence physically restating tribal rights to land.