An effective understanding of the history of Mangaia, the most southerly of the Cook Islands, requires a firm foundation in the language of the people. Based upon this insight, Ancestral Voices transcribes and interprets a series of indigenous historical texts, including proverbs, songs and narratives, as told by generations of Mangaian scholars, notably the tribal historian, Mamae, and by outsider scholars, particularly, the missionary William Wyatt Gill and the anthropologist Te Rangi Hiroa (Peter Buck).