Until Hela Becomes a City: The Western Encounter with Huli Modernity

This thesis is an investigation into materialism as a crucial component of Huli thought. Previous ethnographic research undertaken among Huli since the 1950s has touched upon materialist aspects of Huli in various ways, but the ethnographic fieldwork that I undertook in 2016 convinced me that the existence of a distinct Huli materialist ontology presented a gap in our understandings of Huli culture and history. This thesis examines several different aspects of contemporary Huli life, and links them via a theory of Huli materialism.