The peoples this entry groups together, Maori, Native Hawaiians, Samoans, Tongans, Tahitians and others, share deep linguistic and ancestral kinship but built distinct societies once settlement spread them across the Pacific, developing separate political structures, social hierarchies and, in many cases, separate ceremonial traditions specific to each island group's own history and environment. Treating them as a single grouping is a linguistic and genealogical statement, that they descend from a common ancestral population and speak closely related languages, and not a claim that Maori tikanga and Native Hawaiian practice, for instance, are interchangeable or that a description of one would stand in for the other.
That distinction is why this entry names but does not describe the ceremonial and tapu material this atlas has registered as restricted. Polynesian Religion covers material Kanaka Maoli, Maori and other Pacific peoples hold and govern separately, each setting its own terms for what may be shared outside the community and what may not, and the same rule applies here as elsewhere: record that the restriction exists, name which register entry it falls under, and stop there. A reader wanting to understand who the Polynesian peoples are, where they came from and how they are related to one another will find that here; a reader wanting the specific content of any people's closed ceremonial practice will not, because that content belongs to the communities that hold it and not to an outside reference work.