Polynesian Society

The Polynesian Society is a non-profit organisation based at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, dedicated to the scholarly study of the history, ethnography and mythology of Oceania.

The society was co-founded in 1892 by Percy Smith and Edward Tregear, largely in response to a conviction widely held at the time, that the Māori and other Polynesian peoples were a dying race.

Smith and his friends hoped that it would help to preserve the traditional lore of the Māori before it disappeared and provide scholars with a forum for learned discussion of their ethnographic research (Byrnes 2006).

In addition to this journal, the society has published many notable monographs, including S. Percy Smith's History and Traditions of the Taranaki Coast (1910) and The Lore of the Whare Wananga (1913–15); A. Shand's The Moriori People of the Chatham Islands (1911); Elsdon Best, The Maori (1924) and Tuhoe (1925); J. C. Andersen, Maori Music (1934); and C. R. H. Taylor, A Pacific Bibliography (1951), and two catalogues of the Oldman Collection of Māori and Polynesian artifacts (2004).

Other major works include A. Ngata and Pei Te Hurinui Jones Nga Moteatea (1959–1990), a definitive four-volume collection of traditional Māori song with translations and commentaries, which has been published in a new, enhanced edition by Auckland University Press in association with the Polynesian Society.