Making indigenous lives more visible in mainstream biographical historiography and in mass biography projects has clear merits for scholarship and progressive understandings of the nation. But a few indigenous scholars have warned against the potential effects of imposing lifewriting onto indigenous historical subjects. Sioux scholar Elizabeth Cook-Lynn worries that biography’s fetish for selves aligns more with colonial thinking than with native traditions. In consequence, she argues, such work can degenerate into “pimping the stereotypes.” This paper explores what might be lost and what gained from writing the life of one particular indigenous person, Mai of Ra‘iatea (c.1753-c1780). Mai lived in various islands of the Tahitian archipelago before joining James Cook’s second voyage home to Britain, staying in Europe for two years, and then journeying back via Tasmania, Aotearoa, and Tonga. His life usually figures in history as a traveler to new worlds, and as an exemplar of Indigenous-imperial relations. Taking in his whole (short) life opens up new perspectives on both eastern Pacific history during the late eighteenth century as well as the role of Europeans in the region at this time.