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Nukufetau was settled by Polynesian communities who developed a way of life suited to a narrow coral atoll. The lagoon provided sheltered waters for fishing and canoe travel, while coconut, pandanus and other plants supplied food, materials and shade. Authority and social responsibilities were organised through extended families and local leaders, with customary knowledge transmitted through oral traditions, land relationships and communal work. The atoll's many islets encouraged a maritime culture in which movement across the lagoon was as important as life on land. Although written records are limited for the earliest period, the shape of the community today still reflects these Polynesian foundations.

Christian missionaries reached the islands of the Ellice group during the nineteenth century, bringing new religious institutions and reshaping aspects of community life. On Nukufetau, Christianity became closely associated with village organisation, education, ceremonies and the construction of churches. Traditional practices did not simply disappear; many social obligations, systems of mutual assistance and relationships with the lagoon continued within a Christian framework. Churches and communal meeting places remain important landmarks in the principal settlement, while local stories and family traditions preserve memories of the period when outside teachers, pastors and new patterns of authority became influential across the atoll.

In 1892 Britain established a protectorate over the Ellice Islands, the southern Polynesian islands that were administered alongside the predominantly Micronesian Gilbert Islands. Colonial administration introduced new legal and political structures while the atolls remained remote and largely dependent on local subsistence, copra production and inter-island exchange. Nukufetau's relationship with the wider group increasingly ran through colonial officials, mission networks and maritime links. The administrative pairing of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands lasted into the twentieth century, even though the two groups had distinct languages, cultural traditions and geographical identities.

During the Second World War, the central Pacific became a major theatre of military operations. United States forces developed facilities on several Tuvaluan atolls, including an airfield on Motulalo at Nukufetau. The wartime presence brought aircraft, military personnel, equipment and abrupt changes to island life, as local communities encountered the scale of an international conflict. Much of the military infrastructure has disappeared or been absorbed by the landscape, but the airstrip remains a physical reminder of the years when these remote islands were drawn into strategic campaigns across the Pacific.

After the war, the islands continued under the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony while political discussion gradually strengthened around separate futures for the two island groups. The Gilbert Islands became Kiribati in 1979, while the Ellice Islands achieved independence as Tuvalu on 1 October 1978. Nukufetau became part of the new state, whose government is based on Funafuti but whose identity depends on widely separated atoll communities. Today, migration, climate pressure, imported goods and modern communications have altered daily life, yet customary cooperation, church networks, lagoon knowledge and local leadership remain central to Nukufetau's social character.