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Baruya

The Baruya are a tribe in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. There are approximately 1500 Baruya people living in the Wonenara and Marawaka valleys.

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Bedamini (Biami)

The Bedamini (Biami) are an Indigenous culture group in Papua New Guinea numbering about 4000 people. They are horticulturists living in the Nomad River area of the Great Papuan Plateau. Their territory is 300-600 meters in altitude, and is in a tropical rain forest zone. Other names for this group are Beami or Bedamuni.

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Bosavi (Kaluli)

The Kaluli are a clan of non-literate Indigenous peoples who live in the rain forests of the Great Papuan Plateau in Papua New Guinea. The origin of the name with the addition of the suffix -li the word Kaluli directly translates to “real people of Bosavi.” Some people refer to the language as Bosavi, however the people themselves refer to the language as Kaluli. There are four dialects, Ologo, Kaluli, Walulu, and Kugenesi.

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Chambri

Chambri are an ethnic group in the Chambri Lakes region in the East Sepik province of Papua New Guinea. The social structures of Chambri society have often been a subject in the study of gender roles. The Chambri language is spoken by them. The Chambri consist of three villages: Indingai, Wombun, and Kilimbit.

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Enga

Enga is a language of the East New Guinea Highlands spoken by a quarter-million people in Enga Province, Papua New Guinea. Although dialects of the Enga language vary greatly from Laiagam in the west to Wapenamanda in the east, Engans’ shared ethnic identity overshadows the existence of other ethnic groups in the province. Like many other highland Papua New Guineans living west of the Daulo Pass (between Chimbu Province and Eastern Highlands Province), the traditional Engan settlement style is that of scattered homesteads dispersed throughout the landscape.

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Ganiga

Excerpt from a Smithsonian Magazine article about the “Highland Trilogy” legacy:

“Long after missionaries and Europeans settled on the coast of New Guinea in the 19th century, the mountainous interior remained unexplored. As recently as the 1920s, outsiders believed the mountains, which run the length of the island from east to west, were too steep and rugged for anyone to live there. But when gold was discovered 40 miles inland, prospectors went north across the Coral Sea to seek their fortunes…In the highlands (were) found wide, fertile valleys, groomed with garden plots that were later estimated to feed a million inhabitants sorted into hundreds of tribes and clans. The highlanders lived in huts of timber and kunai grass, used stone tools and fought with wooden spears and arrows. Just as white settlers had been unaware of their existence, the highlanders had no idea that anyone lived beyond the mountains.”

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Gogodala

The Gogodala are a tribe of approximately 25,000, located in 33 villages in Papua New Guinea. Their territory extends from the Aramia River to the lower Fly River, and it is the most populous Local-Level Government area in the province. Their territory is divided into West, East and Fly areas. The Gogodala occupy mostly the flat terrain and the floodplain areas.

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Hubula (Dani)

The Hubula are a people from the central highlands of western New Guinea (the Indonesian province of Papua) in the Baliem Valley. Dani, also spelled Ndani, is the name given to them by the Moni people who live to the west of the Baliem Valley. While they do not call themselves Dani, they have been known as such since the 1926 Smithsonian Institution-Dutch Colonial Government expedition to New Guinea under Matthew Stirling who visited the Moni.

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Iatmul (Kandagai Village)

The total Iatmul population is about 10,000 people. The homeland of the Iatmul is along the middle course of the Sepik River in the country of Papua New Guinea. The Iatmul language is classified by linguists as a Papuan, or non-Austronesian, language that belongs to the Ndu language family. The Papuan languages are spoken throughout the island of New Guinea and on a few smaller neighboring islands in Indonesia. There is very little information on the Iatmul language. The Iatmul refer to their language by the word nyara. The language has two dialects. Iatmul children and many adults are also fluent in Tok Pisin (an English-based pidgin language), one of the national languages of Papua New Guinea.

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Kawelka

The Kawelka people are an Indigenous tribe who live in the Western Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. The Kawelka are largely based in the immediate area surrounding the Wahgi Valley, located in the New Guinea Highlands.

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Lak

Lak is the name of a coastal Papua New Guinea population and encompasses two groups that are no longer distinct: inland dwellers who relocated to the coast at the time of Western contact (c. 1900) and an original coastal-dwelling group. The name has been adopted by the New Ireland provincial government and designates an electorate composed almost exclusively of Lak speakers.

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Mandak

Mandak is a linguistic-cultural designation for people living in central New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. “Mandak” means “boy” or “male” and is used by New Irelanders to refer to those speaking the various dialects of Mandak. Further sociocultural distinctions are made by reference to particular Mandak villages.

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Nasioi (Naasioi, Melanesian, Bougainvillean)

Nasioi (Naasioi, Kieta, Kieta Talk, Aunge) is a language spoken by about 20,000 Indigenous people residing in the central mountains and southeast coast of Kieta District, Bougainville Island. Though a province of Papua New Guinea, the island is part of what is called the Solomon Islands archipelago. The majority of the Indigenous population on the island are of Melanesian descent. Post-colonially, there is a pan-Bougainvillean identity that has been forged amongst the various Indigenous groups in their struggle to become sovereign.

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Sepik

The Sepik or Sepik River languages are a family of some 50 Papuan languages spoken in the Sepik river basin of northern Papua New Guinea. The Sepik-Ramu basin is home to the Torricelli, Sepik, Lower Sepik-Ramu, Kwomtari, Leonhard Schultze, Upper Yuat, Yuat, Left May, and Amto-Musan language families, while local language isolates are Busa, Taiap, and Yadë. Torricelli, Sepik, and Lower Sepik-Ramu are by far the three most internally diverse language families of the region.

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Trobriander

The people of the Trobriand Islands are mostly subsistence horticulturalists who live in traditional settlements. The social structure is based on matrilineal clans that control land and resources. he Trobriand peoples speak Kilivila. Various dialects of it are spoken amongst each different tribe. It is an Austronesian language, although has the distinction of having a complex system for classifying nouns.

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Umeda

Umeda is an Indigenous village in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea. The people of the village are known by the village name, Umeda. There is roughly 500 people of this culture and dialect.

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