Drehu

The Drehu are the Kanak people of Lifou, the largest of the Loyalty Islands off New Caledonia's Grande Terre. Their Drehu language, self-named qene drehu and once also called Lifou, is the chief tongue of the Loyalty Islands group.

As a New Caledonian branch Oceanic language it descends from the Austronesian speech of Lapita voyagers who settled these limestone islands after 1100 BC, adapting taro to sunken pits and mastering long open-water fishing voyages. Drehu society developed powerful chiefs addressed in a special elevated register, qene miny; rank, shell-money and clan ceremonies ordered life on an island without streams or building stone for fortifications.

Europeans only located the Loyalty Islands in the 1790s, when the English whaler William Raven mapped Maré, Lifou and Ouvéa between 1793 and 1796, after which the Drehu met only occasional whaling ships before 1837.