Kei

The Kei are the Austronesian people of the Kei Islands in southeast Maluku, chiefly Kai Besar and Kai Kecil. They call their land Evav and speak Keiese, a lingua franca across the archipelago.

Their oral history traces part of their ancestry to Balinese nobles of Majapahit who landed at Ohoi-Ewur on Kai Kecil, where princess Dit Sakmas shaped Larvul Ngabal, the red-blood and Balinese-spear customary law. Their patrilineal society was divided between the nine-village Ursiu and five-village Lorlim ritual federations under twenty-two traditional Rat, or rajas.

When the Dutch East India Company conquered the Banda Islands in 1621, Bandanese refugees fled to Kai Besar and the Kei Islands were drawn into the Dutch sphere in Maluku. The small Tanimbar Kei community kept an older Hindu-tinged ancestor cult on its remote island.