Kilivila

The Kilivila are the people of the Trobriand Islands, coral atolls off New Guinea, whose largest island is Kiriwina. Speaking Kilivila, an Austronesian language of the Oceanic branch, they live in villages under matrilineal clans that hold the land and arrange marriage and inheritance.

Their economy rests on yam gardening, with yams and pigs serving as stores of wealth and instruments of prestige. Their villages take part in the kula, an inter-island circuit in which red shell necklaces and white shell armshells circulate among lifelong trade partners reached by seagoing canoes.

In 1793 the French expedition of Antoine Bruni d'Entrecasteaux sailed past and named the islands after his officer Denis de Trobriand. In the decades that followed, whalers and other ships called for water and provisions, while the islanders kept their clan system, gardening magic and exchange rites essentially intact.