Ma'ya

The Ma'ya are the coastal people of the Raja Ampat archipelago off the Bird's Head Peninsula of New Guinea, living on Waigeo, Salawati, Batanta and Misool. Their language, Ma'ya, belongs to the South Halmahera–West New Guinea branch of Austronesian and sits on the boundary with Papuan languages, with distinct island dialects.

Ma'ya tradition places their origin in Kabui Bay on northern Waigeo and tells of seven sacred eggs, four of which hatched into the kings who ruled Waigeo, Salawati, Sailolof and Misool. Islam reached the archipelago in the fifteenth century through contacts with Bacan, and after the sixteenth century the Ma'ya lands were tied to the Tidore Sultanate, whose four vassal rajas governed them.

The Portuguese navigator Jorge de Menezes landed on Waigeo in 1526, and with the Dutch rise in the Moluccas the islands entered the colonial sphere.