Meyah

The Meyah are the northernmost of the four sub-groups of the Arfak people of the Bird's Head Peninsula, living mainly on the coastal plain east of the Arfak Mountains. They speak Meyah, a Papuan language of the East Bird's Head family whose subject-verb-object order was borrowed from neighbouring Austronesian languages.

Their clans are shared with the neighbouring Moile. Like other Arfak groups they farm swiddens, hunt and gather in the forest, and build stilt houses called mod aki aksa.

The coast was drawn into Moluccan and Malay trade from the fifteenth century, Jorge de Menezes sailed past in 1526, and Tidore's sultans later claimed loose overlordship over the peninsula. Closer to the shore than other Arfak, the Meyah felt these pressures earliest, yet retained their language and clan society.