Moi

The Moi, who call themselves Mosana, are the people of the southwestern tip of the Bird's Head Peninsula, around the harbour that became Sorong and adjacent coasts and islands. Their tradition traces them to Klawelem in Makbon, where the original landowners, the neulig, merged with later migrants, the nesaf, through intermarriage.

They garden and manage the forest under a customary conservation rule called yegek, a form of the sasi tradition, and teach their young in a house named Kambik.

As Tidore's influence spread through the Raja Ampat islands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a Moi named Ulbisi married the daughter of the raja of Waigeo, took the title fun Mo, meaning king of the Moi, and founded the Sailolof kingdom on southern Salawati Island. His descendants ruled there with the Kapita-laut title won through trade with Tidore.