Mu Ngava

Mu Ngava is the Rennellese name for Rennell Island, a raised coral atoll south of the Solomon Islands main chain. Its people and those of neighbouring Bellona form a Polynesian outlier in the Melanesian archipelago. Lapita groups first settled the island in the second millennium BC, and according to local tradition its inhabitants descend from voyagers led by Kaitu'u who arrived from Uvea, now Wallis Island, around 1400.

They speak Rennellese, a Polynesian outlier language closely shared with Bellona. They lived in isolated cliff-bound villages until the first recorded European visit, by Captain Butler of HMS Walpole in 1801.