Muyua

The Muyua, or Muyuw, are the people of Woodlark Island and its surrounding islets in the Solomon Sea, east of New Guinea. Their language belongs to the Kilivila–Louisiades branch of the Austronesian family, with dialects including Iwa, which shades into the Kilivila of the Trobriands.

The island's villagers combine yam gardening and fishing with mastery of the sea: stone quarried on Mount Tubukuia was shaped into prized Suloga axes, traded across the Massim islands and west to the Gulf of Papua. The canoe builders of Gawa produced large sailing canoes that carried shell necklaces and armshells around the kula exchange ring.

In the 1830s the Australian whaler Woodlark called there and gave the archipelago its European name; other whaling ships followed for water and wood, and islanders sometimes shipped as crew while the old trade networks kept running.