Suau

The Suau are a coastal people of the southeastern tip of New Guinea, occupying the mangrove- and sago-fringed bays of the southern Milne Bay shore, from Fife Bay eastward. Their language, also called Iou, is an Oceanic tongue of the Papuan Tip group, part of the Suauic linkage with Saliba; it spread beyond its home villages as a lingua franca for trade with island and inland communities.

Where the forested Stirling Range meets the sea, Suau villagers combined shore and lagoon fishing with gardening on the coastal flats and sailed canoes between mainland settlements and offshore islands.

The Spanish expedition of Luís Vaez de Torres surveyed Milne Bay in 1606; afterward the coast slipped into obscurity for more than two centuries, and the Suau kept their dialects, exchange networks and lagoon-centered way of life.