Kwaio

Kwaio, also known as Koio, Welakau or Fataia, is an Austronesian language of the Oceanic branch spoken across the mountainous interior of central Malaita in the Solomon Islands. Its speakers, the Kwaio, live in scattered hamlets and farm taro by swidden cultivation. Kwaio society is organised around descent groups and an ancestor religion governed by rules of taboo, called abu, whose language of ritual and sacrifice forms a central part of the tongue.

Although Álvaro de Mendaña's Spanish ships sighted Malaita in 1568, the island's highlands long remained beyond European reach, and the Kwaio had no recorded contact with outsiders during this period. Their language had no writing and was carried by speech, genealogy and oral lore.