The Tolai are the indigenous people of the Gazelle Peninsula and the Duke of York Islands of East New Britain in the New Guinea Islands region of Papua New Guinea. They are ethnically close kin to the peoples of adjacent New Ireland and tribes like the Tanga people and are thought to have migrated to the Gazelle Peninsula in relatively recent times, displacing the Baining people who were driven westwards.
The majority of Tolais speak Kuanua as their first language (~100,000). Two other languages are spoken as first languages: Lungalunga and Bilur, each with approximately 2,000 speakers.
The Tolais almost universally define themselves as Christian and are predominantly Roman Catholic and United Church. Christianity was introduced to the island when Methodist ministers and teachers from Fiji arrived in the New Guinea islands region in 1875. However, in 1878 when some of the tribespeople ate four of the missionaries, the Englishman who led the missionaries, George Brown, directed and took part in a punitive expedition that resulted in a number of Tolais being killed and several villages burnt down.
In August 2007, the descendants of Tolai tribespeople who ate a Fijian minister and three Fijian teachers in 1878 publicly apologized for the incident to Fiji's High Commissioner, Ratu Isoa Tikoca. The apology was accepted. At the event, Papua New Guinea's Governor-General Paulias Matane told the crowd he appreciated the work of the early Fijian missionaries in spreading Christianity in the islands region.[1]
Notwithstanding the Christianization of the Tolais for more than a century, old beliefs and traditions still persist, e.g., the belief in the female spirits of the Tubuans with secret ceremonies performed by initiates of the Duk-Duk[2] society as well as the belief in sorcery to either gain someone's love or to punish an enemy.
The Tolais are divided into two moieties. Membership is determined by matrilineal descent.
^"Daily Telegraph | Breaking News and Headlines from Sydney and News South Wales | Daily Telegraph".
^D'Alleva, Anne (1998). Arts of the Pacific Islands. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-16412-1.
The Tolai are the indigenous people of the Gazelle Peninsula and the Duke of York Islands of East New Britain in the New Guinea Islands region of Papua...
up Tolai in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Tolai may refer to The Tolai language, an Austronesian language of Papua New Guinea The Tolaipeople, the...
The Tolai language, or Kuanua, is spoken by the Tolaipeople of Papua New Guinea, who live on the Gazelle Peninsula in East New Britain Province. This...
World War II history, flora and fauna, and the cultural life of the Tolaipeople. Before the 1994 eruption, Rabaul was a popular commercial and recreational...
though ambiguously called Minigir, is spoken by a small number of the Tolaipeople of Papua New Guinea, who live on the Gazelle Peninsula in East New Britain...
their own Austronesian languages (perhaps especially Kuanua, that of the Tolaipeople of East New Britain). This English-based pidgin evolved into Tok Pisin...
Guinea in 1970 and 1971, amid further calls for Independence by the Tolaipeople in Gazelle Peninsula. He called for self-governance for the territory...
history of the Baining peoples is strongly influenced by the seventeenth-century migration of the Tolai, an Melanesian people who drove the Papuan Baining...
learned during one of the 2003 expeditions: Foster discovered that the Tolaipeople had a legend of a "devil fish" appearing offshore on the day that AE1...
Chapman and Damian Farrell Duk-Duk, a men-only secret society of the Tolaipeople of New Britain Donald Duk, a coming-of-age novel written by Frank Chin...
thought to have been driven to this area in comparatively recent times by the Tolai tribes who migrated to the coastal areas. The Baining migration inland may...
Urapmin Wiru Wola Wopkaimin Yaifo Zia Baining Tolai Trobriand Girls from Papua New Guinea Papuan people in folk dress in Jakarta Newly married Kayu Batu...
New Britain hosts diverse and complex traditional cultures. While the Tolai of the Rabaul area of East New Britain have a matrilineal society, other...
the Tolaipeople in August 1971 when he was stabbed to death during negotiations. His killers were brought to trial and his death shocked the Tolai who...
Luteru Tolai (born 1 June 1998) is a professional rugby union player who plays as a hooker for Pro D2 club Biarritz. Born in New Zealand, he represents...
Guinea Post-Courier, 12 January 1978, p12 Jubilee's last wish unity for Tolaipeople Papua New Guinea Post-Courier, 30 October 1979, p19 Trusteeship Council:...
Shortly after his arrival in New Guinea, he had already lived among the Tolaipeople and learned their language. On 1 February 1903 Dr. Albert Hahl was married...
(Source of the Sea); a multimedia installation based on the lives of the Tolaipeople. An album of the same name was released. The album was nominated for...
appointment of 'luluais' [village chiefs], attempts to integrate the Tolaispeople into the European economy, and the protection of village lands, which...
Most of the lyrics are in the Tolai tongue, Kuanuan and Tok Pisin (Pidgin English) and recount the life of the Tolaipeople, then and now." In a review...
Mountains. They are distinct from the Tolai's Melanesian ethnicity. The Tolai are regarded as being the most successful people of Papua New Guinea; defined by...
the 1943 Battle of Mount Tambu Tambu or Tabu, the shell money of the Tolaipeople. Tambu, a 1979 novel by Robert Asprin Tambu, a fictional island in the...
Kabu. His father and grandfather were both traditional leaders of the Tolaipeople, and he became the third generation of his family to hold the role. After...
he was befriended by the local Tolai tribespeople, who offered him land, a home, and citizenship via marriage to a Tolai woman. Mizuki acknowledged that...
time, he had to teach Japanese soldiers Melanesian Pidgin and Kuanua (the Tolai language). Towards the end of the war, suspected of sympathy towards the...
400,000 speakers. The Gilbertese (Kiribati), Tongan, Tahitian, Māori and Tolai (Gazelle Peninsula) languages each have over 100,000 speakers. The common...
the late 1950s. Their feces and stomachs contained remains of tolai hare (Lepus tolai), small rodents, birds, small reptiles and invertebrates. In March...
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