Tolai people

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 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: Minigir 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.