Minahasan people

Common card · No. 210402

The Minahasans or Minahassa are an Austronesian ethnic group native to North Sulawesi province of Indonesia. The Minahasa people sometimes refer to themselves as Manado people. Although the Minahasan pre-Christian creation myth entails some form of ethnic unification, other sources assert that before the nineteenth century the Minahasa region was in no way unified. Instead, a number of politically independent groups (walak) existed together, often in a permanent state of conflict. Minahasans are the most populous ethnic group in the Minahasan peninsula of North Sulawesi, a Christian-majority region in a Muslim-majority country (Indonesia). The indigenous inhabitants of Minahasa are 'Austronesian' people who are the descendants of earlier migrations from further North. Prior to contact with Europeans, people living in the Minahasan peninsula primarily had contact with the people of North Maluku and with Chinese and Malay traders from within the Indonesian archipelago. From the 1500s onwards...

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