Geographic Distribution
Kalaw Lagaw Ya is spoken on all of the western and central islands of Torres Strait, between Papua New Guinea and the Australian mainland, though on some islands it has now been largely replaced by Brokan (Torres Strait Creole). Before Colonisation in the 1870s-1880s, the language was the major lingua franca of the area in both Australia and Papua, and there is some folk history evidence that the language was spoken as a first language in a few villages neighbouring Torres Strait in Papua. It was also formerly spoken by the Hiamu of Daru (Dhaaru) to the north-east of Torres Strait. The main body of the Hiamu (who were originally settlers from Yama in Torres Strait) moved to the Thursday Island group to escape the Kiwai colonisation of the area.
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“There is the illusion of time, which is very deep; who has disposed of it? Mor come to the conviction that what seems the succession of thought is only the distribution of wholes into causal series.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)