Welcome to Sumba Iland

The name of this island is etymologically derived from the native Sumba word of Humba (in certain dialects), which means “no interference”, “original”, “native”, or “indigenous”; which was initially an ethnonym referring to the native inhabitants of this island who identified themselves as tau Humba or tau Hubba ('native people' or 'original people'), the identification was made to differentiate themselves from foreigners (non-Sumba people) who gradually and continuously came to occupy the island.

On the other hand, the Sumba's cultural territory (which includes Sumba Island and its surrounding seas) is also natively known as tana wai Humba or tana was hubba (in Sumba languages) which means “our native land” or “the motherland of Sumba people. Sumba has a highly stratified society based on castes. This is especially true of East Sumba, whereas West Sumba is more ethnically and linguistically diverse.

The Sumbanese people speak a variety of closely related Austronesian languages and have a mixture of Austronesian and Melanesian ancestry. The largest language group is the Kambera language, spoken by a quarter of a million people in the eastern half of Sumba.

Twenty-five to thirty percent of the population practices the animist Marapu religion. Sumba is famous for ikat textiles, particularly very detailed hand-woven ikat. The process of dyeing and weaving ikat is labor-intensive and one piece can take months to prepare.