For most of its history Sumba has been divided into small kingdoms, each dominated by a feudal raja. These raja had absolute power until the formation of the Indonesian Republic in 1945. Socially and culturally, however, they remain highly respected. The east of Sumba supports barely a third of the island's population but has the most richly developed textile tradition. In full traditional dress men wear two large blanket-size hinggi, one as a hip cloth, one as a sash.
Women wear a tubular lau sarong and a hawala irung sash.
Textiles in Sumba have always functioned both as an indication of status and a means of ritual exchange. Textiles form part of the ceremonial exchange of gifts between the families of a bride and groom. For funerals, dozens of cloths are interred with the corpse and many more given to and by the hundreds of guests that attend the ceremony. The motifs in a cloth may be geometric, zoomorphic, floral, trade-inspired or ethnographic. Even though many Sumbanese are now Christian, the way of the merapu ancestral spirits continues to be vividly expressed in the symbols of birth, on-going life, death, and reincarnation woven into the island's textiles.