They consisted mainly of a strip on the coast facing the Indian Ocean, and a western hinterland and up to and beyond Boolathanna, Mooka, Mardathuna, Binthalya, and the Kennedy Range.
They also lived around the coastal salt lakes near Carnarvon to Manberry and Hutton Creek.
Their southern flank ran down to the floodplain of the Gascoyne River,[2] and on Lake Macleod.
Their area was afflicted by diseases like smallpox and influenza which ravaged the coastal populations after the establishment of pearling stations on the coast, at Shark Bay and Cossack.
Subsequently, "nigger hunting" to cull hands to work the pearling trawlers, and a system of indentured labour imposed on the tribes found by pastoralists on their runs, effectively decimated people like the Maia by breaking up their kinship groups.