They usually live a seaborne lifestyle and use small wooden sailing vessels such as the perahu (layag in Maranao), djenging (balutu), lepa, and vinta (pilang).

Sama-Bajau is a collective term, referring to several closely related indigenous people who consider themselves a single distinct bangsa ("ethnic group" or "nation").

[28] Most of the various oral traditions and tarsila (royal genealogies) among the Sama-Bajau have a common theme which claims that they were originally a land-dwelling people who were the subjects of a king who had a daughter.

[6][26][29][30] One such version widely told among the Sama-Bajau of Borneo claims that they descended from Johorean royal guards who were escorting a princess named Dayang Ayesha for marriage to a ruler in Sulu.

[31][32] This legend is popular among Sabah Sama-Bajau as it legitimises their claim to "Malay-ness" and strengthens their ties to Islam, which puts them in a favourable position in the Bumiputera laws of Malaysia (similar to the usage of the name "Bajau" instead of "Sama").

[33] Second version of the oral stories is told among the Bajau Kubang of Semporna where two siblings named Haklum Nuzum and Salingayah Bungsu from Sulu compete in a boat race to marry a beautiful princess from Johor Sultanate.

He then promised to not return to Johor and continue his journey all the way to "Sambuanga" (Zamboanga) in southern Philippines where he married a woman and blessed with a son and daughter later on.

[32] The origin myths claiming descent from Johor or Gowa have been largely rejected by modern scholars, mostly because these kingdoms were established too recently to explain the ethnic divergence.

[6] In 1965, the anthropologist David E. Sopher claimed that the Sama-Bajau, along with the Orang laut, descended from ancient "Veddoid" (Australoid)[note 1] hunter-gatherers from the Riau Archipelago who intermarried with Austronesians.

[6] In 1968, the anthropologist Harry Arlo Nimmo, on the other hand, believed that the Sama-Bajau are indigenous to the Sulu Archipelago, Sulawesi, and/or Borneo, and do not share a common origin with the Orang laut.

They were the original inhabitants of Zamboanga and the Sulu archipelago,[36] and were well-established in the region long before the first arrival of the Tausūg people at around the 13th century from their homelands along the northern coast of eastern Mindanao.

[14][37][38] From Zamboanga, some members of these people adopted an exclusively seaborne culture and spread outwards in the 10th century towards Basilan, Sulu, Borneo, and Sulawesi.

Genetically, the Sama-Bajau are highly diverse, indicating heavy admixture with the locals or even language and cultural adoption by coastal groups in the areas they settled.

This genetic signal (called the "Sama ancestry" by the authors) identifies them as descendants of an ancient migration of Austroasiatic-affiliated hunter-gatherer groups from mainland Southeast Asia via the now sunken land bridges of Sundaland around 15,000 to 12,000 years ago.

[37] Sama-Bajau usually served as low-ranking crewmembers of war boats, directly under the command of Iranun squadron leaders, who in turn answered to the Tausūg datu of the Sultanate of Sulu.

They were significantly involved in the First and Second Bone Wars (1824–1825) when the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army sent a punitive expedition in retaliation for Bugis and Makassar attacks on local Dutch garrisons.

[21][29] During the British colonial rule of Sabah, the Sama-Bajau were involved in two uprisings against the North Borneo Chartered Company: the Mat Salleh rebellion from 1894 to 1905, and the Pandasan Affair of 1915.

[41] Moreover, some controversial government programs in Indonesia and Malaysia have also resettled Bajau to the mainland too with the Malaysian programmes in particular trying to encourage them to pursue agriculture activities with some incentive.

[20][22][23] Though these are relatively safer regions, they are also more economically disadvantaged and socially excluded, leading to Filipinos sometimes stereotyping the boat-dwelling Sama-Bajau as beggars and squatters.

[35][56] It is believed that the Sama-Bajau resort to these activities mainly due to sedentarisation brought about by the restrictions imposed on their nomadic culture by modern nation-states.

[14][56] The Indonesian government and certain non-governmental organisations have launched several programs for providing alternative sustainable livelihood projects for Sama-Bajau to discourage these practices (such as the use of fish aggregating devices instead of explosives).

[57] With the loss of their traditional fishing grounds, some refugee groups of Sama-Bajau in the Philippines are forced to resort to begging (agpangamu in Sinama), particularly diving for coins thrown by inter-island ferry passengers (angedjo).

[23][44][58] In 2016, the Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources started a project for distributing fishing boats, gear, and other livelihood materials among Sama-Bajau communities in Luzon.

This was largely the result of raised awareness and an outpouring of support after a photo of a Sama-Bajau beggar, Rita Gaviola (dubbed the "Badjao Girl"), went viral in the Philippines.

[53] The umboh are believed to influence fishing activities, rewarding the Sama-Bajau by granting good luck favours known as padalleang and occasionally punishing by causing serious incidents called busong.

They are dried (magpatanak) and are then laid out in small conical piles symbolic of mountains (bud) on the living room floor (a process known as the "sleeping of rice").

They live in houseboats (lepa, balutu, and vinta being the most common types) which generally accommodate a single nuclear family (usually five people).

The songs are usually sung during marriage celebrations (kanduli pagkawin), accompanied by dance (pang-igal) and musical instruments like pulau (flute), gabbang (xylophone), tagunggo' (kulintang gongs), biula (violin), and in modern times, electronic keyboards.

Sama-Bajau society is traditionally highly individualistic,[31] and the largest political unit is the clan cluster around mooring points, rarely more.

[27][103] More than a thousand years of subsistence freediving associated with their life on the sea appear to have endowed the Bajau with several genetic adaptations to facilitate their lifestyle.