Flora and Fauna in the Perspective of the Bajo Maritime Language and Culture Studies Language Tajirah Umajjah 1 * , Ikhwan M. Said 2 , Asriani Abbas 3 1,2,3 Cultural Studies Faculty, Hasanuddin University * Corresponding author. Email: thajirahumajjah@gmail.com ABSTRACT Bajo is a tribe that lives in the sea. The interaction pattern of the Bajo is on the sea which is the source of their life. The nomadic lifestyle (wandering or moving) made the Bajo feel a real change in their cultural life. The tribes who have a life with the sea since a long time ago, are scattered in eastern Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Nusa Tenggara, to the southern Philippines now. In anthropological or cultural literature, there are various theories regarding the relationship between language and culture. In terms of language, the Bajo tribe uses the Sama-Bajau language. The Sama-Bajau language is the name for the language used by the Bajo people, especially in the coastal areas of the eastern Indonesian archipelago. The object of research in this paper is flora and fauna from the perspective of the Bajo language in the Kolaka region of Southeast Sulawesi. The data relating to flora and fauna were collected using descriptive qualitative research methods. It was found that a few numbers of flora and fauna in the perspective of the Bajo language, dominantly use the letter 'H' in their lexical expression and often absorb the language of the neighbouring tribes who live side by side with it, namely: Bugis, Makassar and Tolaki. Keywords: Bajo tribe, flora, fauna, Bajo language 1. INTRODUCTION Indonesia is a country with a variety of tribes, customs and cultures. One of the tribes that attracted the attention of researchers to get to know and study more deeply about social lifestyle, culture and language is the Bajo tribe. The Bajo tribe is a tribe that lives in the sea. The pattern of interaction of Bajo people is centred on the sea that is the source of their lives. Nomadic lifestyles (wandering or moving around) make people feel a real change in their culture and language. As a result, Bajo people find it difficult to show their true identity. Whereas identity as a social phenomenon that arises from the dialectic between individuals and society. Identity is formed by social processes, maintained, modified or reshaped by the social relations of society. The identity of Bajo people has now become vague due to social change and development that occurs so quickly. In addition, globalization that strengthens every line of life makes people cannot withstand the flow of global change. In Indonesia, research on Bajo people has a high interest lately, both from the point of view of anthropology, ecology, sociology, politics and economics. Not a few social scientists try to research the lives of Bajo people, issues of identity of Bajo people, and issues about the language of Bajo people. If you research Bajo people, it cannot be separated from the writings of Robert Zacot, an anthropologist, who examined the Bajo people in depth (The Bajo people on Nain Island, in North Sulawesi and Torosiaje, in Gorontalo). In particular, he looked at the lives of the Bajo people as a whole, at the time, roughly between the 1970s and 1990s. His research used purely ethnographic methods, and still saw people Bajo at that time who had not been affected by his identity as it is today. Then, Suyuti [4], explained the changing meaning of "sama" (Bajo people) and "bagai" (not Bajo people). From this meaning, He identifies social changes that occur to the Bajo community, analysis of the changes here are related to the interaction of the Bajo people with non-Bajo people, especially the Bajo people in Kolaka, Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 622 Proceedings of the International Congress of Indonesian Linguistics Society (KIMLI 2021) Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL. This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license -http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. 206