La'aka is the most prominent of the adalo, the ancestral spirits at the centre of Kwaio religion in east-central Malaita. Unlike the ordinary adalo, who are the remembered dead of a particular descent group, La'aka belongs to a class of ancient and powerful beings who were never ordinary mortals and who are venerated across many groups. She is bound up with the system of abu, the ramifying taboos that divide the sacred from the polluting, men from women, and the shrine (fera) from the menstrual and childbirth seclusion of the bisi. Worshippers secure her favour, and the fertility of pigs and the success in feasting that flow from it, through sacrifice, while neglect or transgression of the taboos she guards brings sickness and misfortune. Sources describe La'aka as female, though her attributes are rendered differently in different local traditions.