Yena, also yina, are the ancient and powerful spirit-beings honoured in the first and most public of the three ceremonies that follow the Kwoma yam harvest. Each is manifested as a carved or ceramic head set on a long, neck-like stalk, lavishly painted and adorned and displayed atop the basketry mount that holds part of the crop. Yena are conceived as clan spirits: every clan owns one or more, the carvings are individually named, and while a great male yena presides, lesser yena are reckoned as its brothers and sisters. They are associated particularly with lakes, into which their images were periodically submerged. Sources differ on whether yena embody the spirits of dead ancestors or independent clan spirits responsible for the fertility of the yam gardens. Among the neighbouring Nukuma and Yasyin-Mayo peoples the equivalent spirit-head is called wasau (was au).