The Kadazan people are part of the Kadazandusun community, which is the biggest ethnic entity in Sabah, compromising about 20% of her population.

There are a total of 32 different tribes in Sabah, speaking as many languages and over 80 dialects. In the whole of Borneo over 200 peoples speak more than 250 languages, and many more dialects.

Next to the Kadazandusun there are three other important ethnic entities, namely the Murut and the Bajau, and the Chinese, the biggest non-indigenous ethnic community.

The term Kadazandusun has been used in modem times to unite the various ethnic entities of the Dusunic language community. The Kadazan people were traditionally those who inhabited plains and valleys, cultivating wet-rice. The Dusun people still five in the hilly areas around Mount Kinabalu, and mostly farm hill-rice. 

The Kadazan people differentiate various tribes amongst themselves, with slight language variations (isoglots). Thus, in the area of Kuai-Kandazon the people belong to the Tangaa', and in Penampang Proper, stretching to Nambazan are the Karanga'an.

It is not exactly clear from where the Dusunic tribes have come, and when they settled in the north of Borneo. More recent archaeological evidence places the origin of the Dusunic people in the area that was known as Indo-China. Some 10,000 yeas ago, during the last ice-age and when Borneo was still part of a wider landmass, called the Sundaland, those people could have moved by toot to these parts of the world. It is also possible that they have moved trough Laos, Vietnam and the Philippines, and a few thousand years ago arrived by sea. Language affinities, and similarities of customs, dresses and religious belief system make both assumptions possible.

For sure is that the Kadazan subsequently have developed a way of life that suited them perfectly in this climate. With the arrival of rice, which is believed to have been imported by the Chinese about 2000 years ago, the Kadazan settled to a life in wonderful harmony with their environment. The community, with large, extended families at its centre, took a pivotal role. For the most part an egalitarian society, the Kadazan were ruled by elected chiefs, and their priestesses, called Bobohizans, who were responsible to maintain harmony between human beings, nature and spiritual world.