Polewali Mandar is one of the five regencies in West Sulawesi province of Indonesia. It borders on the regencies of Mamasa in the North, Majene in the West and Pinrang regency of South Sulawesi in the East. It covers an area of 2,074.76 km2 and had a population of 396,120 at the 2010 Census and 478,534 at the 2020 Census; the official estimate as at mid 2023 was 495,371. The regency is inhabited by various ethnic groups such as the Mandar, Buginese, Javanese and Toraja.

The Mandarese are an ethnic group in the Indonesian province of West Sulawesi in Sulawesi. The Mandar language belongs to the Northern subgroup of the South Sulawesi languages group of the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family. The closest language to Mandar is the Toraja-Sa'dan language.