The Mingin, also known as the Mingginda, are an

Aboriginal Australian Aboriginal Australians are the various indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, excluding the ethnically distinct people of the Torres Strait Islands. Humans first migrated to Australia 50,000 to 65,000 year ...

people of the state of

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

, who lived in the

Gulf Country The Gulf Country or North West Queensland is the region of woodland and savanna grassland surrounding the Gulf of Carpentaria in north western Queensland and eastern Northern Territory on the north coast of Australia. The region is also ca ...

east of Moonlight Creek and the Yukulta / Ganggalidda people in the southern

Gulf of Carpentaria The Gulf of Carpentaria is a sea off the northern coast of Australia. It is enclosed on three sides by northern Australia and bounded on the north by the eastern Arafura Sea, which separates Australia and New Guinea. The northern boundary ...

Language

The Mingin language's affiliation has yet to be determined but is thought to have belonged to the Tangkic language family, and to have been closely related to the languages of the

Wellesley Islands The Wellesley Islands, also known as the North Wellesley Islands, is a group of islands off the coast of Far North Queensland, Australia, in the Gulf of Carpentaria. It is a locality within the Shire of Mornington local government area. The t ...

and in particular

Yukulta The Yukulta people, also spelt Jokula, Jukula, and other variants, and also known as Ganggalidda or Gangalidda, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the state of Queensland. They may be the same as the Yanga group. Country Norman Tindale ( ...

spoken by the neighbouring Ganggalida.

Country

Norman Tindale estimated Mingin land as encompassing around , in the savannah plains south of

Burketown Burketown is an isolated outback town and coastal Suburbs and localities (Australia), locality in the Shire of Burke, Queensland, Australia. It is located west of Cairns and west of Normanton, Queensland, Normanton on the Albert River (Gulf Sa ...

on the Barkly River, as far east to the banks of the

Leichhardt River The Leichhardt River is a river in north-west Queensland, Australia. Course The source of the river is in the Selwyn Range under Rifle Creek Hill and fed by Rifle Creek approximately south of the mining town Mount Isa. It runs in a generally n ...

. Their southern limits lay around Augustus Downs and Gregory Downs. Their sole contact with the coast was at the area where the Albert River drains into the

Social customs

The Mingin were a circumcising tribe which dropped the rite from their initiation ceremonies sometime around the middle of the 19th century. They had close links, though speaking apparently quite distinct languages, with the neighbouring Maikudunu. According to one early settler in their area, their tribal traditions held that they were respectively formed by branching off from the

Kalkatungu The Kalkadoon (properly Kalkatungu) are descendants of an Indigenous Australian tribe living in the Mount Isa region of Queensland. Their ancestral tribe has been called "the elite of the Aboriginal warriors of Queensland". In 1884 they were mas ...

, a people whom they, and the Maikudunu, thereafter reportedly held in contempt.

History

The Mingin lived along the coastal territory lying west of the

. One oral account, conserved by the Ganggalida, has them encountering intruders in the area of the Albert River. The Leichhardt river forms a natural divide between differing Aboriginal cultures, circumcision not being practised east of it, from which one may infer that the Mingginda included it in their initiatory rituals. Within a very short period after the beginning of white settlement in the area, the Mingin were decimated, either through white colonial violence, introduced diseases, or both. The yellow fever that ravaged the settlement of

, which was founded in the heartland of their territory, is thought to have been a major factor precipitating their disappearance, and by the 1930s they were thought of as extinct. The Ganggalida people spread to occupy the niche once occupied by the Mingin, and have successfully petitioned for a native title right to the latter tribe's traditional lands around Burketown on the basis of the principle of succession.

Language

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Social customs

History

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