The Mingginda were an Indigenous Australian people who once dwelt east of sv:Moonlight Creek and the Ganggalida people in the southern Gulf of Carpentaria. Now thought to be extinct.
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Language
The Mingginda language is thought to have belonged to the Tangkic language family, and to have been closely related to the languages of the Wellesley Islands and in particular Yukulta spoken by the neighbouring Ganggalida.
History
The Mingginda, also called the Minkin people, lived along the coastal territory lying west of the Leichhardt River. 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 practiced 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 Mingginda were decimated, either through white colonial violence, introduced diseases, or both. The yellow fever that ravaged the settlement of Burketown, 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 Mingginda, 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.