Murrinh Patha

The Murrinh-Patha are an indigenous Australian people, whose traditional lands are located in Australia's Northern Territory, inland from the settlement of Wadeye between the Moyle and Fitzmaurice rivers. Their language, also called Murrinh-Patha, is spoken by about 2500 people, and serves as a lingua franca for several other ethnic groups, such as the Mati Ke or Marri-Djabin, whose languages are extinct or threatened. It is not clearly related to other languages.

The Murrinh-Patha culture displays a social structure characteristic of indigenous Australian peoples generally, featuring a complex kinship system with elaborate behavioural norms for interactions between the different kinship groups.