[6] Linguistics scholar, Maïa Ponsonnet, states that, before the colonial period, the Dalbon people were located in Central Arnhem Land, with clan estates extending further north in the direction of the Arafura Sea.
[3] Their immediate tribal environment consisted of several peoples: the Jawoyn to their southwest, Kune and Mayali speakers of the Bininj Kunwok dialect chain on their west-north western boundaries, the Ngalakgan on their southern frontier, and the Rembarrnga beyond their eastern limits.
[9] The structure of these moieties and semi-moieties affects the ritual choreography of two major ceremonies, Gunabibi and Yabuduruwa, held on alternating years by the Dalabon and some contiguous tribes.
[12] W. Lloyd Warner took the practice as a ritual expression of displeasure performed to allay the outbreak of hostilities between the respective clans of husband and wife; Lester Hiatt thought his material suggested rather a brother's disavowal of incestuous interest in his sister; Maddock took the Dalabon custom as a predictable ceremonial affirmation of a social relation forming part of a larger body of tribal etiquette.
[15] Nicholas Evans notes that the Dalabon root √men, with more or less the general sense of 'social conscience /awareness', emerges in an adjectival compound form like men-djabalarrk (obedient) that is applied also to non-human beings like a dog.