It was spoken by the Mingin people in the area around Burketown, on the southern coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria, in an area that contains the headwaters of the Leichhardt River.
[1] The classification of Minkin is uncertain, primarily due to a lack of data.
It has been suggested that it may have been related to the Yiwaidjan or Tankic language families.
Evans (1990) believes it has been demonstrated to be a Tankic language, more distant than the others are to each other; this is accepted in Bowern (2011).
[1] Minkin data reconstituted by Evans (1990):[1] Source: Curr 1886, p. 314