The Mirndiyan Gununa Aboriginal Corporation owns and manages an art centre, MIArt, and dance troupe, the Mornington Island Dancers.

The general topography of the island, which lies on the eastern (Queensland) side of the Gulf of Carpentaria,[2] is flat with the maximum elevation of 150 metres (490 ft).

[3] The Manowar and Rocky Islands Important Bird Area lies about 40 kilometres (25 mi) to the northwest of Mornington.

[10] Lardil, who prefer to be known as Kunhanaamendaa (meaning people of Kunhanhaa),[11] is the predominant nation on Mornington Island and they are the traditional owners of the land and surrounding seas.

[12] Macassan trepangers once travelled thousands of kilometres from Sulawesi to Mornington Island and other Australian mainland destinations in search of sea cucumbers.

Bleakley was the next Protector, from 1913, but did not visit the island until 1916, by which time the first missionary (Hall) had arrived (see below for mission history).

[15] The Mornington Island Airport was a temporary airfield used by the RAAF and allied air forces during World War II.

James (Bert) McCarthy[19] was Superintendent from 1944 to 1948, and he imposed a strict regime of adhering to Christian customs and eroded the authority of the elders.

It was ten years after the relocation, completed in 1948, before one of the removed Kaiadilt woman gave birth to a child who survived.

[12] One of those relocated by the missionaries was artist Sally Gabori (c.1924–2015), who later mapped her traditional lands in her artwork at the Mornington Island Art Centre.

With a scheduled completion date of Christmas 2023, there is a new accommodation complex which includes another 34 rooms, and another 10 cabins added to the existing motel.

The expansion will provide accommodation for tourists and enable medical staff and tradespeople to stay for longer periods of time on the island, with the added benefit of bringing in more revenue to the council.

It adopted its present name in 2009, at the same time establishing three discrete business units: MIDance, MIArt and MI Festival.

In the mid-1980s Mornington Island Art and Craft(s) (MIAAC)[26] was established by Brett Evans,[28] with a new building and a dedicated coordinator.

[20] Evans established MIAAC to produce and market traditional crafts, including Gabori's fine weaving.

[35] Mornington Island was the site of research over several decades by British anthropologist David McKnight and described in a series of books, People, Countries, and the Rainbow Serpent: Systems of classification among the Lardil of Mornington Island (1999), From Hunting to Drinking: The devastating effects of alcohol on an Australian Aboriginal community (2002), Going the Whiteman’s Way: Kinship and marriage among Australian Aborigines (2004) and Of Marriage, Violence and Sorcery: The quest for power in northern Queensland (2005).

[37] According to the Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals (2008), a group of Indigenous Mornington Island people has been communicating with wild Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins for millennia.

[41] After the tavern was shut down, locals took to home brewing, and in 2017 Mornington Shire Council called for the ban to be lifted so that alcohol could be better regulated from a single legal outlet.

[44] On 16 April 2022, after much consultation with community elders, the island introduced limited, regulated access to liquor.

The strategy has been adopted in order to address the problem of harms from people creating potent strength homebrews, as well as sly grogging.