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 Maridjabin, whose languages are extinct or threatened.
The Murrinh-Patha's traditional lands extended some 800 square miles (2,100 km2) inland from Wadeye, formerly known as Port Keats reaching eastwards the Macadam Range.
[3] In the general context of aboriginal religion, such initiations instill the idea that in the Dreamtime, extraordinary events once took place which set the fundamental pattern of man's life in his given environment, and the living must commemorate and keep actively in touch with the symbolic truths and paths outlined illo tempore.
With the first sighting of the Morning star the initiands are taken back to the ŋudanu, and from that moment they are neither addressed, nor even seen, by anyone who does not belong to the group of adult men overseeing the performance to the end.
As they take up the singing once more, men indulge in the comic antics of tjirmumuk, a jostling horseplay between moiety members, including attempts to grab each other's genitals, interleaved with obscene remarks that would normally never be tolerated.