What is "mirning"

The Mirning people are a group of Indigenous Australians whose traditional lands lie in the coastal region of the Great Australian Bight in the south-west of South Australia and bordering Western Australia. They are relatively short in stature and practice rites of circumcision and subincision. The Mirning language is called Ngandatha, from the phrase 'What is it?'.

The Mirning people were one of the founding members of the "People of the Whale", a project to research the relationship between whales and indigenous people. Part of the project was the making of a documentary film, "Eyes of the Soul", which was conceived by Kim Kindersley and Julian Lennon in 1994; by 1998, the funding ran out and the film project was abandoned. A new documentary called "Whaledreamers - The Gathering", about the tribes of indigenous people, was made in 2006.