Aboriginal people in Central Australia identify with the language that they speak or that their ancestors spoke. In 1901, Spencer and Gillen worked across a 3,000 km stretch of arid Australia and collected important information – some of it linguistic – for over 20 distinct Australian Aboriginal languages. In doing so, they were among the first people to record the languages of Central Australia. In 1899 they wrote:

Each of the various tribes speaks a distinct dialect, and regards itself as the possessor of the country in which it lives.” (Native Tribes of Central Australia, 1899: 7)