Mawuyul Yanthalawuy AM, star of Manganinnie, leaves legacy as actor and educator following death at age of 85

In 1979, 40-year-old Darwin preschool assistant Mawuyul Yanthalawuy answered a national casting call to play the leading lady in what would become an art-house feature film.

Note to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers: Mawuyul Yanthalawuy's name and image are used here in accordance with the wishes of her family.

She walked onto a plane in the tropics of the Northern Territory, and stepped out onto a movie set in Tasmania.

"I don't think anybody will ever achieve again quite what she achieved," director John Honey said.

Yanthalawuy passed away peacefully in Darwin on November 18, aged 85, more than four decades after she came to public prominence through her starring role in the film Manganinnie.

Set in 1830s Van Diemen's Land, the fictional drama depicts a Palawa woman's survival during the Black Wars — a time of raids and mass killings of First Nations people in the penal colony.

"It was a critical success," Honey remembered.

"It was received really very well in the festival world around the world, in France and in the Soviet Union.

"It won awards … and remained a staple on the international festival circuit for a long time."

Restored by the National Film and Sound Archive in 2007, the movie has maintained its niche in the nation's film landscape.

The role is one that Yanthalawuy was extremely proud of, according to her daughter Nadyezhda Dilipuma Pozzana, who said "every Yolŋu person was bursting with pride".

"My mother was a national treasure and a lot of people knew her and respected her," she said.

Yanthalawuy was born on the island of Milingimbi off the north coast of Arnhem Land in 1939.

She was just four when the Japanese bombed her community in one of more than 100 raids across the north.

"[Yanthalawuy] told us the story of the mums and dads telling their kids, 'Run, run, run into the mangroves so they can't see you', as they were bombing Milingimbi community," great-grandson Jeremiah Larrwanbuy Baker said.

She learned to read and speak English while working as a domestic servant in missionary homes and became renowned for her storytelling.

"She had this regal presence about her," Manganinnie co-star Anna Ralph said.

"She was a very striking woman but she was also really fun."

Professor Ralph is now deputy director of the Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin, but in 1979 she was a first-time child actor working opposite the Yolŋu actor.

She said that "to be so immersed in Aboriginal culture … especially as a white child growing up in 1970s Tasmania" was eye-opening.

"It was a really formative experience for me," she said.

Professor Ralph credited it with inspiring her career in Aboriginal health in the Northern Territory.

"I think it's an example of the really diverse impacts that she has had on so many different people," she said. 

Yanthalawuy went on to be a leader in bilingual education, committing decades of her life to her students.

"She was not a trained teacher … she was born with it," independent Mulka MLA Yiŋiya Mark Guyula said.

"She used those skills to teach children, and one of those children was me.

"She was a mother who became a teacher … who showed a pathway of where we have been, Yolŋu, and where we need to go.

Yanthalawuy's contribution to education and film is one that colleagues and loved ones now hope will be recognised with a state funeral.

Condolence speeches were offered in NT parliament this week, but Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro's office is yet to confirm whether a state funeral will be offered.