2021
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Jacob Junior Nayinggul is an Australian actor. His first screen role was in the feature film High Ground. For his role in the film he was nominated for the 2021 AACTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role.
Actor: High Ground. Jacob Junior Nayinggul is known for High Ground (2020), Fear Below and Barrumbi Kids (2022).
- Actor
- 2 min
- The Mission
- The Real Station
- The Real Missionaries
- The Real Gutjuk
- The Real ‘Punishment’ and ‘Peace’ Expeditions
- The Historical Record
In the film, a young boy, Gutjuk, who survives the massacre of his family, is taken to a mission. The Roper River Mission(now Ngukurr), established in 1908 and run by the Church Missionary Society, really did take in Aboriginal children who had either lost kin, or been forcibly removed from their families. By the 1920s, there were so many children ...
Before it was a mission, Oenpelli was a cattle station and buffalo shooters’ camp run by a man named Paddy Cahill. In the film, a young woman, Gulwirri, who fights to defend her people, has worked as a “house girl” on a station and speaks of the violence she experienced. Cahill had a reputation for brutality. He wrote of chaining Aboriginal people ...
In High Ground, the mission is run by a young brother and sister team. The latter, Claire, speaks the local language. The original missionaries at Oenpelli were an older, socially awkward couple with prior experience: Alf and Mary Dyer. Some have questioned whether a missionary woman would have learned language in the 1930s. But the character of Cl...
In the film, Gutjuk (played as an adult by Jacob Junior Nayinggul), grows up at the mission. He uses this affiliation to work for the interests of his kin in defending themselves against the police, who come looking for his uncle, Baywara, a warrior and survivor of the 1919 massacre. This reminds us of a real historical figure, Narlim. Narlim was e...
In 1932, Yolngu warriors killed a party of Japanese pearlers trespassing on their country. Constable Albert McColl was sent in; he too was speared. So police proposed a “punishment expedition”, not unlike those depicted in High Ground. Read more: How Dr G.Yunupiŋu took Yolŋu culture to the world After a humanitarian outcry, the society proposed a “...
High Ground also shows how self-conscious white authorities were creating a historical record. The chief of police, played by Jack Thompson, seems to be always directing a photographer to take portraits. These images were good for fund raising, for impressing officials. They do not reflect the full story of the community. But they do give us a glim...
Gunbalanya star Jacob Junior Nayinggul plays Gutjuk in High Ground. (Supplied: High Ground) New to acting, Nayinggul is stunning in his portrayal of character Gutjuk, an Aboriginal man raised by a mission family after his family is wiped out in a police-led massacre. "My grandmother nearly had a heart attack on that scene," Nayinggul said.
May 14, 2021 · Jacob Junior Nayinggul plays Gutjuk, who is trying to find his uncle before the military arrests and executes him for murder. Simon Baker plays Travis, an ex-soldier struggling with regret over his past, who helps Gutjuk.
Jan 21, 2021 · Jacob Junior Nayinggul is a scion of a Yolngu clan who stepped up to play Gutjuk because, he says, he didn’t want somebody else coming into country to play the part.
Actor Jacob Junior Nayinggul made his feature film debut in box-office hit, High Ground, receiving wide-spread acclaim for his stunning performance as Gutjuk...
