"They ask us to make our children ready for school, but why can’t we make schools ready for our children."

Margaret Kemarre Turner, Arrernte Elder and Film Advisor

What is the film about?

In My Blood It Runs offers a critical perspective on Aboriginal experiences and ways of knowing and being, as well as, the ways that western schooling systems negatively (and oftentimes, violently) affect Aboriginal youth. The film depicts the struggles of many Aboriginal communities, both historically and contemporarily, in the colonial nation-state of Australia. The removal of Aboriginal youth through the foster care system, erasure in curricula, the relationship between schooling and incarceration of Aboriginal youth, and the illegal occupation of Aboriginal Country are key components that the documentary addresses. Additionally, this film highlights the creative strengths of indigenous and ancestral knowledge, the care-based practices of Dujuan’s community, and the wisdom of young people. Although Australia recognizes Aboriginal and First Nations people, Aboriginal People’s fight for sovereignty and recognition are not taken seriously and often regulated by state control (Moreton-Robinson, 2020). Additionally, schools as institutions are connected to (and shaped by) histories of colonization, and as Aboriginal scholars and educators remind us that ongoing colonial and racist perceptions of Aboriginal identity impact Aboriginal youth’s educational experiences (Shay and Wickes, 2017). Like schools in the United States, education systems in Australia have an ongoing legacy of racism, especially toward Aboriginal youth, although many educational agencies proclaim that there have been big strides in eradicating racial tensions within schooling (Bodkin-Andrews and Carlson, 2016).

In My Blood it Runs center’s Dujuan’s story and experiences, and in doing so reframes the way this story about an Indigenous community is told. By centering the experience and wisdom of an Aboriginal youth, this film resists centering the colonizers’ perspective and refuses deficit-based stereotypes or prejudice embedded in colonial histories. Dujuan is an Arrernte child healer and a student in the Australian schooling system who is labeled as a “bad” and “failing” student by his white teachers. Throughout the film we see the ways that Dujuan’s family remains committed to his Arrernte education alongside his western education. In My Blood It Runs demonstrates the important role elders and family members have in advocating and fighting for Dujuan and other Arrernte youth to learn the Arrernte language and sustain their culture (Paris & Alim, 2014). The film was created through the collaborative partnership amongst Dujuan, his family, Advisors chosen by Dujuan’s family including Arrernte Elders, film producers, Sophie Hyde, Larissa Behrendt and Rachel Naninaaq Edwardson and film director Maya Newell. While the film was made on unceded territory in Australia, the themes, concerns, and structural issues facing Indigenous people it presents can (and should) be considered in the context of Indigenous peoples in Turtle Island, unceded territory now considered America/United States.

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