In My Blood It Runs Discussion Guide

Film Summary

In this collection:

Film Summary

Using This Guide

The Film: Participants and Key Issues

Helpful Definitions and Concepts

Background Information - What is the film about?

Background Informtion - Themes

Discussion Prompts

Taking Action and Resources

Credits and Acknowledgements

ACCESS FULL RESOURCE

POV acknowledges the unceded lands of the many First Nations people, upon which we live, work and tell stories. We also acknowledge the unceded lands of the Arrernte and Garrwa people in Mparntwe and Borroloola, Australia, where this film was made. We pay our respects to all their elders past present and emerging.

FILM SUMMARY

Ten-year-old Arrernte Aboriginal boy Dujuan is a child-healer and a good hunter and speaks three languages. Yet Dujuan is failing in the Australian school system and facing increasing scrutiny from welfare authorities and the police. As he veers perilously close to incarceration, his family fights to give him a strong Arrernte education alongside his western education. We walk with him as he grapples with these pressures and shares his truths.

Sources

About the authors

Pablo Montes

Pablo Montes is a PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin in the Cultural Studies in Education Program. He is the son of migrant workers from Guanajuato, Mexico, the ancestral territories of the Chichimeca Guamares and P'urhepecha. He currently serves as the Youth Director for the Indigenous Cultures Institute with the Coahuiltecan community in the Lands of Yana Wana (spirit waters of central Texas). Additionally, through a generous grant by the University of Texas at Austin’s Green Fund, he is working with co-author Judith Landeros and other Indigenous people to create a Land Based Education Curriculum. His interests include the intersection of queer settler colonialism, Indigeneity, and Land education.

Judith Landeros

Judith Landeros is a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin studying Cultural Studies in Education with a focus on Indigenous girlhood, traditional healing knowledge, and schooling. Her family is from Michoacán and Jalisco, the ancestral territories of the P’urhepecha and Chichimeca. She is a former bilingual early childhood teacher and advocates for the inclusion of Critical Indigenous Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Land as pedagogy within teacher preparation education programs.