Colonization Australian-Style

In My Blood It Runs

Directed by Maya Newell (2019)

Film Review

A very poignant film about a ten-year-old Aboriginal boy who is failing all his school subjects despite having special healing abilities and speaking three languages. DuJuan’s mother and grandmother have brought DuJuan and his younger brother from their traditional Sandy Bore homeland to attend public school in Alice Springs. Sandy Bore has no school, and his family worries he won’t adjust to modern society without education.

They all spends every weekend in the bush in Sandy Bore, where DuJuan speaks in his birth language Arrente and renews his healing powers. Struggling with contradictory messages he receives from his family and teachers, DuJuan hates his Alice Springs school. He bunks class most days and celebrates when he gets suspended.

When his school finally expels him, the family’s biggest fear is that social welfare will kidnap him and send him to foster care or juvenile detention. At night, Australian special forces patrol Alice Springs (pop 26,000) as part of the government’s anti-terrorist regime.

The Northern Territories juvenile detention facilities (where 100% of the inmates are aboriginal) are notorious for violently abusing children as young as ten. These conditions have been the focus of Australian Black Lives Matter protests.