ENGLISH

IN MY BLOOD IT RUNS - INCURSION

As part of the English Curriculum, the students of Year 9 have been tasked with watching the documentary In My Blood It Runs, and providing a film analysis on it. This has taught us film techniques, TEEL paragraph structure and about Indigenous Australians experiences in the past and present. 

The documentary, In My Blood it Runs, centres around the Aboriginal Australian community in Alice Springs, Northern Territory. It is there that 

a young boy called Dujuan, the main subject of the documentary, struggles with the Western schooling system as it fails, again and again, to provide education that is relevant to his culture.

To assist us with this Learning Task, the Year 9 students were presented with an invaluable opportunity to meet the Indigenous founders of Children’s Ground, William Tilmouth and Jane Vadiveloo. 

Children’s Ground is a First Nations Organisation led by First Nations communities, ensuring that the culture, languages, health, employment and education of the First Nations population will flourish and thrive over generations. 

Children’s Ground also helped in the direction and development of In My Blood It Runs, making our session with William and Jane incredibly insightful and memorable. 

In this talk, they spoke of their experiences filming with Dujuan and his family, and how the documentary differs from others of its type by largely letting Dujuan take the wheel creatively, and participate in its creation as the documentary follows his life over multiple years. They also spoke of the ongoing struggles of Aboriginal children in schooling systems. 

Overall, this film study and educational talk experience has definitely been one of the highlights of Year 9 English, especially with how astonishingly relevant it is in society and the issues that surround us and affect people we know. 

Alice Hollingsworth & Kayla Morgan

Year 9 Students