Last September, Dujuan Hoosan, a 12-year-old Arrernte and Garrwa boy from Alice Springs, addressed the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva — the youngest person to do so.
He spoke on behalf of the Human Rights Law Centre, an independent Australian organisation that has for years been advocating raising the national age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14 years — the global median.
"I came here to speak with you because the Australian Government is not listening," the young Hoosan said. "Adults never listen to kids like me. But we have important things to say."
Filmmaker Maya Newell is particularly attuned to the truth of his statement. Her latest documentary, In My Blood It Runs, examines the ongoing trauma wrought by colonialism on Australia's Indigenous population through Dujuan's eyes, as he bounds between his home in one of Alice's town camps, school, and country.
A bright and deeply restless spark, Dujuan speaks three languages and takes great pride in utilising the Ngangkere — healing power — passed down to him by his grandfather. And yet, he is resistant to the western educational model imposed upon him and, with a proclivity to running off, already at risk of incarceration.
This threat takes form as the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre, which casts a long shadow over In My Blood It Runs. It crops up in the snippets of harrowing reportage that emanate from the TV in Dujuan's living room and the car radio, and in stories traded by his family and friends — who are painfully aware that those detained constitute a Stolen Generation in their own right.
The film is Newell's follow-up to 2015's Gayby Baby, which also offered a calmly incisive "child's-eye view" of a controversial subject, as a portrait of four children with same-sex parents, growing up against the backdrop of an intensive international debate on the subject of marriage equality.
(And Gayby Baby would itself become a vital part of that debate here in Australia when the NSW Government opted to ban the film from being screened in public schools.)
Although not an Indigenous Australian herself, Newell has been making films in conjunction with the Arrernte community for a decade, at the invitation of its elders. Shot over the course of three years, In My Blood It Runs is an outgrowth of this pre-existing relationship, and was made with the participation of Aboriginal advisors as well as that of Dujuan and his family members — who are all billed as collaborating directors.
The film depicts intimate moments, both sweet and bitter, in candid close-up — Dujuan's grandmother Carol bathes him in water infused with arrethe, a bush medicine; his mother Megan pleads with him to listen to his school teachers; the receipt of a grim report card moves the boy to quiet tears — suggesting the sense of trust between those on either side of camera.
Observational segments are complemented by reflective interviews with Carol, Megan, and other family members, often conducted by Dujuan — Newell filming him as he films his subject — as well as brief but pointed montages of archival footage.
"The children are being gently led towards our culture," affirms a posh British-inflected voice over black and white imagery of uniformed Aboriginal children, "so that in time, they will take their place in the Australian community, thinking as we do."
Carol articulates this same point, though she speaks from the opposite perspective.
"White people educate our kids in the way they want them to be educated," she says. "But I need them to speak their language, so they can carry on their language. We want our kids to grow up learning in both ways."
Certainly, Dujuan is eager to spend time on country, and enthusiastic about learning about the practices native to his people. That he doesn't bring the same level of engagement to school — where he's often found fidgeting or slumped over in his seat, and is prone to acting out — is at least partly explicable by a regressive curriculum.
"Listen carefully," says one of his white teachers to the children assembling on the carpet for story time. "This is information, or non-fiction. It's fact," she continues, before proceeding to read aloud from The Australia Book, by Eve Pownall — an illustrated history book which has about all the sensitivity to the genocidal thrust of colonisation as one would expect of a text published in 1952.
Another teacher interrupts herself while reading from a picture book about the Dreaming. "Can you understand that?" she asks the class. "I'm glad you can, because I find it a bit confusing about the Spirit and the Dreaming," she admits, with an airy, dismissive wave of her hand. "But we've just gotta believe it."
These sequences are amongst the most disheartening in the film, insofar as they show up the deeply rooted disconnect between White Australia and its Black history — a disconnect that necessarily continues to shape, and distort, the experiences of young people who find themselves marginalised by the historical narratives they are taught in school.
Education is so often idealised as the antidote to the issue of youth in detention, and with good reason. In My Blood It Runs, however, provides gentle testament to the fact that this solution is bound to fall short so long as schools and prisons alike continue to operate according to a colonialist mandate.
In My Blood It Runs is in cinemas from February 20.
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