The pulse of history: In My Blood it Runs and indigenous identity

Indigenous Australians’ lives are too often overlooked by politicians, media organisations and the broader sphere of middle-class Australia. In light of this, director Maya Newell’s feature documentary In My Blood It Runs (2019) provides tremendous insight into the Northern Territory’s Indigenous communities. By directing its point of view through protagonist Dujuan Hoosan, a ten-year-old Arrernte/ Garrwa child-healer, Newell’s film offers an intimate portrait of the embodied and psychological experience of being a young Aboriginal child. In My Blood It Runs is one of those unique films that gets under one’s skin, with audiences of diverse backgrounds given the opportunity to empathise and identify with young Dujuan and his family as they struggle to cope with various government institutions – the education system, welfare and law enforcement – whose ostensible purposes are to support individuals and their wider community, but which nonetheless frequently damage lives and communities due to cultural misunderstanding.