This article was “The ‘smart and cheeky’ Aboriginal boy teaching Australia a lesson”, which focused on Dujuan Hoosan, the subject of the incredibly important and moving documentary, In My Blood It Runs.

Together Films have been proud to distribute In My Blood It Runs across the UK, promoting educational screenings and seeing the amazing results the film has prompted in school children. Decolonising the UK curriculum is such an important topic, and efforts are garnering real results; Wales has already made significant steps towards this by making black history lessons mandatory. In My Blood It Runs has provided schools with a unique opportunity to confront the erasure of non-white stories, and observe the impact this can have among young people. 

 Following the release of the article on Saturday morning, we saw an influx of screening requests from schools all over the UK – with over four hundred in total claiming their free educational licence by the end of the weekend, a new record for Together Films!

With updated educational resources and a dedicated screening room for each school, we’re delighted to be delivering this film to so many school children across the UK! You still have time to access a free educational licence for In My Blood It Runs here – use the code  IMBIREDU at checkout.

In the article, reporter Vibeke Venema says:

A documentary about a 10-year-old Aboriginal boy’s experience in school, In My Blood It Runs, has reignited a debate about Australia’s failure to give indigenous children a good education and a fair start in life.
 
“Listen carefully,” the teacher tells the class. “This one isn’t a story, this is information, or non-fiction – it’s fact.”
 
She’s holding up The Australia Book, a picture book from 1952, and reads: “In Botany Bay, Cook landed for the first time in a new country. Then he sailed up the coast, mapping as he went… On an island in Cape York he raised the English flag. And he claimed for the English country the whole of this new land.”
 
Dujuan Hoosan’s hand shoots up, but he doesn’t get the chance to speak.
 
Afterwards, the children have to find a list of words in the text and mark them with a highlighter. Dujuan, a 10-year-old Aboriginal boy, struggles a bit with the vocabulary, but he finds it even harder to recognise the story, because the history he has been taught by his elders is very different.
“That [lesson] was for white people, not for Aboriginals,” he reflects. “This man came on the ship and he was the first white man on Australia. The Aboriginal people told them to go and find another land, because this was their land. But people didn’t listen.”
 
Film-maker Maya Newell filmed the scene for her documentary, In My Blood It Runs – in which she followed Dujuan at school for a year – and could feel his frustration.
 
“You imagine what it feels like to be essentially erased from history,” she says.”

To see the full article, click here.