hello and welcome to formations events a series of public events focused on global inequalities led by jenny ramon for nottingham trent university's postcolonial studies center in collaboration with nottingham's bunnington gallery we hope you will enjoy we you will join us for events throughout the year you can watch last year's in this year's events on the youtube channel please do subscribe to bunnington galleries formations youtube channel this month we discuss indigeneity and tonight's event is one of a series of events connected with our film screening of the award-winning australian documentary film in my blood it runs tonight's special event is a conversation between danny lewis over nahuia harrison and me my name is valentina de rizo and i'm a doctoral researcher at nottingham trent university working on contemporary writings by first nations metis and inuit women nahuia harrison is an artist and doctoral candidate at the university of auckland in new zealand she comes from northland new zealand tribes her lens-based doctoral research is looking at the effects of marine legislation upon her tribe dany oliver is a midlands for city for cities doctoral researcher at nottingham trent university in england her research focuses on contemporary u.s and canadian indigenous school stories and how authors deploy and subvert the conventions of young adult school stories to unmask and confront enduring colonial legacies in educational contexts so today we come together to discuss am i bloody runs in the broader context of indigenous studies with attention paid to topics of education justice history memory language and indigenous resistance this event lasts about one hour and we are delighted that you can join us please note that tonight's event includes live automated closed captioning generated via teams and that this may include some mistakes just before we start i would like to acknowledge that the realities represented in the film take place in australia but they're also part of the historical imprint of the uk and its legacy of imperialism and colonialism so it is important that we engage in these conversations and the hope that they may inform public perceptions of colonial relationships which are otherwise often poorly understood beyond stereotypes and misconceptions so for those of you who may not have seen the film yet in my blood it runs is a collaborative documentary that illustrates what it means to grow up um as an indigenous person in australia through the story of duwan a 10 year old arenda healer living in alice springs duwan is held in high esteem by his family and his tribe because of his healing powers and his wisdom but the western education system does not value this knowledge and instead punishes him for not conforming to western standards as a result he struggles in school and faces increasing surveillance from child welfare and police and my bloody runs is a powerful indictment of australian society and its treatment of indigenous peoples and it's much more than a film because it is a campaign for change that is guided by the indigenous families and communities behind the film and uh so for a start of our conversation i'd like to ask uh both of you and ngahuia and dani uh what is it in the film or the making of the film that made a strong impression for you um i don't mind going first well firstly i think your choice of words was very correct there and the words powerful i think it is a very powerful documentary and i think for a lot of people will be very eye-opening into realities that are hidden from the public eye thanks danny um yeah thanks firstly i just actually wanted to start um by um acknowledging the aboriginal people of australia and their struggles um acknowledge their lands and their peoples and their resources um and that they never ceded sovereignty of their lands and their ways of life um i guess for me uh the the what struck me with the film is um as australia as our neighbour our closest uh neighbour uh here in alternator new zealand um it always surprises me these the different struggles that aboriginal people have to deal with compared to what we as maori deal with in aotearoa new zealand um not saying that it's a bed of roses in new zealand for maori people far from it but definitely the um the the oppression that aboriginal people have to deal with is incredibly violent uh and um and daily and i think is what uh danny has said about um this would be really eye-opening for people uh to witness the daily oppression that aboriginal people in australia have to live with have to learn how to cope with and survive um and even though we are so close geographically uh in new zealand it's something that you know you you know about you're aware of because of our relationship with australia but you're not thinking about it all the time so for me it was a really powerful reminder of not just what aboriginal people have to survive under but the ways in which they actually do resist and survive which is yeah beyond um admirable thank you uh yes i agree with what both of you said and for me i think that um i really liked how central family was to the film um and um i like that duane's families collaborated um in the making of the film and they had agency and what kinds of messages to share on screen i really like that and i liked that we have you know duan's perspective and his voice and his presence is so is is really emphasized in the film it's it's the core and it's not a perspective that we get to see very often it's not very often represented and and i i really like those scenes where he is holding the camera and he interviews his family members um so yes i liked how like he has agency and and so this reinforces the messages then about the importance of listening to children and indigenous children specifically and um yes and in this way it it acts like a counter narrative um and so the object of study that is scrutinized is actually the australian government i really like that that it forces us to to see that uh to to um yeah scrutinize the school system you know the the education system and the criminal justice system um and in so doing i think it is the colonized i liked that it was decolonizing in that way so it offers a different perspective and it dispels uh some of the colonial myths uh about uh indigenous families as well like the the the racist assumption that indigenous parents are not fit to raise their kids and it actually shows that it it puts on the foreground how much indigenous parents care and love for their kids and actually how uh it's the it's society's problem um it's not the ones who fails at school it's the school that fails to one i i like how how that was um really foregrounded in the film yeah definitely that that idea of um i mean that's such a integral part of the colonial project is to dehumanize you know create another and then dehumanize that other um and it's really heartbreaking that you know mothers grandmothers fathers uncles aunties have to i mean we that we've created a situation where people like that have to make a movie and say no we love our children we're capable of love yeah i mean the fact that that that is something that indigenous people have to witness and even have to articulate is such an indictment to me on our governments on our state systems and on the people that have dehumanized us because it doesn't say anything about our humanity it actually says something about this yeah i definitely think the family love pushes back against the specter of taking children away that haunts all of the character all of the people throughout the documentary because it affects every single person yes um another thing which that i liked uh was as well the i thought the the title of the film uh was really nice too um and powerful um and also like the way then uh that concept was used throughout uh the film um and so the film begins and ends with a mention of how history and and memories flow through blood um and um and he introduces the story he duan himself introduces this story with um with this um and the idea of history being written into the body reminds me of the concept of blood memory which circulated which first circulated in um scott mamaday's novel house made of dawn um and and the film uses it perhaps not this concept specifically but um this idea of embodied memory it uses it almost a little bit as a framing device because it starts and end with a mention to it and then we see so many clips of um uh and images we see images both of past trauma and violence images of schools presidential schools and missions and other colonial institutions but also images of indigenous resistance images of protests foreign language revitalization and these are all um memories that duan has not lived through uh necessarily but that are alive um in him um so i liked how that worked out as well yeah the intergenerational nature of it really shows through it it shows through his anger as well absolutely yes yeah um and then we see it as well how this knowledge and and and history that um runs through his veins is not legitimized or accepted or recognized by the education system the western education system and we see it especially in those um seen shot in the school um so there's one a history class where a teacher teaches um um australian history which is actually colonial history with a with an update outdated book uh a 1950s book um and then another class where a teacher ridicules indigenous beliefs when she's supposed to be teaching them um yeah what did you think of of those scenes those things make me very uncomfortable and that speaks to the power of this documentary to share how that makes a young boy such as duane feel especially when they belittle their own culture and history and i think the teacher says i don't understand it and it's like you are in a powerful position and it's just really upsetting really yeah i love that see i mean it kind of makes me his um his spirit really you know there's a kind of trickster playfulness about him and in that scene where he sort of says spirits realness i love that just claiming without ever having to evidence that this is a real knowledge system of course it's a real knowledge system and um i mean again i think it speaks to the differences and can you speak from my position as a maori um but the differences between what we have to contend with as maori people and with our neighbours aboriginal people but in new zealand there's next year they are finally including um new zealand history into the curriculum in new zealand history in terms of the settler uh settler maori relationship um as well as including what is being described as matauranga maori which i guess broadly translates as like maori knowledge um and there's been a lot of uh there's been a lot of kickback um i mean obviously we are so much further along in terms of our relationship with our government that we are able to even put this into the primary and secondary curriculum um but earlier this year there was a group of academics from the university that i um study at the university of auckland who penned a public open letter dismissing the inclusion of mataranga maori or its relationship as it sits as they see it as it sits next to western science there are a group of academics from mostly the science faculty at the university of auckland now there's a lot of academics that also came back and other people that um you know pushed back against their letter but it definitely shows that tension i think the fear um of including this knowledge and speaks to that fear of what that i think the same space where the teacher is talking from in the film is where these academics are speaking from it's fear of i mean many things but i think perhaps the base of it the fear of that of other guilds perhaps that is going to be brought up um and having to face um having to face a sort of i don't like the word true but a better more realistic understanding of how a you know a settler colonial nation was formed because there's no other way to cut it but it's formed off the back of theft and exploitation and attempted genocide of indigenous people and we can't change that but you can face it and um yeah her dismissal of it in the film is it was almost comic to me um and his response to that kind of made me smile because it was like yeah it is real like it's comic that she's that she could be um that she could be so ignorant and i guess that's the importance of teaching this knowledge it's like that fred moton thing you just have to recognize you know the is killing you too if not more softly um to not face this sickness to not diagnose the illness we're never going to heal from it um and it's going to make you yeah continue sort of violence acts or the best case like this teacher just look a bit stupid [Music] yeah absolutely when i was watching that scene i um i cringed um and um it was uh she she kept saying that she didn't understand it it was um she speaks of she speaks of it dismissively and then she she says i don't understand it but we've got to believe it or something like and then she asks another thing is she asks the students if they understand it but doesn't wait to listen to what they say or to be taught by them because the thing is duan is probably the in that class is probably the expert on that topic as a himself being a healer uh but yes even when he protests as you said he says spirit is real but um he's not um listened to and another thing that i thought when while watching this um is also that um so this is a documentary um and these are these are also supposed to be at the very good schools uh that are um invested in um you know that want to support indigenous children and probably the teacher was happy to be filmed she seems fine with being filmed um so probably kind of like some lack of awareness as well um but watching those scenes also especially well actually the the history class also the use of an outdated book also reminded me of um an article that i read um last month i think or maybe it was the month before i can't remember now but um and it was about an eight level textbook used in the uk to teach um american history and um so the look was the the book was looking at a period in history uh between the 1800s and the 1900s um [Music] and it was a period in time where native americans were treated horribly a wounded knee happened at that time and but that this textbook included an exercise that um asked students um to criticize but also defend the treatment of native americans as if it's actually exaggerated suggesting that perhaps it's exaggerated and uh and then the same publisher like two months maybe not two months before that but a few months before that was also criticized for including an exercise um about it so this was about the american civil war and and there was an exercise that suggested that maybe um slavery could be justified now obviously these textbooks have been withdrawn but it still speaks of the you know how racial injustice like how ingrained it is and um how yeah it's still problematic in schools how these things are being discussed in the in the uk as well um and probably there are these things are badly discussed kind of like across the globe um and i'm also thinking of the american teacher of there was a video that went viral i don't know if you've seen it up in a califor i think it was in california a math teacher ridiculing um indigenous cultures during her her class um and that's really really sad so we see we see this in the film um and we're aware that it's it's happening and it keeps happening in different in different contexts and i know what you're saying nahuya about there are there they have been making efforts to um include um indigenous curriculum into uh or indigenous perspectives into western curriculum or dominantly western curriculum and um that also is problematic uh and we see it in the film because this is a class about the dreaming so um and it doesn't work it clearly um it it it does not rectify the problems and it it continues the violence actually and so we yeah we could think about like how if there are more positive ways maybe of dismantling western institution as a colon tool or navigating that um yeah what do you think of that yeah i mean i almost think um yeah well i mean again i can speak from a new zealand perspective but what i see here in our institutions when people start to talk about decolonizing a university or a school curriculum at whatever level the knee-jerk reaction is to sort of reach into ciao maori and to mata rangamati and sort of use that as a band-aid rather than actually looking at what that wound is underneath which is that people pakis our european new zealanders um uh [Music] what their role was historically and the ways in which they unwittingly wishingly are complicit in the perpetual um colonization of mighty people and lands but rather than facing that relationship the knee-jerk is to sort of reach into to the mighty world and ask maori to do that labor by renaming everything you know uh putting maori names on everything saying that there will be these xyz classes or papers as part of the curriculum but not actually firstly offer maori the autonomy to create that curriculum um but not at the same time uh have institutions facing up to their part in which they play aid in colonization um you know the lands in which our institutions stand how those lands came to be in crown position uh we're a pretty young nation in terms of western as a western nation new zealand is a young nation altera is much older but it's not because it's yeah it's not that hard to find those records probably take you half a day but people don't want to mate people who don't want to go there so that seems to be the attempt at decolonizing which i think just puts a lot of burden back on indigenous people where we're still having to deal with you know over 200 years of being told as you say being learned to now it being taught in our education system that you're worthless not just your knowledge systems are worthless but you yourself are a useless human being um and that you know since our native schools were established in the 1860s that was the message literally drilled in you know maori weren't equipped for higher learning so you know manual manual kind of uh work is what is the path that maori would be put on i mean it was all just a ruse to get more of our land but um you know today you still see that and the you know primary secondary uh most maori don't get to tertiary curriculum that put still to this day or maori people or you can do woodwork you can do middle work you know so manual uh laboring type um pathways which you know there's nothing wrong with that but it's not you can't dictate a whole race of people's ability um it's not your right to do that so i think that idea but all of that would mean that our government has to give up control in terms of at least in terms of maori um ways of being teaching learning and being um and yeah they don't seem to want to do that i think control is a very good term like you see in the documentary that these schools have been set up for the aboriginal children but the power and the control of the education itself is still in the colonial hand yeah i was horrified in the documentary i mean this is one of the wake-up calls again those reminders i was talking about for me as a maori person that there's even in the um in the aboriginal schools language schools they're only allowed to it still has to be you know a hugely predominant part of the course has to be taught in english i mean in new zealand we've had te reo maori schools you can go from kohanga also from your preschool kindergarten right through to tertiary um university or college um all into del mardi um so yeah it's just one of those stark differences for me as um a maori person watching that that aboriginal people oh that started in the the first kurako papa maori was in the early 90s in new zealand so we're now seeing the first generation of maori um students who have done a whole their whole education has been [Music] and there's a lot of research that shows like the um dips in crime rate for that age bracket and things like that so the payoff i guess when you allow a people to be who they are um for the whole country by relinquishing some of that control um [Music] yeah how all of us benefit from that you know maori thrives the country thrives aboriginal people were allowed to thrive that country would thrive but yeah it's just a racist system i think you really notice the difference in the body language of the children as well in these two different educational lessons they really thrive in one you can see their disengagement in the other yeah yeah yeah it was very clear that contrast but between english classes they looked just really boring you just see duan yawning and um and and the children also are like they seemed to me at least uh almost afraid to answer sometimes when the or maybe not afraid but just not interested in answering when the teacher would ask some questions or maybe hesitant but then in the arenda classes which i yes i i read it says in the film that they only have like 30 minutes of arenda classes which is and you're like but these are supposed to be for indigenous children these schools are supposed to be for them but then yes most most of it is in english and um but yeah i liked how the children were really having fun in the arenda classes and uh um and how as well we um you know you can approach language learning because in those fun classes language related to activities that they perform on the land and and beings on the land they were learning the names of animals and plants and while the english classes were very focused on syntax and grammar and um and completely disconnected from the environment um so that must be um yeah boring for you know um yeah it's taken a step further as well when you know when they're doing the multiple choice answers and teachers said just fill in any bubble they're almost given that self-fulfilling prophecy of you're gonna fail anyway which which is really horrible yeah absolutely and then we see in the film as well um that there is uh an alternative to that western education system when we see when duan goes back to his traditional homeland and um um and there and that is kind that's still schooling because he's learning but that happens on the land and the teachers are the elders um and um and that's probably then i'm not saying that's the way to dismantle because i don't know if maybe the effort shouldn't be necessarily in reacting but and and that's what where i see indigenous resurgence is not is not react reactionary to colonialism but it's focused on uh on just the revitalization of indigenous culture and and i did see that in those scenes where um you know not just when he's learning the language from his grandmother's and other relatives but also when they when they tell traditional stories and um and he discusses traditional stories with his grandma and then all those scenes where he's um picking bush medicine and and also then later in the film where he reconnects with um um the land of his father and he's fishing there and all that um that was very um uplifting even though you know in all the um the situation is um is difficult for for the one he's struggling but all that i thought that that was uh really nice and uplifting i think that i that idea um yeah of indigenous resurgence not being in re reaction to the state or the government the nation is really important because i mean it's something that indigenous people have had to do by default i mean because if someone's coming at you to attack you you have to defend yourself and that requires a interaction with the attacker but there is also i think there has to be room for that kind of um [Music] their space where you're allowed to be indigenous and not in a reactive way to this power that's constantly trying to redefine who you are um and and whether that's to that idea of kind of like interpolation like the idea of like if you know if a cop you know yells out at you in the street and you turn and you respond to that you're kind of recognizing that how the power that they have um and so trying to build the strength not to turn i guess like that's a really important thing for indigenous people to do because it diminishes this just this given power that these that the state has um which you know is is as fallible as i mean it's incredibly vulnerable i think that's why state is usually afraid to teach proper history um you know why the state is afraid to relinquish any control and any power because um there's such an insecurity i guess that idea of like uh we were talking about before it doesn't say anything about indigenous humanity it says much more about the state's lack of humanity so there's a real insecurity in in the state's position um and yeah i think there's just something that's a really important um and we see it in the film uh i mean i guess it's showing you like physically or geographically at least where dwan goes to his father's land and is given that space to to to be and to um to have that uh ability to be resilient and to resist without even having to recognize for it for even just a week or a day the states um yeah sort of claws over you or hold over your control over you yes and as danny said before duane is is angry and it's understandable um his his reactions are our responses to the situation he's living and the scene where he's shown his school report is a really uh tough one i think because his base he's labeled as a bad student he's getting bad marks bad grades and it says that he remains below standard but whose standard that is um so that standard is um it's it's a colonial standard and it just serves to maintain the statue school by making him feel like that as well by making him feel that he is a failure um and um and sort of like forcing him to pursue someone else's objectives but he rebels and he's like no um although there is and that scene was kind of hard to watch because he is um at first he doubts himself before getting angry and and um and protesting uh there's as soon as he reads the report he doubt himself and he thinks to himself that maybe he said like there must be something wrong with me or something like that um and that's how colonialism works as well um and um so his his behavior in response of all that it's um it's really understandable um i think um and i like the way how his family deals with that because the family is worried obviously for him um and um and when he um like he runs away from home and they they they go out at night in the car looking for him and then he's always brought back home and um is not punished like you know because there's always this threat of the detention centers lingering but at home is not is not punished is not abused or anything and actually they perform like healing on him as well they bring into his um uh other grandmother who's a traditional healer and uh and she heals him and that's really that's really an act of care um and and that was beautiful as well i think to see [Music] yeah i i think actually um picking up on what what you're saying valentina it's like that the um the idea of of juan being sent to his father's land not only does it sort of have i guess sort of um [Music] benefits in terms of his learning and teaching but it is actually in the sort of protection of that way what we were just talking about giving him sort of space to just be but it's also giving him space to live like to to to quite um literally live because the detention centers and the rate of um aboriginal deaths in custody in australia is disgusting and you know they had the royal commission did an inquiry in the detention centers and i think at the time the film was made it was all the detention centers were full of aboriginal children and that fear is so palpable in his auntie his nannies and his grandmother and and then the woman that's around him because if he gets picked up it's not just a night in the cells like it might be for some people for white australians it's it's potential death [Music] and that fear is so palpable in them and so they have to remove him so i guess that that his father's land becomes a sanctuary not just learning and teaching but actually for living um which is you know it's it's yeah it's 20 it's 2021 and this is how the australian government treat their indigenous people it's super perfect yeah danny did you want to add anything on this i think you summed it up really perfectly to be honest yeah but yeah i think naturally he has a very turbulent personality because of the hardships he's having to endure but you really see him start to calm himself and feel feel almost at peace with himself in his identity when he's when he's on his father's land and when he's free from those negative pressures yeah and i was also thinking that he is very vocal and very direct about what he wants um and there's a um a point in the film where he says um this film is about me and um and what i what i think is stop taking kids away um and that's very powerful as well and and because removal of indigenous children from their families sometimes i think many settlers think that that's something of the past that that's something that used to happen in residential schools and um missions but actually um it's not it's still happening it's still a contemporary issue there's over-representation of indigenous children in the child welfare and and this is evident in the film as well um and it also seems that the school the school system feeds into the child welfare system which feeds into the criminal justice system because once his report says that he's a bad student it's like automatically he he it because he is labeled like at risk of engaging in criminal so the student the basically the school criminalizes him in a way um and so then he risks being taken away from his family and it's just like all the um oh just how the the the mechanism of colonialism work and the fact that his mom says that if he doesn't go to school she her welfare payments are cut that's another thing that really striked me um because it's punishing the parents and it's forcing them to depend on the system which um hurt them continues to hurt them and um yes that's just um [Music] yeah the institutional nature is really emphasized and you can see how it fuels the cycle yes and that kind of um that idea of fear of false generosity it's like well we're giving you we give you welfare we give you a an aboriginal school so but it's false generosity because they've created a system as you say from cradle to the grave as an indigenous person you are lined up to go through um state institutions whether that's being removed i mean yeah i totally agree with what you see people think that uplift and children taking displacing children is a thing of the past i mean that still happens to maori children today um you know our state child our child state um [Music] ministry they are under investigation at the moment for um you know turning up to hospitals of young mighty mothers uh who've just given birth and taking the child off them um so i mean that's happening at the moment in this country you know a country that's kind of put out there as having you know um really great relationships with its indigenous people but i mean you know if the benchmark is australia then you know if it's hardly um it's hardly a standard you want to be working by um and if we are supposedly some sort of model of of good relationships then you know i just it's it horrifies me to think what it's like in other countries then because yeah that up uplifting children is happening here in new zealand and then as you said that that child starts in foster care and just yeah it goes to a school where often they are um by default criminalized and think that's a really good way of putting it and then you know that's how you're treated um that's that's often what happens you have kids who are told they're useless they're worthless they're criminals well [Music] um and then the state sort of acts surprised because it gave you all this false generosity but really in the background creating the structures and creating the situation for indigenous people to be well in this country it's maori woman the highest rates of incarceration in fact internationally we have some of the highest rates of incarceration you know here we are the kind of bastion of good indigenous relationships and 64 of maori women are in you know make up their prison population here and that's not something that happened by accident at all no absolutely um yes there are um extremely high rates of incarceration for um especially youth in canada as well indigenous youth and i'm also thinking of indigenous women who are missing and murdered um and again that's not um that's not happening by chance um um that's systemic and um and so they are targeted and we we see it in the film that um the justice system targets uh indigenous indigenous children and and that's these detention centers are really horrible places they're they're tortured in in there and um i was also um [Music] i was almost surprised that those images were shown in television um and then the narrative around that was also um [Music] very strong you know because the news people you would hear them saying that they um the extreme measures were taken um because um camouflaged specialized police uh with military-grade weapons were were being sent to uh patrol the street at night at alice spring at valley springs and that's just um so those are like counter terrorism um and so that's just another yes just very extreme measures um to deal um [Music] not even maybe to deal but just to [Music] continue to um target indigenous peoples and and ultimately it just shows that the state is really attempting to um well what we know which is erasing indigenous presence um through all these um all these institutions which are all connected um and uh yes um disheartening i'd agree with you the level of violence shown was it was quite shocking to watch and it's something that people have been talking about from indigenous communities but it's been pushed back it's been ignored it's been shoved off and now suddenly they can't ignore it because there's a piece of evidence yeah yeah that's yeah it's so funny right like it's now that there's video evidence of photographic evidence um suddenly it's true but indigenous people original people have been saying that this is happening in their communities and i feel like i mean all of this kind of amounts to you know exactly what you're saying it's because the lack of value on indigenous life um because i think often indigenous people are the thorn in the side of um settler colonial governments like we undermine your whole um [Music] narrative or mythology of uh how you came to be as powerful as you are and how you came to be as brilliant as you are and it's a lot uglier the truth of it and um that's not me really even putting any value on it it's just the need to the need for um [Music] for non-indigenous people to recognize that um and i guess that goes back to what we're talking about before in terms of how institutions can decolonize but there has to be a recognition of not this sort of state or non-indigenous people and set the colonial nations implicit uh part in these histories um you know no one's trying to kind of genocide themselves it's like you know someone else is coming in but we don't name it we yeah we don't listen to it when there's no evidence where you can't see it we create these structures that are so embedded it's hard to kind of pull them apart and show and sort of display them or present them and so it's allowed to just allowed to take over yes um and uh i i like the fact that this film is also a campaign for change and the families are also involved on um well they're involved in different campaigns but one of them i can't remember the name now but um it supports um [Music] indigenous students so it's like a a journey which lasts about 20 years i think so um it's like um educating holistically one student and just supporting him or her for 20 years um and that's um that's beautiful and and again that's decolonizing because uh many people wouldn't think of uh you know education necessarily in that in those terms um and uh and it's really important and duane also um spoke at the united nations um which was also um um really inspiring i i think um and again he emphasized there as well that he was doing his work including the film but also speaking at the united nations because the australian government doesn't listen um and especially to children um and uh and so that's why he was doing this so there's yeah i i like the idea of like emphasizing this importance of listening and listening carefully um to indigenous people to children um because then again even in school settler colonial strategies positions position the child is less believable less reliable [Music] but we see in the film many instances in which um it's to one who would be uh most reliable in those specific contexts if just the teachers would listen to him uh but they don't um yes i found that as well i found uh i wanted someone to give the power to dewan to let him be a student leader and let him speak his own truth yes that's kind of the most beautiful thing yeah about the film to me is that all like what man mind neural's done is she's not an indigenous person but there is a lot of um agency from the people in the film or the families in the film and juan himself and his voice like for me it was um when you're dealing with such ugly and dark issues but it was a really hopeful there was so much hope in the film and i think that really speaks to him but also more broadly kind of those ideas of indigenous resilience um i mean the flip side of being kind of beaten down for so long is that you become such an incredibly strong people and i think that she captured that in the film um i imagine it's probably difficult working with someone like dwight not to show his strength or not to have that kind of be front and center but yeah i thought that um especially from an aboriginal point of view i mean even in new zealand there's kind of rhetoric around like especially in terms of uh the sort of discovery of australia and new zealand by by cook and the difference the differences in the way that maori and aboriginal people interacted with um that first voyage in particular the endeavor and is sort of used as evidence as to why maori people are so kind of fierce and outspoken and um all the rest of it because you know cook the endeavour appeared and we were out there in our wokka in our canoes and sort of challenging whereas um what uses evidence about aboriginal people is that you know cook left things on on the shore and aboriginal people um you know just left that they were untouched and also i guess australia also had the concept of terra nullius which which didn't wasn't incorporated in the sort of colonization explicitly in the colonization of new zealand but those kinds of ways that aboriginal people have been framed um as sort of docile nomads that sort of didn't really care that they were being taken you know didn't put up a fight so um which is just so incorrect um but i suppose makes non-indigenous australians feel good about themselves um but what is so amazing and hopeful about the film is that that is not what we see with juan and his family is incredibly active fighting um loving you know human beings um and i thought yeah that to me is why the film itself is just is so incredible is the hope in it and representing aboriginal um as as not how they've been defined uh traditionally thank you for putting it so eloquently and uh i think it's the perfect way to come to an end as well with this very hopeful uh note and um yes i agree that there's um there are a lot of hopeful messages in the film um and um [Music] and indigenous uh resistance as shown in the film as well it's um it's really inspiring and um i love those scenes we're with the grandmother as well um and as you said that's just love um and and it's really it's really nice um yes so just to wrap up is there anything that you would like to say [Music] anything else if we're good then i would just like to thank jenny jenny ramon and the postcolonial studies center at ntu and the bonnington gallery for having us today and thank you to both of you danny and nahuyam i really really enjoyed our conversation and i hope that who's watching enjoyed the film and our discussion and thank you all for listening you