A Living Curriculum of In My Blood It Runs

A Living Curriculum of In My Blood It Runs

At a glance

Film summary

Dujuan, age ten, is a child-healer and a good hunter and speaks three languages. Yet Dujuan is failing in school and facing increasing scrutiny from welfare authorities and the police. As he veers perilously close to incarceration, his family fights to give him a strong Arrernte education alongside his western education. A Co-Presentation of Pacific Islanders in Communications.
more about this film

Introduction

In this lesson, educators, youth, and community members will be guided through practices of critically engaging with western schooling, settler colonialism, school curriculum and the overt and concealed prejudices towards Aboriginal and Indigenous peoples. This may involve engaging in the process of unlearning and relearning to think critically about the history of settler colonialism and learning from Aboriginal and Indigenous peoples while also centering their stories. Each lesson section is an opportunity for learners to engage in (re)storying conversations about traditional and ancestral homelands. Through creative and open-ended activities, learners are guided to learn about the Indigenous territory they are currently living on and the responsibilities they have as guests. The lesson can be modified to meet the needs of learners and linked to units of study related to history, geography, literature, environmental science, art, culture, language, and creative writing.

About the Authors

Pablo Montes is a PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin in the Cultural Studies in Education Program. He is the son of migrant workers from Guanajuato, Mexico, the ancestral territories of the Chichimeca Guamares and P’urhepecha. He currently serves as the Youth Director for the Indigenous Cultures Institute with the Coahuiltecan community in the Lands of Yana Wana (spirit waters of central Texas). Additionally, through a generous grant by the University of Texas at Austin’s Green Fund, he is working with co-author Judith Landeros and other Indigenous people to create a Land Based Education Curriculum. His interests include the intersection of queer settler colonialism, Indigeneity, and Land education.

Judith Landeros is a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin studying Cultural Studies in Education with a focus on Indigenous girlhood, traditional healing knowledge, and schooling. Her family is from Michoacán and Jalisco, the ancestral territories of the P’urhepecha and Chichimeca. She is a former bilingual early childhood teacher and advocates for the inclusion of Critical Indigenous Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Land as pedagogy within teacher preparation education programs.