Introduction
The social-ecological systems theory by Bronfenbrenner gives a useful model that can be used to comprehend how various levels of environment interplay to affect the development of a child (Newell , 2020). The model describes five interrelated levels, namely the microsystem, mesosystem, ecosystem, macrosystem and chronosystem, which influence the experiences and the outcomes of the child in unique but interconnected ways. This school of thought emphasizes the fact that not only immediate family or schooling affects the life of children, but also the greater cultural, institutional, and historical influences in which they are immersed (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Using the lens on actual cases can help gain a better understanding of the complex situations that define the wellbeing of children especially those belonging to marginalised groups.
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The documentary In My Blood It Runs (Newell, 2019) offers an interesting case study of the life of a ten-year-old Arrernte and Garrwa boy, Dujuan, living in Alice Springs. The case of Dujuan tells how tensions are experienced by the Aboriginal children as they balance cultural knowledge, family expectations and demands of the Western institutions like schooling, welfare and the justice system. His lived experience is marked by a combination of protective effects of kinship and cultural practice and structural factors that may be caused by systemic racism, colonisation, and intergenerational disadvantage (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). The film reveals that the development of an individual can never be separated from larger social and political contexts through the journey of Dujuan.
Microsystem
The microsystem is the closest component of the socio-ecological model created by Bronfenbrenner, and it describes the environment of a child and immediate interactions with people who are important to him/her (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). These are the family, peer group, teachers and other close people that influence the daily life of the child.
The family relations are the most prominent aspect of the microsystem in the case of Dujuan (Newell, 2020). He was brought up by his mother and grandmother, who took care of him, provided emotional support, and culture. Dujuan can build on a strong sense of identity that is associated with language, Country, and spirituality through their teaching. These family relations serve as a safeguard in his life, and the strength was developed, creating resilience and establishing his cultural being against the external forces.
Meanwhile, the microsystem implies conflicts between the cultural parenting in the home and the requirements of mainstream education (Xu et al., 2025). Family members also appreciate that Dujuan is a knowledge-holder and healer of their culture; however, they are also concerned that not engaging in school can draw the attention of welfare authorities or justice authorities. This represents the general struggle of numerous Aboriginal families as they attempt to negotiate through educational systems (Sianturi et al., 2022). In many cases, do not place significant importance on the knowledge of Aboriginal people and their learning styles.
The type of relationships in the microsystem is vital. The strong relationship with his grandmother, who understands that Dujuan has healing powers and is culturally strong, helps him to be confident and strong (Newell, 2020). But once the good family forces are compromised by outside structures such as school systems that ignore cultural knowledge, then the microsystem is stressed. By doing so, family relations safeguard Dujuan and place him in the spotlight of the broader systemic inequity (Newell, 2020). The relationships in the family background of Dujuan bring out the strength and the vulnerability that the microsystem can have. In his story, the immediate family and kinship networks appear in the middle of the support of the wellbeing of Aboriginal children, and it is only in case where external systems are respectful and cooperate with cultural knowledge that their protective role can be maintained.
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Mesosystem
Mesosystem is a term used to refer to the interactions and relationships between the various microsystems that a child experiences in his life (Guy-Evans, 2024). It is a product of the interplay between relationships in the home, school, peer and community environments to affect the development of the child. These environments, when managed positively, can reinforce a sense of belonging and well-being of a child. Nevertheless, in case of a clash in these systems, a child will feel stressed and out of touch.
School-family engagement is the most important mesosystem component to Dujuan (Newell, 2020). The disconnectedness between his family values and the values of the school system is evidenced in his life experiences in mainstream schooling. Dujuan receives cultural teachings, language and healing at home, and his family considers this important to his identity and development. By contrast, Western academic knowledge usually taught in English is favoured by the school environment, which ignores the cultural knowledge Dujuan possesses. This alienation brings about a conflict and causes him to lose interest in classroom learning.
The fact that there is little communication and cooperation between the family and school also contributes to the difficulties that Dujuan experiences. His mother and grandmother are worried about his problems at school, but they do not have a significant input on the education process. Instead of viewing his family as contributors to his learning, the school system has placed his family on the fringes (Guy-Evans, 2024). This is the absence of authentic interaction and, as a consequence, the cultural identity of Dujuan is not given a warm welcome, and the family's goals for a bicultural education are neglected.
The impact of ineffective school-family interaction is not only educational. Lack of good cooperation increases the risk of Dujuan coming into contact with the welfare or justice systems due to school challenges (Newell, 2020). He leaves his family to the task of ensuring that he is not labelled or criminalised without proper support by institutions that are intended to collaborate with them. This demonstrates that the mesosystem has the potential to compound disadvantage in cases where the microsystem relationships fail.
The school-family involvement of Dujuan can serve to illustrate the influence that the mesosystem has on his academic performance and well-being, in general (Newell, 2020). In the context where good relationships would have provided him with learning and helped him be confident in his cultural identity, the lack of these relationships leads to alienation and danger. It is essential for Aboriginal children in terms of balancing cultural knowledge with formal education, as well as facilitating the mesosystem to serve as a supportive, and not a destructive, force (Kennedy et al., 2023).
Ecosystem
Ecosystem is the social systems and environments that the child does not directly engage in but are involved in shaping his or her day-to-day life (Tong & An, 2024). They are institutions like the workplaces of parents, community organisations, governmental agencies and media systems. Although children are not directly engaged in these settings, the issues and pressures that occur out of them indirectly affect the experience, opportunities, and well-being of children.
The most important aspect of the exosystem in the story by Dujuan is the welfare and juvenile justice systems. Furthermore, Dujuan does not interact with these systems daily; the threat of their participation looms large over his family (Newell, 2020). His mother and his grandmother fear that lack of engagement at school or trivial behavioural problems might spark off a response by the government. This fear of continuous existence describes the influence of the policies and institutional practices in welfare and justice, indirectly on the family life and the feeling of safety among the children.
The process of exosystem affects the families through exerted pressures. To the family of Dujuan, the concept of the state intervention limits the liberty of the family and imposes pressure to sustain their systems to conform to the culture of the family. The family is acutely aware that the welfare and justice agencies are closely following these Aboriginal children and limiting them (Newell, 2020). This provides an atmosphere where banal things such as school enrolment or punishment have frontiers that stretch far beyond the classroom.
There is also an indirect influence of the welfare system and the juvenile justice system that adds to the climate of mistrust between the families and institutions. In the case of Dujuan, this implies that the time of trouble is not perceived as a potential support system but is the occasion that evokes surveillance and possible punishment. His lack of engagement in school is not perceived as a lack of alignment between cultural knowledge and curriculum, but is a risk factor for involvement in justice in the future. This shows how structural inequality can be recreated by the exosystem, although the child does not have to go through these institutions directly (Sadownik, 2023).
As it is experienced by Dujuan, the exosystem influences his world in the sense that it creates circumstances in which his family is subjected to conflicts that they have no control over. The fact that he has a system of welfare and justice in his background shows the indirect influence on the institutional structure in shaping children on their pathways (El Zaatari & Maalouf, 2022). These systems tend to intensify the disadvantage of Aboriginal children, such as Dujuan, instead of supporting them substantially in any meaningful way, which is why the exosystem is a very important point of indirect but effective influence.
Macrosystem
The macrosystem is described as the expansive cultural, social, political, as well as economic environment that a child grows up in (Witherspoon et al., 2023). It encompasses prevailing ideologies, belief systems, policies, and values of the society that influence the environments that children go through more directly. The macrosystem, in contrast to the microsystem or mesosystem, which entail face-to-face interactions, is manifested at the structural level and it affects the design of institutions and the placement of children and families in society.
Racism and colonisation are the most prominent aspects of the macrosystem in the story by Dujuan. Systemic disadvantage, marginalisation and cultural repression of Aboriginal families and communities remain the traces of colonisation to this day (Durey et al., 2023). Racism in the schooling of Dujuan is being manifested through the absence of the understanding of the Aboriginal languages, history and knowledge systems. The curriculum favours the Western worldview and compares the Aboriginal children to the standards that are not based on the realities they live in (Witherspoon et al., 2023). Such institutional bias places Dujuan as an outlaw child when actually he possesses a whole lot of cultural knowledge and healing methods not recognised in conventional education.
The macrosystem is also an element by which the institution of welfare and justice interprets the behaviour of Aboriginal children based on racism. Aboriginal children are not approached through the prism of strengths, but rather often perceive them through the prism of deficit approaches, which support negative stereotypes (Chan et al., 2025). In the case of Dujuan, this translates that it is not perceived that school struggles are a problem of the system but rather a reflection of his personal inadequacies (Newell, 2020). This account of blame echoes wider social tendencies in which the Aboriginal culture is undermined in favour of Western standards.
Racism and colonisation also have their effects on the educational and daily lives. Traces of colonial history, such as policies and practices, still limit the autonomy of the Aboriginal families and perpetuate disadvantageous cycles (Wright et al., 2024). The family of Dujuan goes on with the fact that state institutions tend to disregard or demean their cultural knowledge and child-rearing practices. Simultaneously, structural racism places obstacles in the way of supportive services, and it supports the fear of punitive actions of the authorities. The experiences of Dujuan illustrate how the macrosystem uses inequality as a part of the fabric of systems that are expected to help children. The remnants of racism and the still-existing colonisation history affect all spheres of his ecological system, including schooling and family life (Dunstan et al., 2019). His narrative reflects on the critical situation of change through the system, which acknowledges and honours the Aboriginal culture, so that the macrosystem tends to empower, instead of marginalise, children such as Dujuan.
Chronosystem
Chronosystem is where time plays in the development of a child, such as transitions in the life of a child, the history, and the generations (Guy-Evans, 2024). It understands that children are shaped by not only the immediate surroundings that are around them, but also by the transitions and the events that take place during their lifetime, but also by the heritage left behind by their forebears.
The intergenerational trauma and historical dispossession is the most important component of the chronosystem in the story by Dujuan. The history of colonisation, child-abduction, and institutional exclusion is still going on to define Aboriginal families in various generations. In his case, Dujuan does not see these historical processes as something that occurred many years ago but as current realities, which affect his family in its relations with schools, welfare agencies, and society in general. The language and cultural practice taught by his grandmother is an indication of a deliberate act of fighting back against the eradication of Aboriginal identity, which has taken place due to decades of assimilation policies.
The chronosystem brings out the intergenerational trauma in the modern problems of distrust in institutions and fear of state intervention. Families such as Dujan have the burden of having a history of children being taken away regularly in the course of the Stolen Generations policies (Newell, 2020). This history upgrades current worries about welfare and justice systems, despite families struggling to provide supportive settings. The outcome is a process of continuation in which the past is still influencing current risks and opportunities.
Meanwhile, the chronosystem also includes inter-generational resilience. The cultural knowledge and practices on healing and spirituality reveal that the indigenous cultural practices have been held up and transmitted despite colonisation by Dujuan (Newell, 2020). His cultural continuity of being a young healer signifies continuity of cultural resilience, which has withstood efforts to oppress it. This proves that the chronosystem does not only concern trauma but rather continuation of resistance, adaptation and cultural continuity through time (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). The case of Dujuan shows that intergenerational trauma and historical dispossession are still present forces in the lives of children of Aboriginal people. The chronosystem is important because it emphasises that children cannot be conceptualised outside of history, and that healing must take into consideration the accumulated damages as well as the strengths brought forward into later generations.
Conclusion
Chronosystem is a status of time in the development of a child, touching on the life transitions, past, and intergenerational trends. It recognises that children are not merely similar to their present settings, they undergo the same change as well as exactly whatever occurs during their lifetime, and heritages that preceding generations have bequeathed.
The most significant element of the chronosystem that is present in the storey by Dujuan is intergenerational trauma and history-dependent dispossession. The legacy of colonisation, child abduction and the exclusion system have continued to affect the aboriginal families. These historical processes are rather proximate to the case of Dujuan but they are a reality that enhance the way his family interact with school, welfare agencies and the entire society. This language and cultural practise imparted upon him by his grandmother is a sort of response to eradication of Aboriginal identity of which he is a victim due to decades of assimilation policy. According to the chronosystem, the issue of intergenerational trauma appears in the contemporary issues of a lack of trust in institutions and the fear of being caught in the state’s system. Families such as Dujuan belongs bear the burden of the past, in which they often took away their children in accordance with the Stolen Generations policies. This past heightens current fear of welfare and justice systems, even when families do their best to offer nurturing conditions. The outcome is the existence of a cycle where the past still defines modern-day risks and opportunities.
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