Finding Eliza Power and Colonial Storytelling

Aboriginal lawyer, writer and filmmaker Larissa Behrendt has long been fascinated by the story of Eliza Fraser, who was purportedly captured by the Butchulla people after she was shipwrecked on their island off the Queensland coast in 1836. In this deeply personal book, Behrendt uses Eliza’ s tale as a starting point to interrogate how Aboriginal people – and indigenous people of other countries – have been portrayed in their colonisers’ stories. Exploring works as diverse as Robinson Crusoe and Coonardoo, Behrendt looks at the stereotypes embedded in these accounts, including the assumption of cannibalism and the myth of the noble savage. Ultimately, Finding Eliza shows how these stories not only reflect the values of their storytellers but also reinforce those values – and how, in Australia, this has contributed to a complex racial divide.

Larissa Behrendt is an accomplished Australian legal academic, filmmaker, Indigenous rights advocate and is the author of three award-winning novels: Home, Legacy and After Story. She received the Human Rights Medal in 2021 from the Australian Human Rights Commission; and Order of Australia in 2020 for her work in Indigenous education, law and the arts; the 2011 NSW Australian of the Year award; and the 2009 NAIDOC Person of the Year award. Larissa is a Harvard Law graduate and current Distinguished Professor and Laureate Fellow at the Jumbunna Institute at the University of Technology Sydney. Dr Fiona Foley is an Australian Indigenous artist, filmmaker and author of Biting the Clouds (UQP 2020) which was shortlisted for the QLAs Queensland Premier's Award for a work of State Significance. She is is currently a Lecturer at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University.

Introduction by Fiona Foley xi 1 Once Upon a Time 1 2 The White Woman Captured by Cannibals 11 3 Methods and Motives 35 4 The Other Side of the Story 56 5 Fictionalising Aboriginal Women 81 6 Cannibalism: Dark Acts on the Frontier 106 7 Imagining Noble Savages 144 8 Telling Stories about Colonisation 178 9 Happily Ever After 193 Acknowledgements 203 References 205