An interactive documentary telling the story of the shipwreck of Eliza Fraser on K'gari (later Fraser Island) from the perspective of the Butchulla people among whom she found herself.
Teaching resources via SBS website.
Finding Eliza : Power and Colonial Storytelling
St Lucia
:
University of Queensland Press
,
2016
9186866
2016
multi chapter work
criticism
'A vital Aboriginal perspective on colonial storytelling
'Indigenous lawyer and writer Larissa Behrendt has long been fascinated by the story of Eliza Fraser, who was purportedly captured by the local Butchulla people after she was shipwrecked on their island 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 colonizers’ stories. Citing works as diverse as Robinson Crusoe and Coonardoo, she explores the tropes in these accounts, such as the supposed promiscuity of Aboriginal women, the Europeans’ fixation on cannibalism, and the myth of the noble savage. Ultimately, Behrendt shows how these stories not only reflect the values of their storytellers but also reinforce those values – which in Australia led to the dispossession of Aboriginal people and the laws enforced against them. ' (Publication summary)
