'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)
Epigraph:
If not for other, there is no self.
If not for self, nothing is apprehended.
–Chuang-tzu
K'gari
Tori-Jay Mordey
(illustrator),
Sydney
:
SBS
,
2017
12361285
2017
single work
film/TV
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.
'In times of crisis I take comfort in the words of black women in whatever form, whether it’s poetry, fiction, memoir, academia, journalism or a Twitter feed. When a white police officer killed an African-American man on camera in May, and ignited the fury of the world, I found strength in the activism of Aboriginal women who continued to break through the stifling silences to shout black lives matter on our own shores too. The writing of black women is powerful because, as Distinguished Professor Aileen Moreton-Robinson writes, although we come from a diversity of backgrounds and circumstances, we also share common experiences:
All Indigenous women share the common experience of living in a society that deprecates us. We share the experience of having different cultural knowledges.
We share in the experience of the continual denial of our sovereignties. We share experiences of the politics of dispossession. We share our respective countries’ histories of colonisation. We share the experience of multiple oppressions. We share in the experiences of living in a hegemonic white patriarchal society.
(Introduction)
Larissa Behrendt : On 'Finding Eliza: Colonial Power and Storytelling'
Astrid Edwards
(interviewer),
2020
19699192
2020
single work
podcast
interview
'Larissa Behrendt, a Eualeyai and Kamillaroi woman, is a writer, lawyer and academic. This interview is an in-depth discussion of her work Finding Eliza: Colonial Power and Storytelling.
'Larissa is the Distinguished Professor at the University of Technology Sydney and at the Director of Research and Academic Programs Jumbunna Institute of Indigenous Education and Research.
'Larissa won the 2002 David Unaipon Award and a 2005 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for her novel Home. Her second novel, Legacy, won a Victorian Premiers Literary Award. She has also published numerous textbooks on Indigenous legal issues.
'Larissa wrote and directed the feature films, After the Apology and Innocence Betrayed and has written and produced several short films. She won the 2018 Australian Directors Guild Award for Best Direction in a Feature Documentary.
'Larissa is on the board of Sydney Festival and a board member of the Australia Council’s Major Performing Arts Panel. She was awarded the 2009 NAIDOC Person of the Year award and 2011 NSW Australian of the Year.' (Introduction)
'Somewhere before White Fragility became the lingo du jour of anti-racism workshops, white people stopped telling me out loud that they were ‘one of the good ones’. They chuckled and said ‘Oh, I’m so white’. They offered me a conspiring wink. It’s not as suave when I reciprocate. I can only blink, or hold my hand over one eye like an optometrist, testing just what it is I’m meant to be seeing.' (Introduction)
'Little of Eliza Fraser’s life was spent in Australia, but her name has become part of its colonised landscape. So, too, has her story. Shipwrecked off the coast of Australia in 1836, she lived for several weeks with local Aboriginal people, the Butchulla, traditional custodians and owners of the island that now bears her name. Her husband perished but Eliza survived, enduring – by her own account – abuse and drudgery before being rescued and restored to civilised society. Sensational accounts of her ordeal ensured her story a lasting place in colonial mythology, reinforced and reinvented in the twentieth century when her ‘captivity’ was made the theme of paintings by Sidney Nolan, a novel by Patrick White, and a memorable 1970s film.' (Introduction)
'A colonial story of hardship and humiliation after a 19th-century shipwreck is unpicked to reveal the Indigenous perspective. '
'Little of Eliza Fraser’s life was spent in Australia, but her name has become part of its colonised landscape. So, too, has her story. Shipwrecked off the coast of Australia in 1836, she lived for several weeks with local Aboriginal people, the Butchulla, traditional custodians and owners of the island that now bears her name. Her husband perished but Eliza survived, enduring – by her own account – abuse and drudgery before being rescued and restored to civilised society. Sensational accounts of her ordeal ensured her story a lasting place in colonial mythology, reinforced and reinvented in the twentieth century when her ‘captivity’ was made the theme of paintings by Sidney Nolan, a novel by Patrick White, and a memorable 1970s film.' (Introduction)
'Somewhere before White Fragility became the lingo du jour of anti-racism workshops, white people stopped telling me out loud that they were ‘one of the good ones’. They chuckled and said ‘Oh, I’m so white’. They offered me a conspiring wink. It’s not as suave when I reciprocate. I can only blink, or hold my hand over one eye like an optometrist, testing just what it is I’m meant to be seeing.' (Introduction)
Larissa Behrendt : On 'Finding Eliza: Colonial Power and Storytelling'
Astrid Edwards
(interviewer),
2020
19699192
2020
single work
podcast
interview
'Larissa Behrendt, a Eualeyai and Kamillaroi woman, is a writer, lawyer and academic. This interview is an in-depth discussion of her work Finding Eliza: Colonial Power and Storytelling.
'Larissa is the Distinguished Professor at the University of Technology Sydney and at the Director of Research and Academic Programs Jumbunna Institute of Indigenous Education and Research.
'Larissa won the 2002 David Unaipon Award and a 2005 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for her novel Home. Her second novel, Legacy, won a Victorian Premiers Literary Award. She has also published numerous textbooks on Indigenous legal issues.
'Larissa wrote and directed the feature films, After the Apology and Innocence Betrayed and has written and produced several short films. She won the 2018 Australian Directors Guild Award for Best Direction in a Feature Documentary.
'Larissa is on the board of Sydney Festival and a board member of the Australia Council’s Major Performing Arts Panel. She was awarded the 2009 NAIDOC Person of the Year award and 2011 NSW Australian of the Year.' (Introduction)
