num_pages: 204
description: 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 Elizas 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.
language: None
title: Finding Eliza: Power and Colonial Storytelling
publisher: University of Queensland Press