Larissa Behrendt – December 18 2016

Larissa is currently a Professor of Indigenous Research and Director of Research at the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at the University of Technology, Sydney. An academic and writer, she holds a Bachelor of Jurisprudence and Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of New South Wales, and a Master of Laws and Doctor of Juridical Science from Harvard Law School. Larissa has practised as a barrister in the Supreme Court of the ACT, worked in Canada for a year with a range of First Nations organisations and has represented the Assembly of First Nations at the United Nations. Larissa is a member of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences of Australia (ASSA), a Foundation Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law (AAL) and has chaired The Review of Higher Education Access and Outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People.

Home
University of Queensland Press, 2004; ISBN 978-0702234071
Candice, a young, city-based lawyer, sets out on her first visit to ancestral country, arriving at “the place where the rivers meet”, the camp of the Eualeyai where in 1918 her grandmother Garibooli was abducted. As Garibooli takes up the story, the twentieth century falls away. Sent to work as a housemaid, marriage soon offered escape from the terror of the master’s night-time visits. Her displacement carries into the lives of her seven children – their stories witness to the impact of orphanage life and the consequences of having a dark skin in post-war Australia. Vividly rekindled, the lives of her family point the direction home for Candice.

Legacy
University of Queensland Press, 2009; ISBN 978070223733
Simone Harlowe is young and clever, an Aboriginal lawyer straddling two lives and two cultures while studying at Harvard. Her family life back in Sydney is defined by the complex relationship she has with her father Tony, a prominent Aboriginal rights activist. As Simone juggles the challenges of a modern woman’s life – career, family, friends and relationships – her father is confronting his own uncomfortable truths as his secret double life implodes. Can Simone accept her father for the man he is and forgive him for the man he’s not?