Cirrus@Austlit

'May Gibbs, creator of the gumnut babies—humanoid bush babies associated with eucalyptus trees—is popularly recognized as one of the early illustrators of Australian children’s literature to represent indigenous Australian plants in her work. A British settler on colonized Indigenous land, Gibbs participates in both the shaping of an Australian identity for settler-culture children through connection with the Australian landscape and the erasure of Australian First Peoples. This chapter offers a new perspective on the tangled relations between human settlers and indigenous plants (as well as other indigenous more-than-human beings) through a critical plant studies approach, considering the implications of the genealogy and hybridity of the gumnuts, as well as the books’ treatment of multispecies kinship. Whereas the gumnuts embody plant-human kinship and model existence within lively multispecies entanglements, the gumnut books also raise difficult questions about identity and belonging on settler-colonized land, challenging some of the values of settler culture and propagating others.' (Publication abstract)