Abstract

This chapter examines Ukrainian Australian literature for children and youth written by 14 authors between 1950 and 1990. All but one of these authors moved from Ukraine to Australia in the aftermath of World War II. The analyses combine Donna Haraway’s (The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003) concept natureculture with the notion of gaze. The compound “natureculture” challenges the intellectual tradition of separating nature and culture to highlight interactions between the two. Human influence on plants has been normalized to the extent plant influence on humans is rendered invisible. We use the notion of “gaze” to make visible aspects of human-plant interaction that might otherwise go unnoticed, highlighting instances where the authors either obscure or celebrate plant autonomy. This chapter focuses on the representation of the Australian bush in literature for Ukrainian children and youth. We examine representations of bush as a place, then as a plant or group of plants. The former exposes Ukrainian settlers’ imposition of “Ukrainian gaze” onto the landscape: i.e., seeing the Australian bush through the lens of Ukrainian landscapes. However, we also identify works where Ukrainian Australian authors recognize plant autonomy. We suggest this becomes more evident when the bush is conceived as a plant and/or in relation to the Indigenous populations of Australia.