Help a Gamilaroi Buy Some Gamilaroi Land Back

I'm Travis De Vries, a Gamilaroi man.

I'm here to ask you to help me buy back a part of traditional homelands that was stolen from my people generations ago through the British colonisation of this country. 

This colonisation was disruptive to our peoples in so many ways, one of which was the process of our land ownership. There's no way of articulating this nicely. Our access to inter-generational wealth was stolen from us. 

I am here to ask you to help me get it back. I come to you hat in hand asking for financial assistance through this fundraiser to purchase back land. I want to use this money to buy property on country that if not for colonisation I would have had access to. 

I want to live on that property. I want to then use that property to build more opportunities for other mob to buy back land as well. I want to help create a system that is just and a system where we have meaningful access and control over our ancestral lands and can financially benefit from that. 

My plan is to first have a roof over my head and then to keep building. 

With every acre of land I can buy back we can help Gamilaroi and other people live in freedom on land that is rightfully ours. We'll use this land to run programs and create more wealth that we won't hoard like western millionaires. Instead we'll share this bounty amongst each other and sustainably try to save this planet, one acre at a time.

A year ago I worked hard to help start a blakfulla media and arts organisation: Awesome Black which is classified as a non-for-profit Aboriginal Corporation. With this fundraiser and through buying back land I mean to set up a place where I can grow that organisation, create a wider community organisation and keep blakfulla money in the hands of blakfullas. 

I want this fundraiser to spark a wider conversation about the concept of getting land back in the hands of its rightful owners.  I want this to be the start of something bigger. 

We need these funds fairly soon. I've been paying rent and working full-time for the last 15 years whilst trying to save money to ask the Whitefulla banks for a loan to buy back some of my land. We never get that far ahead though.

If you're benefiting off stolen land that your ancestors were a part of stealing you owe to yourself to dig deep.

Your support would mean the world to me.

Thank you