The Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania (ALCT) has launched Giving Back Land – a campaign inviting private owners to return land to pakana ownership and management, through a clear structured process.
“We became aware that there’s people out there willing to give back but we didn’t have a structured process,” ALCT manager Rebecca Digney said at the recent launch event in Nipaluna (Hobart).
“Now, when people come with those offers we can act on it.
“Aboriginal people have intrinsic connection to our land, we’ve suffered 213 years of dispossession, that dispossession started with violence, our land was taken from us at the point of a gun,” Ms Digney said.
“Some people in the state of Tasmania have much more land than they need, some have land that they can’t manage because what they have is so vast, some people have land and they have nobody to pass it onto, and some people who have land just want the opportunity to right past wrongs.”
Land can be given back directly, bequeathed to the Aboriginal community at the end of life or money can be donated to purchase land back. ALCT has recently been granted charity status and donations over $2 are now tax-deductible…
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