Our Story

We are a young professional couple living in Sydney, Australia. We'd like to ask for your donation, however small or large, to help us get an important book published. 

In late 2010, having spent 6 weeks volunteering our time in the Aboriginal homeland of Yilpara (also known as Baniyala) in North East Arnhem Land, we created a book titled What Is A Homeland? inspired by interviews and conversations we had with the Yolngu people living there. Yolngu are a diverse group of Aboriginal inhabitants living across multiple homelands in the Northern Territory. Land passed on to them by their ancestors who have lived there for countless generations.

After witnessing life in the community it was very clear to us that, with positive support and leadership, life on homelands can be incredibly beneficial to Aboriginal people in all aspects of health, education, employment and most importantly, culture. 

Through consultation with Yolngu leaders and other people we met, we decided that creating this book would be the perfect way to say thank you to those people who allowed us into their community and lives so openly as well as being a platform for their voices to be heard. 

The Impact

Initially we hope to raise enough money to cover the cost of printing a small amount of books. Just enough to supply every person living in Yilpara with a copy, allowing them to share the positive aspects of their life with other visitors to their small community of 150 people. We will also send several copies to key representatives within the Australian Government involved in policy making on indigenous issues. 

On a larger scale we hope this book can contribute to the process of educating non-indigenous Australia and Government about the importance of homelands and the need to support them. 

The current policy of both the Northern Territory Government and the Federal Government dealing with homeland/outstation communities intends to phase out all financial support over the next few years. They intend to establish 20 regional hub towns throughout the Northern Territory and redirect all major services out of these hubs, thus limiting the scope to support services in remote homeland communities, disregarding the intrinsic importance and benefits of people living on their homelands.

Understanding the complexity of what homelands mean to Aboriginal people is an extremely difficult task. In creating this book we did not attempt to reveal these complexities, nor did we mean to reflect the views of all indigenous people, rather we simply intend to show some of the richness of the cultural integrity, and spiritual and physical importance of homelands through the imagery and words of the people we met.

What We Need & What You Get

Our priority at this stage is to print at least 150 - 200 copies of our book. This will allow every person living in Yilpara to own one book for themselves. If we can raise $2000 we will achieve this goal. 

If we can raise closer to $3000 it will mean we can print more copies. This could enable us to distribute them to you, our donors, as well as making them available for free in art centres and community centres across North East Arnhem Land where many tourists visit on a daily basis, often with little knowledge of what life is really like in remote communities.

Here's the donation details:

A donation of $5 - $9 = Our great thanks and your guaranteed assistance in helping getting our book printed

A donation of $10 - $19 = Your greatly appreciated assistance in helping us print enough copies to supply each person in Yilpara with at least one copy, as well as acknowledgement of your donation on our facebook group.

A donation of $20 or more = Your greatly appreciated assistance. A personal email from us thanking you for your donation with images of Yilpara attached from the book, as well as an opportunity to have a copy of the book posted* to you at a later date. (*We will only be able to post copies if we beat our target of $2000 and are able to print extra copies).

NOTE: Even if we don't make our target your money will go toward printing as many books as we can. All amounts are in US dollars

Want to contribute but can't afford to donate right now? Or want to get involved in other ways? 

Make some noise by spreading the word on Facebook, Twitter or any other social networks.

Email this URL link around to your friends and colleagues.

Thank you for your time,

Ruby Johnson & Steve Tierney