Fresh from a monumental walk across almost half of Victoria this year, Travis Lovett has announced a new "walk for truth" in 2026, travelling from Naarm to Canberra.
The Kerrupmara Gunditjmara man, who is also the inaugural Executive Director of the University of Melbourne's Centre for Truth Telling and Dialogue, says the new walk will go Victorian Parliament on Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung Country and conclude at Parliament House in Canberra on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country in April and May next year.
"Everyone is invited," he said.
The walk will call on the Federal Government to commit to a national truth-telling process in genuine partnership with First Nations Peoples.
"Every voice matters," Mr Lovett said. "This is our chance to come together, walk side by side and call for a national commitment to Truth."
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Mr Lovett's 513-kilometre journey earlier this year drew more than 22,000 Victorians along the route from Portland to State Parliament, including more than 5,000 people who gathered to meet him at the finish line.
Next year's walk will begin from the same Parliament steps where he concluded this year's sojourn, with the former Yoorrook Justice Commissioner inviting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their allies to join him.
"Walk For Truth is a shared journey that says, with our feet and our voices, that our country needs healing. We will walk because love of country means loving it enough to change it," he said.
"As a nation built on stories, we too often leave out the violence, dispossession and survival that followed colonisation. But a country that turns away from the truth of its own beginnings cannot be at peace with itself."
This year's Walk for Truth covered nearly half of Victoria over 25 days, beginning on Gunditjmara Country; where colonisation in the state "took its first breath". It marked the completion of Yoorrook's final report, including its Official Public Record, which urged Victorians to confront the state's history and commit to a just future.
Mr Lovett said truth-telling is not about apportioning blame. Instead, it is about "finally listening to those who have too often been treated as a problem to be handled, rather than as sovereign peoples who deserve respect".
He described the process as an act of national repair, allowing everyone to move forward together on a truthful path.
"We invite all Australians to walk this path with us, both literally on the roads and tracks we travel, and in your hearts and minds," Mr Lovett said.
"We ask the Federal Government to meet us on this path too — hear what is hard to hear, sit in the discomfort, and stay at the table long enough to build something better."
