On a bright Monday morning in July, Arrernte elder Felicity Hayes walks hand-in-hand with three generations of her family, on the road to the American satellite spy base at Pine Gap in Central Australia.
The Arrernte Apmereke-artweye traditional custodians – backed by hundreds of protestors – are calling for their land to be handed back to them.
Evidence that intelligence from the base has been used to enable warfare and the lethal targeting of civilians has spurred a groundswell of people demanding the facility’s closure.
“We look after land more than what you do,” Felicity Hayes says.
“Close the base because what it’s doing is destroying other people’s country and killing children and old people as well.
“It’s causing us a lot of sadness.
“We want to live in peace.”
The Hayes family are on the frontlines of the largest protest at the highly secure facility since the ‘Close the Gap’ protests of 1987.
To reach the fences restricting access to several of their sacred sites, the custodians, accompanied by a small group of supporters, passed a police blockade and a sign warning they are entering a “prohibited area”.
Armed with a letter, the Hayes family delivered their message to a line of police guarding the gates.
“My grandfather long time ago was taken advantage of and with no consent, they took his land away,” Felicity Hayes said, amid a swell of protest chants down the road and the buzz of a surveillance drone. “My grandfather was a drover – he didn’t understand English.
“This is where our old people used to dance and sing and do their corroborees.
“I’ve been to white man’s school [and] this is my sovereign land . . . and I know how to speak up for my family.
“We want our land back.”
Solidarity across borders
The US-built Pine Gap satellite surveillance basehas occupied parts of the Hayes family’s ancestral lands, known as Kuyunba, since the 60s.
The letter from the family, handed to police to be given to a representative of Pine Gap, is set to be tabled in parliament by Greens Senator David Shoebridge later this year. It lists four key demands.
These include the closure of the Pine Gap facility, return of the site into the care of custodians, compensation for the custodians, and compensation for families in Gaza impacted by the use of the base.
“We feel sorry for the families around the world whose lives have been taken away by that [Pine Gap] base,” their letter reads.
“We don’t want to be feeling guilty all the time when there’s bad things happening overseas to little ones.
“We are there for these families around the world.”
Aboriginal community leader Barbara Shaw, who walked alongside the Hayes family as they deliver their letter, says the last time she was on this road was as a child during the Women’s Camp protests in 1983.
“It was led by women, just like today has been led by women, especially traditional owners,” says Shaw, a housing and land rights advocate.
“Traditional owners have never been compensated for this area, and I think it’s about time.
“They don’t want Americans occupying their land anymore.
“I hope that that letter that was delivered . . . will reach far and wide.”
‘Homeless on our own Country’
As Pine Gap’s capabilities expand rapidly with 10 new satelite dishes being built since 2001, the Hayes family’s town camp – down the road in Alice Springs – lacks basic infrastructure, like sewerage, mains water and stable electricity.
Standing among a scattering of tin sheds, Felicity Hayes says despite longstanding calls for these essentials “nothing has changed” for residents of Irrkerlantye (White Gate).
“We’ve been asking for the same things, our old people, our elders—building houses for the next generation,” she said.
“But nothing has ever got off the ground.
“Lot of politicians . . . and human rights [organisations] come through here.
“I don’t trust anybody anymore . . . nothing really comes of it.”
“We feel homeless on our own Country.”
‘No through road, please turn back’
The delivery of the letter followed a weekend of panel discussions and workshops in Central Australia attended by around 600 people from around the continent.
In nearly 60 years of Pine Gap’s operations, it has attracted multiple protests around its – and Australia’s – involvement in US wars and in cases of spying on other countries.
The current ramifications of the base’s operations, and more broadly of the US-Australian military alliance, was a talking point at the recent convergence.
An organiser and member of the Anti-Militarism Action Network Nathalie Farah said the protest at the base “went better than imagined”.
“It was so much simpler than previous campaigns I’ve been a part of because it was such a strong message from the Hayes family,” Farah said.
The three-day convergence brought together politicians, academics, legal professionals, and community leaders, including several veteran campaigners who had attended the ’83 and ’87 Pine Gap protests.
Convergence discussions also centred around longstanding Indigenous campaigns for justice, against the backdrop of the current Northern Territory Government’s ‘tough-on-crime’ agenda.
Yawarllaayi and Gomeroi elder Barbara Flick, who was one of the organisers of the 1987 protest, drew parallels between the genocide of First Nations people in Australia and the killing of civilians overseas.
She said cutting ties with the US and forging respectful relationships with the Pacific and southeast Asia is “key to our national security.”
“Massacres took place across our lands . . . the killings have never stopped,” she said.
“Now our lands are used by successive Australian governments to engage in the killings of people all over the world.
“The so-called ‘joint facility’ at Pine Gap, illegally built on unceded Arrernte land, is very much part of the technology that allows this to continue to happen.”
Over the decades, Australian governments have hidden behind a policy of saying they do not comment on intelligence matters or the operation of intelligence facilities..
However, numerous insider and academic sources have painted a picture of the base’s support for military operations.
A November 2023 Declassified Australia investigation featured a former employee at the surveillance base who confirmed the base is collecting intelligence on the Gaza strip.
“Pine Gap facility is monitoring the Gaza Strip and surrounding areas with all its resources, and gathering intelligence assessed to be useful to Israel,” said the former NSA employee.
In 2017, the ABC published leaked intelligence documents from the National Security Agency (NSA) that revealed the first documented proof that Pine Gap intelligence is being used by America providing targeting for lethal military actions around the globe, by unmanned drone strikes, bombing missions, and armed attack.
Among the satellites Pine Gap operates, there are four powerful, advanced Orion satellites positioned over the Indian ocean, which can gather and share extensive surveillance data from large parts of the world.
Leading Australian researcher on Pine Gap, Professor Richard Tanter says three of these satellites “cover the Middle East, all cover Gaza, all cover Iran.”
Drawing on years of research with the late intelligence expert Professor Des Ball and Bill Robinson, Prof Tanter confirms these satellites are part of the Pine Gap apparatus that enable the US’s “warfighting capabilities”.
“Any area of contemporary American military interest is almost certainly dealt with by Pine Gap,” he says.
Tanter believes intelligence gathered at Pine Gap, which is automatically relayed to the US, is passed on to the Israeli Defence Force, based on the leaks from whistleblower Edward Snowden.
“Because of the agreements between the National Security Agency. . .all that information is passed on, apparently without explicit filter, to the Israeli defence authorities,” he says.
“The United States is the greatest threat to Australia, and Pine Gap is particularly so.
“A great many parts of the American attack plans, for example on China, depend on signals intelligence.
“It makes us a nuclear target. . . [and] a conventional missile target.
“It entraps us very clearly in complicity in genocide in Gaza.”
‘History repeating itself’
Over the past weeks, the Australian government’s defence spending – particularly around the $368 billion AUKUS nuclear deal with the US and UK – has once again been in the spotlight.
Last month, federal defence minister Richard Marles announced an extra $4.6 billion for South Australian shipyards contracted to build AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines.
This is on top of nearly $4 billion pledged towards the SA shipyards earlier this year.
The announcement coincided with the national Labor Party conference in Adelaide in July, which saw muted debate around the AUKUS agreement.
Meanwhile, an independent public inquiry currently underway into the multi-billion-dollar AUKUS deal recently heard Australia’s nuclear submarine fleet will output hundreds of kilograms of high-level radioactive waste.
Commissioner for the AUKUS inquiry and Yankunytjatjara woman Karina Lester – a second-generation nuclear survivor – says there needs to be transparency around the costly deal.
Lester’s family is among Anangu communities who suffered devastating health and environmental impacts from the British Government’s nuclear weapons testing in the 50s in Australia at Maralinga and Emu Fields.
“When it comes to managing waste. . .big players across the globe, such as the US and the UK have no [public] plan,” Lester said.
“With this AUKUS agreement. . . Australia could potentially be the waste dump of the world, which is something that we have fought in South Australia.
“History [is] repeating itself: secrecy around the British nuclear testing program, secrecy around the AUKUS agreement.”
Senior Googatha elder and president of the Australian Nuclear Free Alliance Aunty Sue Coleman-Haseldine was born in Koonibba mission, near Ceduna in South Australia, just before the first British atomic bombs were tested near her lands in 1953.
“I’ve got four generations, and within the four generations, the fallout from Maralinga is still happening, right down to little grandchildren, great grandchildren,” she said.
“[There are] defects, and there’s a lot of miscarriages. . .a lot of young men [with] triple heart bypasses at 40.
“The nasty part was they already knew what those things [atomic bombs] could do because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“I’ll keep fighting for the rights of the next generation.”
The elder has defied authorities to look after her Country, where the Koonibba Test Range – promoted as one of the largest commercial rocket testing facilities in the world – has operated since 2019.
For the Hayes family, their struggle for adequate services and housing seems linked to the violence perpetrated by the intelligence gathered on their land at the Pine Gap military base.
“We need to get Pine Gap out of here because it’s destroying our world, and killing young people, old people, babies,” Felicity Hayes says.
“This isn’t our problem – it’s an American problem.
“Stop the genocide.”
The Australian defence department has been contacted for comment, but provided no response by deadline.
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