Walk With Us

First Nations communities in the fight against Santos

By Market Forces

December 19^th, 2023

This is the story Australia’s big banks, super funds and Santos don’t want you to hear.

A new documentary, Walk With Us, tells the story of Gomeroi and Tiwi Islands Traditional Owners coming together to ramp up the fight against Santos and its dirty Narrabri and Barossa gas projects.

These Traditional Owners have a powerful message for Australia’s major banks and super funds: stop funding Santos and its destructive new gas projects.

Watch the documentary and take action

Billions of dollars are being poured into Santos by Australia’s major banks and super funds. Gomeroi Traditional Owner, Miah Wright, says Australians need to know what their retirement savings and the funds in their bank accounts are being used for.

“You need to know where your money is going, and what it's supporting... It's coming up here, and it's ripping our land up.”

The Pilliga Forest near Narrabri, New South Wales has been sacred land to the Gomeroi for millennia.

The Pilliga is a "recharge zone" for the Great Artesian Basin. Yet Santos wants to build 850 gas wells in the Pilliga Forest as part of their Narrabri gas project.

Gomeroi Traditional Owners have been fighting this project for years.

"One of the names that's been given to this area is the Scrub; they call it the Pilliga Scrub. That was basically to, you know, give it a tag that there's nothing of relevance in there that's important," says Miah. "And that is so not true."

“This place is special. You can smell it; you can feel it. It's one of the greatest biodiversities in the world.”

By drilling into the Great Artesian Basin, Santos is threatening one of the largest freshwater reserves in Australia.

Karra Kinchela, also a Gomeroi Traditional Owner, is deeply worried about what the Narrabri gas project will mean for the land and for her people.

“It's going to cause devastating massive effects to our cultural heritage, to our access to community and Country—to the whole of Australia.”

Tiwi Islanders are fighting the same fight.

Up north, Traditional Owners from the Tiwi Islands are desperately fighting Santos over its offshore Barossa gas project, where the company plans on drilling for gas in Tiwi Islands Sea Country.

Over its lifetime, the proposed Barossa project would produce the equivalent of more than half Australia’s total annual emissions.

Antonia Burke, an Indigenous human rights advocate and campaigner, is heartbroken at the impacts Santos' projects will have on her family's homelands.

“I feel sad for my daughter, that she won’t get to enjoy what I grew up with—what my mother grew up with, what my grandmother grew up with—because by the time she’s 28, this’ll be gone. It’ll just be a memory.”

Australia's big four banks—ANZ, CommBank, NAB and Westpac—all claim to support the rights of Traditional Owners. Yet each of these banks took part in a loan to Santos, supporting its dirty Barossa gas project—even as Tiwi Traditional Owners challenged that project in court. And none of these banks have ruled out further finance for Santos' destructive new gas plans.

Many of Australia’s biggest super funds also claim to support the rights of Traditional Owners, yet almost all of them remain invested in Santos and are failing Traditional Owners by letting this company get away with ignoring communities and threatening cultural heritage.

In response, Tiwi Islands Traditional Owners have lodged complaints with twelve Australian and international banks over Santos' disregard for human rights. Tiwi, Gomeroi and Larrakia Traditional Owners have lodged complaints with Australia’s twenty biggest super funds over Santos’ disregard for human rights.

Both Gomeroi and Tiwi Islands communities have made it abundantly clear to Santos that they do not consent to their lands and waters being exploited for gas, and that Santos is not welcome.

Tiwi Islands Traditional Owners have taken Santos to the Federal Court for failing to adequately consult with the Tiwi community over its Barossa project. Gomeroi Traditional Owners are taking their fight to the Federal Court as well.

Rebecca Parker Photography: Carol Marie Puruntatmeri and Paulina Jedda Puruntatmeri at Pitjamirra for the on country hearing

Yet despite this strong opposition, Santos is still pushing ahead with the Narrabri and Barossa projects—even going so far as to attempt to extinguish Gomeroi Native Title rights over the Pilliga.

They've made it clear they will stop at nothing in the pursuit of climate-wrecking gas, including undermining the rights and wishes of Traditional Owners.