Why does Pine Gap get security of tenure, while the Traditional Owners of the land that Pine Gap sits on are still fighting for a lease and basic services for their land at Irrkerlantye/ Whitegate?!
Many custodians for the land on which the Pine Gap facility is sited live at Irrkerlantye – Whitegate town camp, 5km from the centre of Alice Springs town, and on Antulye country. Irrkerlantye means Kitehawk in Arrernte. They have been fighting a four-decade long struggle for legal tenure over, and basic services to this community.
Felicity Hayes, a senior custodian for Mparntwe/ Alice Springs, and for the land on which Pine Gap is sited, says: “It is our traditional land. Our old people walked this land and hunted and lived here before the white man came – we got culture and language, we survived colonisation.”
Despite applying for official tenure under the NT Land Rights Act in the late 1970s, around the same time as the US government was insisting on “security of tenure” from the Australian government for its Pine Gap investments, residents of Irrkerlantye have still not been granted legal title, nor basic services such as running water and electricity.
“We’ve been asking the government for housing and essential services this whole time, however nothing has been done to provide the most basic services that all people are entitled to,” says Felicity Hayes.
“We’ve been fighting for forty years and we’ve got children, the next generation, and they’re still going to be living here”.
Irrkerlantye, an National Indigenous Times article from 2022 states, “has none of the basic services the rest of Australia takes for granted: water is trucked in and a meagre power supply is provided by a few solar panels. There is no sewerage”. Little has progressed in the four years since that article was published. The community’s connection to Alice Springs town water was severed in 2014, a move that was widely seen as an effort by the then Country Liberal Party government to force Irrkerlantye residents off their land, however residents outlasted that government. The subsequent Labor Party government spent eight years in office and did nothing to resolve Irrkerlantye’s legal status and provide residents with the essential services they are entitled to as a fundamental human right.
Tangentyere Council Aboriginal Corporation, the entity that looks after other so-called “town camps” in Alice Springs, is not funded to deliver services to Irrkerlantye. It does, however, provide limited municipal services; rubbish collection; potable water; and some investment in critical infrastructure in order to mitigate some of the hardship.
Irrkerlantye/ White Gate is “fighting for justice … justice to live on their land, to live with the same amenities everyone else takes for granted,” says senior Arrernte man William Tilmouth.
The struggle for justice and fundamental human rights for Irrkerlantye/ White Gate residents continues.