A group of Tiwi Islands elders is urging the Australian government to intervene to stop a Santos gas pipeline project... Impacting ancient underwater burial grounds. Working with scientists and lawyers, the elders have lodged an emergency appeal with the government's Environmental Defenders Office -- to stop the pipeline.
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00:00 Six Tiwi elders, which is islands up in the Northern Territory just above Darwin, have
00:07 lodged an urgent appeal with the Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek, urging her to intervene
00:13 before Santos starts putting in a pipeline for its Barossa gas project up above their
00:19 islands. The Tiwi island elders have been working with lawyers and environmental groups
00:27 and they've been doing geolocation and mapping, also using oral histories, to map out where
00:34 they think that significant sites could be underneath the ocean where the pipeline would
00:39 go. It must be said they don't have any physical proof that there are things such as burial
00:44 grounds on the seabed, but the marine archaeologists that I've been talking to about their case
00:50 say that they think it's probable they've mapped out these sorts of sacred sites. And
00:54 the reason why these sites could be underneath the water is because many, many years ago
01:00 the Tiwi islands weren't an island at all. We know through looking at quite incredible
01:06 replications of sea level rise by archaeologists and geologists that once upon a time the Tiwi
01:11 islands were connected to mainland Australia, as were many other parts of Australia. We
01:17 know that once, for instance, Victoria and Tasmania were connected as well. And this
01:25 archaeologists have told me means that there is potential significance for thousands of
01:29 archaeological sites to be in the waters all around Australia. Santos denies and says it
01:34 disputes the allegations by the marine archaeologists working with these Tiwi elders. It says it's
01:41 brought in its own extensive anthropological investigations and it brought in its own archaeological
01:47 investigations which concluded there's no significant sites along where it wants to
01:51 put its pipeline. It is interesting though when you read the archaeological reports done
01:55 for Santos, they said that there's maybe around 60 sites of potential significance along the
02:02 pipeline that could be investigated further. They said that the conditions down on the
02:07 seabed which is around 40 to 50 metres below the seabed could be good enough that there
02:12 could be potential for the preservation of human occupation, things like they even said
02:19 ancestral remains. So Santos says no, it doesn't think there's any sites along this pipeline
02:25 and it has been given approval by the offshore gas and oil regulator to go ahead with this
02:29 piece of its infrastructure.
02:30 [BLANK_AUDIO]