Introduction
The appropriation of Aboriginal resistance by far-right actors constitutes a profound and escalating threat to Indigenous sovereignty and justice movements in post-pandemic Australia. In the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, far-right conspiracists, sovereign citizens, and settler conspiritualists have increasingly co-opted Aboriginal symbols, language, and political narratives to legitimise their anti-state and pseudo-legal agendas.
This is not merely cultural misappropriation, it is an attempt to simulate and displace Indigenous sovereignty through a settler logic of mimicry and replacement (Tuck & Yang, 2012; Moreton-Robinson, 2015).
The infamous fires at Old Parliament House, promoted as part of a sovereign Aboriginal uprising, were in fact largely orchestrated by white sovereign citizen activists, with minimal and often unverified Indigenous involvement.
This event, known as the Muckadda Camp protest, represents a critical flashpoint in the convergence of settler conspiracy culture and the colonisation of Aboriginal resistance spaces.
https://archive.org/details/canberra-muckadda-camp-the-ostf-2
We critically examine the ideological, political, and cultural dynamics of this appropriation. It draws on the work of Indigenous scholars, Elders, and organisers who have condemned these infiltrations and who continue to assert the centrality of relational, lawful, and collective sovereignty grounded in Country, kinship, and unceded governance.
By tracing the historical roots and contemporary implications of this settler co-option, we aim to present the dangers of replacement sovereignty and reaffirm the legitimacy of Aboriginal political orders in the face of escalating settler mimicry.
The Muckadda Camp and the Burning of Old Parliament House
The fires lit at Old Parliament House on 21 and 30 December 2021 were presented by their perpetrators as acts of sovereign Aboriginal protest. In reality, they were staged by a confluence of far-right conspiracists, sovereign citizens, and a handful of unverified individuals claiming Aboriginal status.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-26/nicholas-reed-apologises-old-parliament-house-fire/103024496
The event, widely known as the Muckadda Camp protest, exemplified the hijacking of Aboriginal symbols and causes by settler extremists. The site targeted was not incidental: Old Parliament House sits directly opposite the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, a globally recognised protest site established in 1972 to assert the unceded sovereignty of First Nations Peoples.
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities/special_issues/new_media_settler_colonialism
Key figures included Danny Searle, a non-Indigenous proponent of sovereign citizen ideology, who claimed in a livestream to have orchestrated a “battle plan” with unnamed “Elders” to storm the site. Protesters chained the doors, burned ceremonial materials at their base, and posted messages invoking Aboriginal Lore.
However, footage later revealed coordinated actions aimed at maximising media impact rather than engaging in culturally sanctioned ceremony. Participants covered CCTV cameras, issued pseudo-legal “eviction notices,” and shouted slogans drawn from far-right ideology (Hassan, 2022).
Indigenous community leaders were swift and unambiguous in their response. Aunty Matilda House and Aunty Jenny Munro, senior figures at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, condemned the protest as an act of cultural and political desecration. They rejected any association between the Embassy and the protestors, identifying the event as an infiltration by white supremacist and conspiracist groups, including members of the Proud Boys and anti-vaccination networks (Coe, 2022; Menzel, 2022). Local Ngambri and Ngunnawal Elders also voiced alarm at the breach of cultural protocols and the aggression displayed toward women and Elders on site.
The fire, symbolically presented as a “smoking ceremony,” constituted a deliberate misappropriation of Aboriginal ritual to mask a political act of vandalism. It manipulated sacred elements for settler purposes, turning what should be a relational and community-sanctioned practice into a performance of false sovereignty. As noted by Ghillar Michael Anderson, the only surviving founder of the 1972 Embassy, these acts were not sanctioned by any lawful Aboriginal body and instead amounted to a spectacle aimed at undermining the real and ongoing struggle for sovereignty (Walker, 2023).
https://cookerpedia.org/wiki/Buddy_Shillingsworth
The fallout was immediate and painful. The Tent Embassy, which was preparing for its 50th anniversary commemorations, was forced to issue public statements distancing itself from the protest. Elders were retraumatised by the media confusion, the need to defend the legitimacy of their cause, and the desecration of a space imbued with decades of political struggle and sacred memory. The event revealed the extent to which settler conspiracists are willing to weaponise Aboriginal identity and cultural practice to advance their own pseudo-legal, anti-government agendas.
Settler Conspirituality and the Appropriation of Indigenous Sovereignty
The phenomenon known as “settler conspirituality” merges New Age mysticism, anti-government populism, and esoteric conspiracy theory into a framework that appropriates Aboriginal spiritual and political narratives. As described by Carlson and Day (2023), this convergence enables white Australians to imagine themselves as spiritually sovereign, thereby bypassing both settler guilt and the political obligations of decolonisation. Drawing on the work of Ward and Voas (2011), this dynamic can be understood as a reconfiguration of conspirituality, typically seen in wellness and anti-vax circles, towards a settler colonial logic of mimicry, spiritual usurpation, and symbolic replacement.
In the Australian context, this performance often involves white individuals adopting Aboriginal identifiers, asserting unverified kinship, and invoking Aboriginal Lore, despite having no genealogical or cultural standing. Figures aligned with the Original Sovereign Tribal Federation (OSTF), Muckadda Camp, and Coast Environmental Alliance exemplify this pattern.
Through the use of ochre, pseudo-smoking ceremonies, and talk of Dreaming and Songlines, these actors simulate sovereignty while obstructing actual Aboriginal governance. Their actions function as a settler counter-claim to land and law.
https://afp.gov.au/news-centre/media-release/man-charged-following-fire-old-parliament-house
As Coe (2022) warns, this is not an act of solidarity but a weaponisation of settler privilege masquerading as resistance. These actors exploit Aboriginal aesthetics to advance far-right, libertarian, and anti-state ideologies. Their goal is not justice or community restoration, but individual autonomy and the rejection of lawful governance; including Aboriginal governance. The result is what Deloria (1998) and Moreton-Robinson (2015) identify as the colonial fantasy of “playing Indian”: a simulacrum of indigeneity used to authorise white sovereignty.
The damage done is not theoretical. Across Australia, Aboriginal People and organisations, Land Councils, Prescribed Bodies Corporate, and Elders report increased disruption by individuals claiming fake Aboriginal status, invoking sovereign citizen rhetoric, and demanding authority over Country without verification. These incursions create confusion, delay, and emotional trauma, especially in Native Title proceedings and cultural heritage consultations. Settler conspirituality does not just misrepresent Aboriginal sovereignty, it actively seeks to overwrite it.
Cultural Consequences and the Crisis of Misrecognition
The appropriation of Aboriginal sovereignty by non-Indigenous conspiracists generates a multilayered crisis of cultural misrecognition and political displacement. Drawing on Taplin, Holland, and Billing (2023), this crisis is not limited to symbolic confusion. It manifests in the erosion of authority at Native Title consultations, cultural heritage assessments, and community negotiations, where impostors assert sovereign Aboriginal status without ancestry, kinship, or Law-based legitimacy. Their claims are often loud, persistent, and framed in pseudo-legal language borrowed from sovereign citizen ideology.
This imposition produces measurable emotional harm. Elders and cultural leaders, already burdened by generations of institutional violence, are forced to defend their identity and authority in the presence of strangers claiming rights to Country. The exhaustion, shame, and trauma involved in such repeated denials of truth are profound. As Singh (2024) and Aird and Ardill (2023) note, these claimants destabilise both the procedural legitimacy and spiritual integrity of community processes.
This is amplified by media misrepresentation. Settler-conspiritual figures often gain attention via YouTube, social media, or sympathetic journalists who mistake performance for authenticity. In doing so, they are platformed into visibility and their false claims gain undeserved credibility. This digital exposure compounds the harm by inviting further incursions, replicating settler occupation in symbolic and institutional space.
To fully grasp the severity of this threat, Moreton-Robinson’s (2015) theory of the white possessive is essential. Settler-conspiritual actors appropriate Aboriginal imagery, language, and ritual while denying the governance structures and relational accountability that underpin Aboriginal law. They recode sacred concepts such as Lore, Dreaming, and kinship into aesthetic or legalistic tools to legitimise themselves. The result is what may be termed a “dual violence”: first, the erasure of real Aboriginal people and cultural custodians from decision-making space, and second, the projection of a simulated Indigeneity that replaces them. This performance of Aboriginality in service of settler futurity is not accidental, it is strategic, damaging, and overwhelmingly colonial.
From Muckadda to the Central Coast: Localised Networks of Infiltration
The dynamics seen at Muckadda Camp have metastasised into a broader regional movement on the New South Wales Central Coast and Northern Sydney. Groups such as My Place Central Coast,Coast Environmental Alliance (CEA) and satellites Coasties Who Care, Save Kariong Sacred Lands, and Save Kincumber Wetlands, operate in a coordinated ecosystem of settler-conspiritual activism. These groups appropriate Aboriginal spiritual language, invoke terms like “sacred sites” and “custodianship,” and falsely claim cultural authority while opposing legitimate Aboriginal governance by organisations such as the Darkinjung Local Aboriginal Land Council (DLALC) (Cooke, 2025).
Jake Cassar, through his bushcraft branding and eco-mystical rhetoric, Vicki Burke through her role with My Place, and claims of embodying extraterrestrial wisdom, and Kate Mason, through her alignment with conspiratorial groups like Community Voice Australia and My Place, present themselves as defenders of Country. Yet their campaigns are fundamentally settler-led and settler-serving. They echo sovereign citizen ideology and propagate the spiritualised conspiracist logic first trialled at Muckadda: namely, that non-Aboriginal actors can assert sacred knowledge and custodianship in defiance of Aboriginal legal entities. These are not acts of allyship—they are settler grievance politics masquerading as Indigenous resistance (Moreton-Robinson, 2015; Veracini, 2010).
These networks actively undermine Aboriginal sovereignty through legal obstruction, public misinformation, and pseudo-heritage claims. For example, CEA has repeatedly opposed DLALC development proposals under the false pretext of protecting sacred Aboriginal sites, despite having no cultural authority, kinship links, or recognition from local community , outside their cult that is. Their actions invert the meaning of sovereignty and co-opt the language of decolonisation to recentre settler entitlement.
https://aapnews.aap.com.au/news/man-involved-in-old-parliament-house-fire-avoids-prison
Media outlets such as Coast Community News play a central role in laundering these narratives. They frame these settler-led campaigns as Indigenous or environmental justice efforts, granting them undeserved credibility and sowing confusion among the public. This is a form of narrative disinformation that obscures the legitimacy of Aboriginal governance and replaces it with settler simulation.
What emerges is a coordinated form of cultural inversion: settler actors claim the right to protect Country while displacing the lawful Aboriginal custodians of that very land. This tactic is not new, but its digital amplification and spiritual veneer make it particularly dangerous in the current climate of conspiratorial radicalisation and institutional distrust.
6. Resisting the Far-Right Appropriation of Aboriginal Sovereignty
In the face of settler conspirituality and sovereign citizen infiltration, the task for Aboriginal communities and allies is both urgent and clear: to draw firm boundaries between genuine expressions of Indigenous sovereignty and its strategic misappropriation by far-right actors. As Kelly (2022) observes, these actors increasingly mimic the language of human rights, environmentalism, and grassroots activism to lend legitimacy to their campaigns. Their goal is not to support justice but to reassert settler autonomy through mimicry and confusion.
As Menzel (2022) insists, Aboriginal sovereignty must never be conflated with the libertarian fantasy of individual sovereignty. Where settler sovereignty is defined by separation, entitlement, and the rejection of relational obligation, Aboriginal sovereignty is communal, place-based, and grounded in Law. It is expressed through kinship networks, Country, ceremony, and Eldership. It cannot be assumed, stylised, or performed by those without responsibility to the communities they claim to represent.
Resisting this appropriation requires more than critique. It demands the active reassertion of cultural authority, relational accountability, and lawful governance. Aboriginal-led organisations have called for institutional protocols that verify identity and community endorsement, especially for those speaking publicly or claiming custodianship. Elders have insisted that sacred spaces like the Tent Embassy remain protected from false claimants, with clear statements of community support and cultural protocol.
There is also a role for institutions and the media in refusing to platform fraud. Universities, councils, and media outlets must reject the narrative laundering of false sovereigns. Cultural legitimacy cannot be granted without verification and must not be assumed based on aesthetics, charisma, or rhetoric.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/embed/video/2579627.html
Real resistance also involves caring for Country and community through principles of cultural safety, restorative justice, and truth-telling. These efforts are already underway; in the call for treaty, the protection of sacred sites, and the return of land. The defence of Aboriginal sovereignty cannot be left to those who already carry the burden of survival. It must be collective, principled, and unambiguous in the face of cultural simulacra.
7. Undermining Aboriginal Sovereignty, Derailing the Climate Transition
The intersection of far-right activism, settler conspirituality, and climate sabotage has emerged as a defining threat to Aboriginal land governance in the twenty-first century. Local Aboriginal Land Councils (LALCs), particularly the Darkinjung Local Aboriginal Land Council (DLALC), are at the forefront of renewable energy planning, ecological restoration, and community-led housing projects. Yet their authority is routinely challenged by settler groups that misuse the language of sacredness and environmental protection.
https://www.miragenews.com/statement-on-charges-laid-for-alleged-701970/
As documented in recent publications (UNSW, 2025; APPI, 2025), LALCs possess both legal title and deep cultural authority to develop land responsibly. Projects in Kariong, Kincumber, and other Central Coast areas reflect sustainable models of Aboriginal-led development. However, groups like the Coast Environmental Alliance (CEA), Save Kariong Sacred Lands, and Save Kincumber Wetlands have aggressively opposed these initiatives, often under the leadership of Jake Cassar, Lisa Bellamy, and Kate Mason. Their campaigns rely on spiritualised conspiracy theories, pseudohistorical narratives, and settler mimicry of Aboriginality (Cooke, 2025; Taplin et al., 2023).
https://search.informit.org/doi/pdf/10.3316/informit.945133166071593?download=true
This opposition is not merely ideological. It has material consequences: stalled renewable energy installations, delayed affordable housing, and fractured community relationships. These campaigns sow doubt about Aboriginal legitimacy, promote pseudolegal arguments, and recode colonial entitlement as grassroots activism. By undermining LALC leadership, they obstruct the climate transition and perpetuate ecological and cultural harm.
https://kooriweb.org/foley/news/jan2022.html
The sovereign citizen superconspiracy, as Taplin et al. (2023) argue, enables these actors to position themselves above the law while exploiting settler institutions to block Aboriginal decision-making. Their alignment with anti-vaccination networks, QAnon-affiliated discourses, and New Age wellness culture forms a potent ideological matrix that erodes both environmental responsibility and Indigenous sovereignty.
In confronting this threat, it is imperative to reaffirm the rightful authority of Aboriginal organisations and expose the settler-colonial scaffolding of these campaigns. Climate justice in Australia is inseparable from Indigenous land justice. To defend the climate transition, we must first defend the sovereignty, leadership, and self-determination of those who lawfully and spiritually speak for Country.
8. Conclusion
The events at Old Parliament House in late 2021, and the broader infiltration of Aboriginal resistance spaces by sovereign citizen and conspiritualist movements, represent a profound and ongoing crisis in settler colonial Australia. This article has examined how settler actors, through New Age spiritualism, pseudo-legalism, and fabricated Indigeneity, perform a politics of replacement that seeks to displace legitimate Aboriginal governance and reassert white possession under the guise of sovereignty.
What has emerged is a movement that trades in spiritual aesthetics, stolen cultural signifiers, and mimetic legitimacy, while actively undermining the relational, lawful, and community-rooted nature of Aboriginal sovereignty. From Muckadda Camp to Kariong, the logics of settler conspiracism have masked themselves in the language of justice, while enacting new forms of cultural violence and erasure.
In the face of these incursions, the response must be guided by Aboriginal Law, kinship, and the authority of community. Cultural legitimacy is not a matter of performance or protest, it is grounded in history, ancestry, responsibility, and relational accountability. Elders, families, and land councils continue to lead this work, protecting the sacred and refusing co-option.
The Aboriginal Tent Embassy, established in 1972 and still standing on Ngunnawal Country, remains a symbol of unceded sovereignty. It is not a stage for settler mimicry, but a frontline of Indigenous resistance. As we move forward, the defence of Aboriginal sovereignty will require continued vigilance, collective refusal, and renewed commitment to cultural safety, verification, and decolonisation.
Aboriginal identity, Culture and sovereignty cannot be co-opted. It cannot be simulated. It cannot be extinguished by fire or replaced by fiction. It lives in us, in our Law, in Country, and in the living authority of the oldest continuing cultures on earth.
JD Cooke
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A Long Con, Gone on Too Long. 
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