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Jake Cassar is an influential figure on the New South Wales Central Coast whose public identity has evolved from that of a bushcraft survivalist and youth mentor to a self-styled environmental advocate and, increasingly, a central actor in a sprawling network of settler conspirituality. Through his organisation, the Coast Environmental Alliance (CEA), Cassar has become a leading voice in campaigns against Aboriginal-led development projects, notably those initiated by the Darkinjung Local Aboriginal Land Council (DLALC). His rhetoric, strategies, and alliances demonstrate a dangerous fusion of environmental activism, conspiracy theory, and Indigenous identity appropriation. This piece critically investigates Cassar’s public interventions, focusing on how he mobilises misinformation, amplifies false Aboriginal custodianship claims (especially through the non-Aboriginal GuriNgai group), and weaponises settler environmentalist discourse to delegitimise Aboriginal sovereignty. Drawing from primary video materials, community evidence, academic literature, and detailed genealogical and cultural records, this essay offers a comprehensive assessment of Cassar’s role in undermining Indigenous land rights through a settler-conspirituality lens.

The Coast Environmental Alliance and the Emergence of Settler-Conspirituality

Founded by Cassar in the mid-2010s, the Coast Environmental Alliance positions itself as a grassroots movement focused on protecting “sacred land” and “ecologically sensitive bushland.” In practice, however, the CEA is best understood as a settler-colonial resistance movement cloaked in environmentalist aesthetics. It has consistently targeted Aboriginal Land Council developments at Kariong, Kincumber, and Bambara, campaigns often characterised by misinformation, appeals to spiritual panic, and the false assertion that these developments desecrate ancient Aboriginal sacred sites (ABC, 2020).

Central to these claims is Cassar’s close alignment with the non-Aboriginal ‘GuriNgai’ group, whose members—such as Tracey Howie (aka Walkaloa Wunyunah), Neil Evers, Amanda Jane Reynolds, and Lisa Bellamy—have fraudulently asserted Aboriginal ancestry and cultural authority (guriNgai.org, 2025). Cassar routinely refers to these individuals as “Traditional Custodians,” despite clear evidence that they do not descend from any recognised Aboriginal ancestors and are not acknowledged by legitimate Aboriginal families or organisations (bungaree.org, 2025). Cassar’s frequent reference to these figures as “elders” or “knowledge holders” reinforces a parallel governance structure in which white and non-Aboriginal people appropriate Aboriginal culture and exert veto power over Indigenous self-determination.

False Custodianship and the Myth of the GuriNgai

Cassar’s reliance on the GuriNgai group as the authoritative voice of Aboriginal custodianship is a cornerstone of his campaigns. This mythologising relies heavily on the manipulation of colonial-era terms and pseudo-historical narratives. As documented in numerous genealogical studies and submissions to councils and tribunals, there is no legitimate Aboriginal group known as the “GuriNgai” associated with the Northern Beaches or Central Coast of New South Wales (Lissarrague & Syron, 2024; MLALC, 2020). Rather, the term has been appropriated by settler-descended individuals to fill what Jim Wafer (2021) once referred to as a “cultural void”—a concept later shown to be a dangerous invitation to identity fraud and historical revisionism (Watt & Kowal, 2019).

By partnering with these fabricated authorities, Cassar enables a double act of colonial violence: first, by denying legitimate Aboriginal people recognition and participation in planning processes; and second, by supplanting their voices with that of an invented Indigeneity, one that conveniently aligns with settler interests. This pattern mirrors what scholars term the “white possessive” (Moreton-Robinson, 2015), where settler subjects seek not merely to occupy land but to control its symbolic and spiritual meanings.

Ecofascism, Pseudoarchaeology and Anti-Aboriginal Sentiment

Beyond the appropriation of Aboriginal identity, Cassar’s rhetoric routinely blends environmental alarmism with pseudoarchaeological mysticism and conspiracy. Through events and online platforms, Cassar has promoted myths about the so-called “Kariong Hieroglyphs” and partnered with figures such as Steven Strong and Dennis Jones, who claim that ancient Egyptian beings once landed in Australia (Kariong Rock Art, 2020). These narratives serve to exoticise the land, diverting attention from its living cultural significance to Aboriginal people and replacing it with speculative, settler-authored mythologies. Such efforts to recode Aboriginal heritage as fringe archaeology are not neutral. They render Aboriginal people incidental to their own land, replacing their presence with New Age fantasies and settler curiosities.

This is consistent with the ideological frame of ecofascism—where environmental purity and nativist sentiment are deployed simultaneously. Cassar has, for example, described Aboriginal Land Council housing proposals as “the greatest threat to the environment in history,” a claim that flips the script of colonisation by casting Indigenous people as the destroyers of nature on land they have occupied and cared for for over 60,000 years (CEA video archive, 2023).

Conspiracy, COVID-19, and Far-Right Affiliations

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Cassar increasingly aligned with anti-vaccine, anti-government, and conspiracist groups, particularly My Place Central Coast and Save Our Sacred Lands—movements often infused with sovereign citizen rhetoric and QAnon-adjacent discourse (Carlson & Day, 2023; Singh, 2024). He has been featured on podcasts promoting fringe spiritual healing, vaccine scepticism, and sovereign individualism, while refusing to acknowledge Aboriginal cultural governance or land rights legislation such as the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1983 (NSW).

The convergence of conspiratorial thinking and settler-colonial grievance is not coincidental. As research by Miotto and Droogan (2024) and Poon et al. (2020) illustrates, individuals drawn into conspiracy culture often seek belonging, meaning, and identity through narratives of persecution and redemption. Cassar’s framing of the DLALC and MLALC as secretive, profit-driven, and culturally illegitimate institutions fits neatly into this conspiracist cosmology, casting him as a spiritual warrior defending the bush from a shadowy elite. This role is reinforced by his promotion of alternative spirituality, sacred site activism, and connections to groups like the My Place Network, whose founder has claimed that sovereignty can be spiritually reclaimed by rejecting modern governance structures.

Media Amplification and the Role of Coast Community News

Cassar’s campaigns have received frequent and often uncritical coverage by Coast Community News (CCN), a local media outlet that has platformed false custodianship claims and failed to consult legitimate Aboriginal voices. CCN’s editorial framing often repeats the language of “locals opposing development” without interrogating the fabricated Indigenous status of those involved (guringai.org, 2025). This journalistic failure lends credibility to anti-Aboriginal narratives, enabling the broader public to mistake conspiracy, identity fraud, and cultural erasure as legitimate community activism.

Settler Environmentalism as White Possession

Ultimately, Cassar’s activism must be understood as an enactment of white possession—the logic that only settlers can be trusted to manage, protect, and speak for the land (Moreton-Robinson, 2015). By allying with identity fraudsters, mobilising conspiracist rhetoric, and positioning himself as a nature priest in opposition to legitimate Aboriginal governance, Cassar repeats and intensifies the foundational violence of settler colonialism.

His resistance to Aboriginal-led development is not about saving the environment, but about preserving settler claims to moral, spiritual, and political authority over Country. It is a reactionary movement dressed in the garb of environmentalism, one that enacts a symbolic terra nullius—where the land is stripped of its living cultural relations and filled instead with settler myths, fake elders, and ecofascist fears.

Conclusion

Jake Cassar represents a growing and dangerous strain of settler environmentalism—one that fuses false identity claims, conspiratorial thinking, and reactionary politics into a potent campaign against Aboriginal land rights. His use of the GuriNgai narrative, rejection of DLALC authority, and promotion of pseudo-history and New Age conspiracies all function to erase real Aboriginal people while enthroning settler fantasies. These actions are not merely misguided; they are structurally racist, culturally violent, and politically dangerous. They demand critical scrutiny, community resistance, and formal intervention from institutions tasked with upholding truth, equity, and the rights of Indigenous peoples.

Only by confronting this settler-conspirituality and refusing to accept its claims to cultural authority can we begin to honour the rightful custodians of Country and dismantle the machinery of identity fraud that continues to distort the political landscape of Aboriginal Australia.