Closing the climb: refusal or reconciliation in Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park?

TY - JOUR

T1 - Closing the climb

T2 - refusal or reconciliation in Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park?

AU - Whittington, Vanessa

AU - Waterton, Emma

PY - 2021/12/21

Y1 - 2021/12/21

N2 - The Uluru Climb, located within Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, Australia, was permanently closed to tourists on the 26 October 2019 after decades of controversy. Determined by a unanimous vote of the Anangu majority Board of Management, news of the Climb’s closure quickly captured popular, political and media attention, not all of which was positive. Drawing on two periods of fieldwork–the first in November 2012 (n = 68 interviewees) and the second in May 2019 (n = 62 interviewees)–this paper discusses visitor responses to the Climb both in terms of the ongoing coloniality evident in discourses of nationalism and individual rights and the possibility of the transformation of such views via a range of emotional and affective engagements. We highlight the prevalence of feelings of ownership, empathy and shame in the deployment of a range of views on the Climb and other cultural restrictions, as well as their political implications in the context of contemporary Australian settler-colonialism. In so doing, we position an ethic of relationality as key to the mobilisation of feelings, emotions and affects necessary to transform the outlook of visitors in the context of ongoing reconciliation debates between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians.

AB - The Uluru Climb, located within Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, Australia, was permanently closed to tourists on the 26 October 2019 after decades of controversy. Determined by a unanimous vote of the Anangu majority Board of Management, news of the Climb’s closure quickly captured popular, political and media attention, not all of which was positive. Drawing on two periods of fieldwork–the first in November 2012 (n = 68 interviewees) and the second in May 2019 (n = 62 interviewees)–this paper discusses visitor responses to the Climb both in terms of the ongoing coloniality evident in discourses of nationalism and individual rights and the possibility of the transformation of such views via a range of emotional and affective engagements. We highlight the prevalence of feelings of ownership, empathy and shame in the deployment of a range of views on the Climb and other cultural restrictions, as well as their political implications in the context of contemporary Australian settler-colonialism. In so doing, we position an ethic of relationality as key to the mobilisation of feelings, emotions and affects necessary to transform the outlook of visitors in the context of ongoing reconciliation debates between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians.

KW - Aboriginal Australia

KW - Anangu

KW - cultural heritage

KW - empathy

KW - ownership

KW - reconciliation

KW - relationality

KW - settler-colonialism

KW - shame

KW - Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park (Australia)

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85121714297&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/2201473X.2021.2007749

DO - 10.1080/2201473X.2021.2007749

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85121714297

SN - 2201-473X

VL - 11

SP - 553

EP - 572

JO - Settler Colonial Studies

JF - Settler Colonial Studies

IS - 4

ER -