It is one of Australia’s most iconic sites.
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A beacon for our country’s Indigenous community, Uluru is more than a tourist attraction, it is a symbol of culture.
That’s part of the reason behind a decision passed this week to close Uluru to climbing from 2019.
While the decision was only passed on Wednesday, and will be two years until it comes into effect, it is something that the area’s traditional owners have been campaigning for for decades.
In announcing Uluru’s closure to climbers, they said the site was of deep cultural significance, and not a “theme park”.
And fair enough.
It gives Tasmania a reason to contemplate how it manages and respects its own sites of Indigenous significance.
Many of the sites that our state proudly boasts as its best are culturally significant to the Aboriginal community.
Recently, we have introduced dual naming, to connect the present-day locations to the role they play in our Indigenous people’s rich cultural tapestry.
The Tamar River’s indigenous name is kanamaluka, Hobart’s Mount Wellington kunanyi, and Tasmania itself is known as lutruwita.
Not only are we recognising Aboriginal history, in a lot of places, we are celebrating it and inviting others to experience it for themselves.
In the North-East, the wukalina cultural walk is in its final stages of development before it opens to walkers early next year.
Then there is tiagarra, on the North-West. Perched at Mersey Bluff, Devonport, it is among Australia’s oldest Aboriginal-operated museums.
But it’s not all pats on the back. The Aboriginal community has been angered by the state government’s September-announced plan to re-open four-wheel drive tracks in the Arthur-Pieman. The site is a conservation area of enormous significance to the Tasmanian Indigenous people.
The community was then told, essentially, to have a cup of concrete and harden up, when it asked for a handful of Tasmanian place names to be changed, because of their racist connections and links to Aboriginal slaughters during colonisation.
Tasmania can take the changes at Uluru as a springboard to make its own changes, and its own steps towards a future of true reconciliation.
Tasmanian attitudes can and should follow suit.