Why is Uluru important to Anangu and to the world?

The park's traditional owners are Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara people. Their own word for themselves is Anangu, and they ask visitors to say it too.¹⁷ Aboriginal people have lived around Uluru and Kata Tjuta for at least 30,000 years.¹⁸ A Traditional Owner's welcome on the park's website is direct: this is Anangu land, and you are welcome.¹⁹

Uluru itself is a Pitjantjatjara name, a proper noun with no English equivalent.²⁰ The first outsider known to have seen it was William Gosse in 1873, who called it Ayers Rock in honour of Sir Henry Ayers, then a senior South Australian official.²¹ The year before, Ernest Giles had spotted Kata Tjuta and named its largest dome Mount Olga.²² Both names stuck on maps for more than a century.

In 1993 the rock became Ayers Rock / Uluru, the first feature in the Northern Territory to carry dual names, and in 2002 the order was reversed to Uluru / Ayers Rock, the official name today.^23,24 Either name is correct. Inside the park, though, Parks Australia always uses Uluru, and so do we, because it was the name long before anyone else arrived, and because using it is a small courtesy that costs nothing.²³

Since the 1985 handback the park has been jointly managed by Anangu and the Australian Government.⁴⁷ A board of 12 people makes the major decisions, and eight of its members are Aboriginal people nominated by Traditional Owners.⁴⁸ Tjukurpa guides everything that happens in the park, as it has for tens of thousands of years.² On the ground, Mutitjulu Mala Rangers, Anangu residents, work on fire management, fauna surveys and park maintenance.⁴⁹

UNESCO listed the park in 1987 for its natural values: its geological formations, rare plants and animals and natural beauty.^4,50 In 1994 it was listed again as a living cultural landscape, recognising the relationship between the land and the belief system of Anangu, one of the oldest societies on earth.^5,51 Only four Australian sites hold that kind of double listing.⁵²

The natural case is easy to see. Uluru rises 348 metres above the plain, measures 9.4 km around and is made of sandstone about half a billion years old.^53,54,55 Its species count runs to 21 mammals, 73 reptiles, 178 birds, 4 frogs adapted to the desert and over 400 plants.⁵⁶ The cultural case takes longer to see, and that is the reason the Cultural Centre exists: it is where the second listing starts to make sense to a first-time visitor.

More than 250,000 people visit the park every year.⁶ The impact of tourism on Uluru has run both ways. Early tourism displaced Anangu from their own land, as the history above shows. Today the park is managed to limit the damage: Mutitjulu, the community inside the park, is closed and open only by permit or permission, and drones and other remote controlled devices are not allowed anywhere in the park.^30,29

The money side has changed too. A quarter of park pass revenue, 25%, goes to Traditional Owner lease payments, with 40% for operations, 15% for ranger and cultural activities and 20% for natural and cultural preservation.^25,26 Ayers Rock Resort at Yulara is an Aboriginal-owned enterprise whose workforce is now more than 40% Indigenous.^60,61 The Indigenous Land Corporation bought the resort in 2011 and set up a national Indigenous training academy there.⁶⁰

Spending at the rock can go straight to Anangu as well. The Ininti Store began in 1972 as an Anangu enterprise, and every business in the Cultural Centre today is Anangu-owned.^62,35 Some tour operators share revenue too: the Segway operator sends 2.5% of each tour's price to Indigenous people nearby by way of the Central Lands Trust.⁶³ The headcount at the rock matters less than how people visit, where they spend and what they choose to photograph.