OPINION
As a traveller to Uluru in 2015, I felt immediately enveloped in generosity and spirituality of the place. On arrival, my sisters and I realised we had made a major error in not booking a car ahead of time. With no transport available, our weekend was bust. I later shared our woes with a hotel staff member Megan. I was taken aback when she replied back casually, "Oh no worries, you girls can just take my car for the weekend".
It was this kind of unfazed help we experienced everywhere. Later the guys at the petrol station wave at us. "That's pilot guys car!" they exclaim. (Apparently the car belonged to Megan's pilot boyfriend.) Property felt like an elastic concept, with things given to people who need it. An invisible web of reciprocity and care-taking seemed to thread through the place, coiled together in an inter-connection of relationships.
In this environment of care and respect, I found it mind-boggling anyone would go against the signs requesting visitors not to climb posted across the site. As a Muslim, with an understanding of sacred space, it felt as wrong as wearing shoes in a mosque.
Celeste Liddle writing for Ten Daily, said the last dash hordes of tourists flouting the explicit wishes from the Traditional custodians of the land - the local Anangu people - was deeply rooted in the 'conqueror complex'.
"This is purely about the climbers “conqueror complex”, their disrespect for Traditional Owners and their land," she wrote.
This kind of colonial impulse to enter and dominate - with blase disregard, overriding the wishes and desires of the other party, and taking advantage of the power relationship that allows for this, just because they can, is a metaphor for so much of our ongoing conversations around race in Australia. I can understand how it fuels much of the pain and anger of those who have been trampled on and literally ignored, so Joe Smith can get his selfie.
It is a mode of being that operates in stark contrast to the love, generosity and sharing offered at the site. The Anangu have previously pleaded with tourists to respect their wishes, citing environmental and safety concerns for the climbers who cross their land, with 37 people losing their lives on the climb since the 1950s.
As we made a walking pilgrimage around the site, moving through the still red Earth I felt my centre of gravity drop in a place beyond stillness. We moved in awe, with long walking treks threading us through magnificent caves painted with ancient rock art from the beginning of human history. Luscious waterfalls fell across burnt orange cliffs as high as the sky, across a sea of red dust expanse.
We'd take the car out for hours and drive in the desert, having long conversations. There was a peace that quelled our usual frenetic pace. There were moments when there was only three of us and an eternity of desert, and rushing felt pointless.
As the climate crisis looms, fuelled by this capitalist desire to conquer our environment, we can learn so much from the Anangu community in respecting and creating limits on how we engage with nature as a spiritual entity.
With the restriction on climbing on the sacred site kicking in tomorrow, I hope this new era will evolve mainstream Australia beyond disrespect into a posture of veneration, awe and learning.
Just seeing and being around Uluru was magical, and you don't need to climb it to feel that.
Sarah Malik is the Deputy Editor of SBS Voices. You can follow Sarah on Twitter @sarahbmalik.
