A "culture of convenient belief"

is how my late friend R... described some of the indigenous issues which were raised in her lifetime. As an indigenous woman with the strongest possible indigenous heritage R....had some robust views about her indigenous brothers and sisters.
R... was alive when Ayer's Rock was returned to the Anangu people and became "Uluru". She was alive when they started agitating to stop people climbing it. She did not live to see climbing it halted. R... would have approved of that - but not because of any "spiritual significance". 
   "It's a bloody great lump of rock," she told me. She believed people should not climb it for environmental and safety reasons. She felt the same way about people climbing Mt Everest - or any other mountain. 
I thought of her and what she so clearly believed as the reports  surrounding the final days of climbing Uluru and the subsequent activities were aired on the media. She would not have approved the "traditional" celebrations by the local people.
    "Wait until the money runs out," she told me when we were discussing the fact that some people were agitating to close the climb.
Will visitor numbers drop at Uluru now that the rock is closed for climbing? I suspect they will. Whether they drop below the point where the financial benefit of allowing people to climb outweighs the other concerns is something that only future numbers will tell. 
I have never been to Uluru.I am never likely to go.I have no particular desire to go. R.... is right in the sense that it is a triangular lump of rock out in the desert. It's a geological oddity I suppose.
People climb such geological oddities - because they are there and because, when you reach the top, you can see such a long way. I am sure the local people were climbing it long before the Europeans descended on the area.
R.... would be right in saying that closing it for environmental and safety reasons made sense. Closing it for cultural reasons does not make sense.  I mean absolutely no disrespect when I say that. It simply doesn't make sense.  If you believe it is a sacred place it's like closing a church or a mosque or a temple or any other place of worship.
R... did not believe Uluru was a sacred place as such. There were, according to her, places around the base that had stories attached to them and they were important to some of the local people. Those places had some cultural significance.
But the rock itself? No.
    "It's a culture of convenience Cat," she told me more than once, "It's like that so called secret women's business. There wasn't any. I should know. It was a few women on the old band wagon. Got them plenty of publicity for a while. Made them feel powerful too but that doesn't say they are right."
Was R... right or wrong? She was certainly in a position to know and she was certainly held in the highest regard by indigenous people from all over the state. 
A couple of days ago someone asked whether closing Uluru to climbers would also cause the closure of other places - Kata Tjuta (the Olgas) or Purnululu (the Bungle-Bungle Range) perhaps? Those places are also claimed to have spiritual significance to the local people. Should they be closed to tourists? 
Surely the answer is that these places need to be treated with respect, with care for their environment, and with the safety of all (including the wildlife) in mind? If we simply try to prevent people from visiting then people will attempt to do so illegally - and do harm in the process.