Hola amigos,
Coming up is the 60th. Anniversary of Yuendumu Sport’s week-end. The first Sports weekend was on my 16th birthday. You’re all invited to Sports weekend and also my birthday party on Sunday evening (4th.August) which sad to say has wound down over time to a modest relatively quiet affair.
At a Yuendumu School Council meeting it was proposed that “old” school staff should be invited to a reunion. Not necessarily a bad thing, but we are a rather laissez faire mob out here and now we’ve left it too late to organise anything properly.
A few decades ago my family and friends visited Ayers Rock. The idea that the locals might have had ideas regarding the appropriateness or otherwise of climbing the rock didn’t occur to us, and neither did it occur to the many other visitors. Myself I did not climb it, not out of respect, but out of acrophobic apprehension. Some of my relatives did climb it, and found it to be an exhilarating experience.
Not all that long ago the Mt.Everest Climb received a fair bit of publicity. We all saw those obscene pictures of crowded queues reaching for the summit and reports of an accumulation of abandoned rubbish and corpses on the slopes, only to have the image of a string of people racing to the top of Uluru to beat the October deadline, when the climb will no longer be permitted, suddenly explode in the Australian media. A not always dignified discourse has ensued. Does the Rock belong to all Australians and should the polite but firm wishes of the Traditional Owners be ignored and defied?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDNeWmzPOZE (Solid Rock- Sacred Ground)- Goanna
In a Musical Dispatch- Lawa- April 2016, I quoted from a 20th April ABC news report:
“…He said, with the approval of the local people, the climb could be a ‘great opportunity for the local Anangu to participate in a lucrative business and create much-needed local jobs’. Mr Giles said he would ‘like to hear from the traditional owners, the Anangu people, and start a conversation’ …”
The traditional owners have been saying WIYA (LAWA in their language) for decades. They simply don’t like people climbing Uluru (Ayers Rock). Possibly for similar reasons to those that the many who would object to people clambering up St. Peter’s Basilica or the Alhambra might give. Yet our Chief Minister, Adam Giles, wants to start a conversation!
Well may we ask:
What part of NO don’t you understand Mr. Giles? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z535jczyobQ
Adam Giles has since been seriously defeated in an election, but not before selling the TIO (Territory Insurance Office) and selling a 99 year lease on the Port of Darwin to a Chinese company
It is of course complete coincidence that Adam Giles after his electoral defeat got a job with Australia’s richest women, Gina Reinhart who in turn sold half a billion dollars worth of live cattle to China.
Somewhat ironic that there is a controversy about climbing Uluru, considering Indigenous Australia’s most generous olive branch extended to mainstream Australia ‘The Uluru Statement from the Heart’ (May 2017) was proclaimed in the shadow of that mountain.
I was going to put a link to the Sound of Music’s ‘Climb Every Mountain’ but just as I’m not a fan of climbing, neither am I a fan of Musicals, so you’re getting Tina Turner’s ‘River Deep Mountain High’ instead:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj0wPrN_Y_4
and as a bonus Aretha Franklin’s “Respect’ which is what Uluru climbers don’t show:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FOUqQt3Kg0
Hasta luego,
Frank