Anangu

Anangu is what the Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara and Ngaanyatjarra peoples of the central Australian desert call themselves, and Tjukurpa is their law and their religion in one word. It is not a set of stories about the past. It is the account of how the country was made and of how people are to live in it, and it carries the rules of kinship, of behaviour, of who holds which ground and of who may speak for it.

Tjukurpa is inherited together with responsibility. A person holds particular parts of it through descent and through the country they belong to, and the holding carries a duty to keep it, to pass it on correctly, and to withhold it from those not entitled to it. Some of it is public and some is held to men or to women, and that line is not visible from any published summary.

For that reason the atlas describes the tradition and its custodians rather than retelling any part of it. Anangu also ask that particular places at Uluru and Kata Tjuta not be photographed or depicted at all, and nothing restricted is drawn or repeated here. The custodian body catalogued in the atlas for this region is the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women's Council, whose own publication on ngangkari, traditional healers, is the account given by the practitioners themselves.

Uluru and Kata Tjuta sit in Anangu country, and the modern history of the place is a history of who decides. The area was declared a national park under Australian administration, and freehold title was handed back to the Anangu traditional owners in 1985 on the condition that the land be leased back and jointly managed. The park's board of management has an Anangu majority, and the management plan is a legal document produced in both English and Pitjantjatjara.

The most visible decision that structure produced concerns climbing Uluru. Anangu had asked visitors not to climb for decades, on the ground that the route runs along a way that carries significance and that the traditional owners hold themselves responsible for the safety of anyone on it. The board resolved in 2017 to close the climb, and it closed in October 2019.

The park also administers photography restrictions covering particular sites, requested by the traditional owners and applied to commercial and general photography alike. The Songlines exhibition, developed with Anangu, Ngaanyatjarra and Yankunytjatjara custodians and toured internationally, is the model the atlas follows: material is presented with the consent and the framing of the people who hold it, and what is not released stays where it is.