A Journey to the Heart: Affecting Engagement at Ulu r u-Kata Tju t a National Park

Abstract

This paper examines how Indigenous cultures and their connections to country are presented to the public in protected areas through a textual analysis of interpretive signage. In protected areas, different representational tropes are used to interpret colonial/settler, natural heritage and Indigenous landscapes and places. This paper begins by exploring the extent to which these contrasting interpretive strategies signify to visitors a hierarchy of place value in protected areas. It then asks whether the signage at Indigenous places alienates contemporary communities from country and history through a distant and detached view of culture, authorised via the template of scientific objectivity. These questions will be explored through an account that concludes with a consideration of the affective registers afforded to visitors within the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park.

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