Ownership of Uluru changed hands in 1985, decades before the climbing question was settled, and the two events are often collapsed into one story that they are not.
The handback
In 1985 the Australian government formally returned title of Uluru and the surrounding land to its traditional owners, the Anangu, under the terms of a land rights settlement. The Anangu then leased the land back to what is now Parks Australia for joint management as a national park, under a board with a built-in Anangu majority, giving traditional owners a formal, ongoing role in decisions about the site rather than symbolic recognition alone.
Knowledge that stays closed
Uluru's surface features are tied to specific Tjukurpa, ancestral law and creation narratives, many of which are restricted by gender, age or ceremonial standing within Anangu law itself and are not shared with outsiders or, in some cases, with all Anangu. Public information at the site accordingly describes some features only in general terms, naming the existence of restricted knowledge rather than the knowledge itself.
Dual listing, dual meaning
UNESCO extended Uluru's original natural World Heritage listing to include cultural significance in 1994, a rare dual inscription that reflects the same underlying fact the joint management board was built to handle: the rock is simultaneously a geological formation and an living archive of law that predates the park by a great deal longer than either institution has existed.