> Some people in a small, homogeneous country might feel hat their traditions are worth preserving. Theirs is the voice that matters.

Some cultures have long and proud traditions of oppression, suppression, subjugation, racism, sexism, murder, genocide, and similar; those cultures don't get a vote in whether to continue those traditions.

But with the exception of that, then of course, any culture gets to choose whether it wants to (collectively, rather than just individually) participate and interact with the rest of the world.

And this has nothing to do with resources; we're talking about culture and traditions here, not about land and strip-mining.