NEWS: Sierra Club apologizes for John Muir's racist views

On Wednesday, July 22, 2020 the Sierra Club apologized for the legacy of John Muir's racism and its impacts on the environmental and conservation movements. I deeply appreciate the awareness and work that it takes to reckon with a history of complicity with structural racism, white supremacy, and colonialism. I have linked the article on NPR, and two articles from the Washington Post.

WASHINGTON POST: The Sierra Club apologized Wednesday for racist remarks its founder, naturalist John Muir, made more then a century ago as the influential environmental group grapples with a harmful history that perpetuated white supremacy.  [...]

Muir, who founded the club in 1892, helped spawn the environmental movement and is called “father of our national parks,” figures prominently in what [ED Michael] Brune called a “truth-telling” about the group’s early history.[...]

But Richard White, a Stanford history professor, said Muir’s advocacy for wilderness has an inherent racial bias.

Muir’s image of pristine wilderness unshaped by humans only existed if native people weren’t part of it. Even though they had been there for thousands of years, Muir wrote that they “seemed to have no right place in the landscape.” American Indians needed to be removed in order to reinvent those places as untouched.

“There is a dark underside here that will not be erased by just saying Muir was a racist,” White said. “I would leave Muir’s name on things but explain that, as hard as it may be to accept, it is not just Muir who was racist. The way we created the wilderness areas we now rightly prize was racist.” [...]  

“For all the harms the Sierra Club has caused, and continues to cause, to Black people, Indigenous people, and other people of color, I am deeply sorry,” Brune wrote.  

I have struggled with this legacy, particularly as a parent teaching my children to both love the outdoors and be aware of the structural racism in the lands that we love. Together we have learned the many ways that parks, visitor centers, and other public lands give atrocities the passive tense and erase and/or romanticize indigenous history.

I acknowledge all the ways that I have benefited from this legacy, and, in particular, benefited from living on the occupied territory of the Yelamu Ramaytush Ohlone. Of course, recognition and apology are only the first steps of this process, and I rededicate myself to our OEN commitment to reducing barriers and participating in and leading the necessary culture change in the outdoors.

Be well,

Seraph

Washington Post (paywall)

• Sierra Club apologizes for founder John Muir’s racist views

  https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/sierra-club-apologizes-for-founder-john-muirs-racist-views/2020/07/22/5f932f20-cc78-11ea-99b0-8426e26d203b_story.html  

• Liberal, progressive — and racist? The Sierra Club faces its white-supremacist history.

  https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/07/22/liberal-progressive-racist-sierra-club-faces-its-white-supremacist-history/?%20environment_1  

NPR

• Radio: https://www.npr.org/2020/07/22/894343467/sierra-club-denounces-founder-john-muir-for-racism  

• Article: https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/07/22/894188718/taking-down-its-own-monuments-sierra-club-assesses-the-racism-of-john-muir  

Institutional Racism In Outdoor Spaces

A week ago, George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis and Christian Cooper was threatened with police violence while birding in New York City. These incidents come on the heels of the murders of Breonna Taylor by the police, and Ahmaud Arbery while jogging, and a long history of police brutality and vigilante lynchings against Blacks and African Americans and other People of Color. Countless lives before them have also been threatened, harmed, or taken due to racism and bias against different races, ethnicities, and cultures. It must stop.

We all bore witness to the racist and mortal threat that Christian Cooper experienced while birding in New York City. This incident is indicative of the life-or-death consequences that can occur when our outdoor commons are appropriated by white privilege. 

Cultural and institutional racism claims the outdoors as a “white space” and the Outdoors Empowered Network stands in solidarity with communities around the country and world for whom this form of white supremacy causes significant and lasting harm.

The Outdoors Empowered Network is composed of organizations from around the country striving to increase youth access to and enjoyment of the outdoors. We deeply believe in the potential for nature to bring health and wellbeing to young people and their families of all backgrounds and identities, but this can only happen when outdoor spaces are safe and outdoor leaders are sensitive to the realities of racism, inequity, and generational trauma.

All people should have equitable access to nature and the outdoors, but this requires actual safety, not just words and intentions. As long as the specter of racialized violence and hatred is present in outdoor common spaces, People of Color will not have equitable access or equitable experiences. Outdoors Empowered Network is committed to leading the culture change required to break down these barriers and dismantle the systems perpetuating untenable inequities and violence.

OEN Advisory Council, Board of Directors, and Staff

• Appalachian Mountain Club

• Bay Area Wilderness Training

• Detroit Outdoors

• Forest Preserves Of Cook County

• Get Outdoors Leadville!

• The Mountaineers

• Washington Trails Association

Video Short December 2019

Check out our two minute short, that shows what a difference the network, and connecting to the outdoors, can make!