John Muir is a leading figure in the environmental movement. He saved the Yosemite Valley, helped form the National Park Service, and influenced generations with his passionate calls to protect and venerate nature.
But on Wednesday, the Sierra Club, which Muir co-founded, recognized a darker part of Muir’s history.
“He made derogatory remarks about blacks and indigenous peoples that were based on deeply damaging racist stereotypes, although their views evolved later in his life,” the environmental group said in an article published on its website. “As the most iconic figure in Sierra Club history, Muir’s words and actions carry especially heavy weight. They continue to hurt and alienate indigenous and colored peoples who come into contact with the Sierra Club. “
The club said it was addressing Muir’s racism in a spirit of reckoning with the past after protests over George Floyd’s death in police custody. In the wake of Floyd’s death, numerous Confederate monuments have been demolished, as well as some statues of Christopher Columbus and Father Juniper Serra, another founding father of California.
“It is time to tear down some of our own monuments, starting with some truths about the Sierra Club’s early history,” the organization said. In addition to pointing to Muir’s story, the publication also said that two other club founders, Joseph LeConte and David Starr Jordan, were white supremacists and that Jordan was a leading believer in eugenics.
Muir is one of the most revered figures in California history. Her writings greatly influenced the environmental movement. But in recent years, there has been a growing debate about its influence and relevance.
A 2014 Times article noted Muir’s hatred of indigenous Californians and his support for driving Native Americans off their land.
“It is essential that we try to understand John Muir in all his complexity,” Laura Pulido, a professor at USC’s Department of American Studies and Ethnicity, told The Times in the article. “He was a man of his time, who actively worked to displace the California Indians by taking their land.”
Others have noted that many of the iconic sites Muir kept were stolen from indigenous peoples, often by force. Before Muir reached Yosemite, it was home to native Californians who died in large numbers of diseases and killings when the Europeans arrived and drove them out.
“Muir was depressingly conventional in matters of race, afflicted by a wide variety of Victorian white supremacism in the garden,” wrote writer Daniel Duane in a 2015 Times opinion piece. “But he was a harmless and decent man; my point is really that Muir experienced Yosemite as the empty paradise of God only because armed men robbed the land with violence 17 years before he arrived in 1868. “
Some have also argued that Muir’s message omitted key environmental problems the world faces today, such as population growth, urban sprawl, demographic changes, and climate change.
“Critics also see a correlation between the emotional and biblical language of Muir’s writings and the demographic makeup of visitors to the national park and the ranks of the largest environmental organizations, primarily white Americans,” the article added.
The Sierra Club outlined plans to make the group better reflect the diversity of the United States today. The organization has struggled with Muir’s legacy in the past. In an article on his website, a writer carefully examined Muir’s writings and found both racism and growing admiration for native Californians as he aged.
That review found that Muir had intolerant views toward Indians (“he used negative terms like ‘dirty’, ‘garrulous like Jays’, ‘superstitious’, ‘deadly’, ‘lazy’, ‘hot’ and ‘wife stealing’ to describe the California Indians, “the report said.) But later in life, he came to admire their stewardship of the land and expressed concern about the cruel ways in which they were treated.
Floyd’s death has sparked a new look at the racism and violence inflicted on native Californians.
State officials removed a statue of Christopher Columbus from the Capitol rotunda in Sacramento this summer. A statue of Serra was demolished on Olvera Street in Los Angeles, and protesters said the founder of the Spanish missionary system enslaved and abused the Indians.
