The Sierra Club, one of the oldest environmental groups in the United States, said on Wednesday that it will face a history of racism and views of white supremacy within its organization following nationwide protests against racial injustice in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
The organization is planning a series of blog posts examining questionable elements of its history, including the views of its founder, famed conservationist John Muir. In an open letter titled “Tearing Down Our Monuments,” Brune said it was time for the Sierra Club to reckon with the words of Muir and other early members.
“The Sierra Club is a 128-year-old organization with a complex history, part of which has caused significant and immeasurable harm,” the organization’s executive director, Michael Brune, said in an open letter published on its website. “As advocates of black life tear down Confederate monuments across the country, we must also seize this moment to reexamine our past and our important role in perpetuating white supremacy.”
While “Muir’s writings taught generations of people to see the sacredness of nature,” he also “made derogatory comments about blacks and indigenous peoples that were based on deeply damaging racist stereotypes,” according to Brune. Muir was friends with Henry Fairfield Osborn, another conservationist who defended the views of white supremacists and helped found the American Eugenics Society.
Other early Sierra Club members, including Joseph LeConte and David Starr Jordan, also had views of white supremacy. For example, Jordan supported forced sterilization laws and founded the Foundation for Human Improvement, a group whose research later inspired eugenic legislation in Nazi Germany.
“The whiteness and privilege of our early membership fueled a very dangerous idea, one that still circulates today. It is the idea that exploring, enjoying and protecting the outdoors can be separated from human affairs, “said Brune.
In addition to blog posts, the Sierra Club will restructure its leadership to be more inclusive. The organization will allocate $ 5 million to support the Sierra Club staff review and combat racial injustice.
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“To begin with, we are redesigning our leadership structure so that black, indigenous, and other leaders of color in the Sierra Club make up the majority of the team that makes high-level organizational decisions,” Brune said. “We will initiate similar changes to raise the voices and experiences of people of color across the organization. We know that the power systems that brought us here will not allow the transformative change we need. “
The Sierra Club was founded in 1982. As of this year, it has more than three million members.
