• Latest
  • Trending
  • All
  • News
  • Lifestyle
Sierra Club apologizes for founder John Muir's racist views thumbnail

Sierra Club apologizes for founder John Muir’s racist views

July 23, 2020
US DOE launches $16.4 million funding call for offshore wind and marine energy research thumbnail

US DOE launches $16.4 million funding call for offshore wind and marine energy research

October 3, 2023
Net neutrality is back, but it’s not what you think thumbnail

Net neutrality is back, but it’s not what you think

October 2, 2023
Bed bug gains ground in Paris, worries about Olympics 2024 thumbnail

Bed bug gains ground in Paris, worries about Olympics 2024

October 1, 2023
Government shutdown practically assured after House GOP stopgap measure fails thumbnail

Government shutdown practically assured after House GOP stopgap measure fails

October 1, 2023
House Republicans vote to lower Defense secretary’s salary to $1 thumbnail

House Republicans vote to lower Defense secretary’s salary to $1

September 30, 2023
The economist who’s been predicting a recession for 18 months says the ‘litmus test’ is finally here, especially with oil headed toward $100 a barrel thumbnail

The economist who’s been predicting a recession for 18 months says the ‘litmus test’ is finally here, especially with oil headed toward $100 a barrel

September 29, 2023
Boston Children's Hospital rolls out hybrid 5G network as it plans to unify on Epic thumbnail

Boston Children’s Hospital rolls out hybrid 5G network as it plans to unify on Epic

September 29, 2023
Massachusetts police chief charged in insider trading scheme to resign thumbnail

Massachusetts police chief charged in insider trading scheme to resign

September 28, 2023
The FCC plans to restore Obama-era net neutrality rules thumbnail

The FCC plans to restore Obama-era net neutrality rules

September 28, 2023
FTC and 17 states sue Amazon for antitrust, accuse it of being a monopoly thumbnail

FTC and 17 states sue Amazon for antitrust, accuse it of being a monopoly

September 28, 2023
How to compost—and why it’s good for the environment thumbnail

How to compost—and why it’s good for the environment

September 28, 2023
Safer trains: New project aims to improve railways across 35 states thumbnail

Safer trains: New project aims to improve railways across 35 states

September 28, 2023
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
  • Donate
Tuesday, October 3, 2023
66 °f
Wellfleet
58 ° Tue
63 ° Wed
68 ° Thu
61 ° Fri
  • Login
  • Register
FREE Cape Cod News
DONATE
  • FREE Cape Cod News
  • Cape Cod News
  • News
    • News
    • Massachusetts
    • Breaking News
    • Cape Cod Weather
    • Storm Watch
    • Environment
  • Politics
    • democrats
    • republicans
  • Business
    • business
    • cryptocurrency
    • economy
    • money
    • Real Estate
    • Tech
  • World
  • Entertainment
  • Lifestyle
  • Photos
    • Orleans
    • Eastham
    • Wellfleet
    • Truro
    • Provincetown
    • Brewster
    • Chatham
  • Videos
No Result
View All Result
Free Cape Cod News
No Result
View All Result
  • FREE Cape Cod News
  • Cape Cod News
  • News
  • Politics
  • Business
  • World
  • Entertainment
  • Lifestyle
  • Photos
  • Videos
Home News Environment

Sierra Club apologizes for founder John Muir’s racist views

FREE Cape Cod News by FREE Cape Cod News
July 23, 2020
in Environment
Reading Time: 3 mins read
Donate
0
Sierra Club apologizes for founder John Muir's racist views thumbnail
633
SHARES
1.4k
VIEWS
Share on TwitterShare on Facebook

LOS ANGELES — The Sierra Club apologized Wednesday for racist remarks its founder, naturalist John Muir, made more than a century ago as the influential environmental group grapples with a harmful history that perpetuated white supremacy.

Executive Director Michael Brune said it was “time to take down some of our own monuments” as statues of Confederate officers and colonists are toppled across the U.S. in a reckoning with the nation’s racist history following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.

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

“He made derogatory comments about Black people and Indigenous peoples that drew on deeply harmful racist stereotypes, though his views evolved later in his life,” Brune wrote on the group’s website. “As the most iconic figure in Sierra Club history, Muir’s words and actions carry an especially heavy weight. They continue to hurt and alienate Indigenous people and people of color.”

Muir, who was born in Scotland, came to the U.S. as a young man and traveled and wrote extensively, romanticizing nature in breathless passages. He emphasized the need to preserve the land but also expressed disdain for American Indians and Black people.

He also kept company with other early club members and leaders, such as Joseph LeConte and David Starr Jordan, who advocated for white supremacy and promoting the race through eugenics, which called for forced sterilization of Black people and other minority groups, Brune said.

The Morning Rundown

Get a head start on the morning’s top stories.

Until recent years, Muir’s legacy has been largely untarnished and focused on his conservation efforts, such as saving Yosemite Valley before it became a national park and preserving the world’s largest trees in what became Sequoia National Park.

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.”

Muir is so widely revered that his name appears across California on everything from schools to national monuments, one of the state’s highest peaks, a giant swath of scenic Sierra Nevada wilderness that is bisected by a trail in his name and a national historic site. The discernible profile of Muir — with long beard, brimmed hat and walking stick gazing at Yosemite’s Half Dome — was stamped on the 2005 California quarter when the U.S. Mint was producing a commemorative coin for every state.

In Alaska, where he traveled extensively, a glacier and an inlet in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve are named for Muir, as likely is a mountain east of Anchorage.

You can’t walk into a national park gift shop without coming face-to-face with T-shirts, mugs and tchotchkes bearing one of his pithy — often overused — quotes, such as “The mountains are calling and I must go.”

Revisiting Muir’s offensive remarks comes as environmental groups and the outdoor industry aim to be more inclusive during renewed racial awareness following Floyd’s death. The killing of the Black man in May has sparked weeks of protests and led to calls to rename places named for Confederate officers and remove statues of historical figures who held slaves or colonized or exploited Native Americans.

Brune said the Sierra Club once excluded people of color as it catered to middle- and upper-class whites. He said the focus on preserving recreational lands once inhabited by Indigenous people who had been driven out by white settlers willfully ignored the plight of minorities who were fighting environmental injustices in their own communities.

“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.

He pledged to hire a more diverse staff and invest in environmental and racial justice work.

Tags: environment

FREE Digital Newspaper Subscription!
Sign up for your free digital subscription. The FREE Cape Cod News

Unsubscribe
FREE Cape Cod News

FREE Cape Cod News

Free Cape Cod News is what's happening in the Cape Cod, U.S and World & what people are talking about right now. Local newspaper. Stay in the know. Subscribe to get notified about our latest news.

Related Posts

US DOE launches $16.4 million funding call for offshore wind and marine energy research thumbnail
Environment

US DOE launches $16.4 million funding call for offshore wind and marine energy research

by FREE Cape Cod News
October 3, 2023
McDonald’s new battle over the way the Big Mac and fries are packaged thumbnail
Environment

McDonald’s new battle over the way the Big Mac and fries are packaged

by FREE Cape Cod News
May 16, 2023
U.S. proposes 56% vehicle emissions cut by 2032, requiring big EV jump thumbnail
Environment

U.S. proposes 56% vehicle emissions cut by 2032, requiring big EV jump

by FREE Cape Cod News
April 14, 2023
4 pro tips for adopting async work thumbnail
Environment

4 pro tips for adopting async work

by FREE Cape Cod News
April 10, 2023
Load More
Please login to join discussion

Follow Us on Twitter

FREE Cape Cod News - Your source for local Cape Cod news, latest breaking U.S. and World news. Every day, all day. Subscribe for your favorite categories.

  • Trending
  • Comments
  • Latest
Rosa DeLauro: I warned Republicans about their debt ceiling bill. I was right. thumbnail

Rosa DeLauro: I warned Republicans about their debt ceiling bill. I was right.

April 24, 2023
Biden Makes a Statement on Evacuation of US Embassy Khartoum in Sudan thumbnail

Biden Makes a Statement on Evacuation of US Embassy Khartoum in Sudan

April 24, 2023
McCarthy accuses Biden of ignoring GOP over debt ceiling negotiations as talks stall: 'Rests upon his feet' thumbnail

McCarthy accuses Biden of ignoring GOP over debt ceiling negotiations as talks stall: ‘Rests upon his feet’

April 24, 2023
US DOE launches $16.4 million funding call for offshore wind and marine energy research thumbnail

US DOE launches $16.4 million funding call for offshore wind and marine energy research

October 3, 2023
Net neutrality is back, but it’s not what you think thumbnail

Net neutrality is back, but it’s not what you think

October 2, 2023
Bed bug gains ground in Paris, worries about Olympics 2024 thumbnail

Bed bug gains ground in Paris, worries about Olympics 2024

October 1, 2023

FREE Cape Cod News On Twitter

Today’s News

  • US DOE launches $16.4 million funding call for offshore wind and marine energy research October 3, 2023
  • Net neutrality is back, but it’s not what you think October 2, 2023
  • Bed bug gains ground in Paris, worries about Olympics 2024 October 1, 2023
  • Government shutdown practically assured after House GOP stopgap measure fails October 1, 2023
  • House Republicans vote to lower Defense secretary’s salary to $1 September 30, 2023
FREE Cape Cod News

Copyright © 2023 Free Cape Cod News

Navigate Site

  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
  • Donate

Follow Us

No Result
View All Result
  • FREE Cape Cod News
  • Cape Cod News
  • News
    • News
    • Massachusetts
    • Breaking News
    • Cape Cod Weather
    • Storm Watch
    • Environment
  • Politics
    • democrats
    • republicans
  • Business
    • business
    • cryptocurrency
    • economy
    • money
    • Real Estate
    • Tech
  • World
  • Entertainment
  • Lifestyle
  • Photos
    • Orleans
    • Eastham
    • Wellfleet
    • Truro
    • Provincetown
    • Brewster
    • Chatham
  • Videos
  • Login
  • Sign Up

Copyright © 2023 Free Cape Cod News

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password? Sign Up

Create New Account!

Fill the forms below to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In

Add New Playlist