• 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
Where to Eat in Martha’s Vineyard thumbnail

Where to Eat in Martha’s Vineyard

July 2, 2022
How Unpredictable Schedules Widen the Gender Pay Gap thumbnail

How Unpredictable Schedules Widen the Gender Pay Gap

July 2, 2022
No Soft Landing, No Return to Normal for US Economy, Says Fed thumbnail

No Soft Landing, No Return to Normal for US Economy, Says Fed

July 2, 2022
U.S. 5-year offshore drilling plan contemplates zero to 11 auctions thumbnail

U.S. 5-year offshore drilling plan contemplates zero to 11 auctions

July 2, 2022
Cape Cod traffic today

Summer travel is in full swing, so is the traffic heading to Cape Cod ahead of this Fourth of July weekend

July 1, 2022
The Biden Administration Needs to Act Like a Blue State thumbnail

The Biden Administration Needs to Act Like a Blue State

July 1, 2022
Democratic Rep Cast Most Of His Votes By ‘Proxy’ While Spending Tens Of Thousands On Travel And Events thumbnail

Democratic Rep Cast Most Of His Votes By ‘Proxy’ While Spending Tens Of Thousands On Travel And Events

July 2, 2022
The most unlikely beneficiary of the Trump Jan. 6 revelations thumbnail

The most unlikely beneficiary of the Trump Jan. 6 revelations

July 1, 2022
Supreme Court Sides With Biden’s Efforts to End ‘Remain in Mexico’ Program thumbnail

Supreme Court Sides With Biden’s Efforts to End ‘Remain in Mexico’ Program

July 1, 2022
How to Avoid Sneaky, Hidden Travel Fees This July 4 Weekend thumbnail

How to Avoid Sneaky, Hidden Travel Fees This July 4 Weekend

July 1, 2022
Great White Shark - Free Cape Cod News

Researchers are warning beachgoers that they may not be the only ones headed to Cape Cod this summer, as great white sharks are expected there, too

June 30, 2022
Gas price gouging focus of new ads backing House Democrats thumbnail

Gas price gouging focus of new ads backing House Democrats

June 30, 2022
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
  • Donate
Saturday, July 2, 2022
66 °f
Wellfleet
58 ° Tue
63 ° Wed
68 ° Thu
61 ° Fri
  • Login
  • Register
FREE Cape Cod News
DONATE
  • FREE Cape Cod News
  • News
    • News
    • Cape Cod 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
  • 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

Thousands of previously undescribed viruses found by huge ocean survey thumbnail
Environment

Thousands of previously undescribed viruses found by huge ocean survey

by FREE Cape Cod News
June 10, 2022
Chatham MA. FREE Cape Cod News.
Cape Cod News

Massachusetts sues companies over use of ‘forever chemicals’

by FREE Cape Cod News
May 26, 2022
U.S. Plastic Recycling Rates Are Even Worse Than We Thought thumbnail
Environment

U.S. Plastic Recycling Rates Are Even Worse Than We Thought

by FREE Cape Cod News
May 20, 2022
‘Will there still be dairy cows by 2050? We don’t think so’: Real Deal Milk taps microbes to make vegan cheese in Barcelona thumbnail
Environment

‘Will there still be dairy cows by 2050? We don’t think so’: Real Deal Milk taps microbes to make vegan cheese in Barcelona

by FREE Cape Cod News
May 8, 2022
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
Where to Eat in Martha’s Vineyard thumbnail

Where to Eat in Martha’s Vineyard

July 2, 2022
No1 Place To See The Sunrise in Cape Cod – Nauset Light Beach

No1 Place To See The Sunrise in Cape Cod – Nauset Light Beach

October 10, 2020
No Soft Landing, No Return to Normal for US Economy, Says Fed thumbnail

No Soft Landing, No Return to Normal for US Economy, Says Fed

July 2, 2022
Where to Eat in Martha’s Vineyard thumbnail

Where to Eat in Martha’s Vineyard

July 2, 2022
How Unpredictable Schedules Widen the Gender Pay Gap thumbnail

How Unpredictable Schedules Widen the Gender Pay Gap

July 2, 2022
No Soft Landing, No Return to Normal for US Economy, Says Fed thumbnail

No Soft Landing, No Return to Normal for US Economy, Says Fed

July 2, 2022
Support Local News, Make a Donation Support Local News, Make a Donation Support Local News, Make a Donation

FREE Cape Cod News On Twitter

Today’s News

  • Where to Eat in Martha’s Vineyard July 2, 2022
  • How Unpredictable Schedules Widen the Gender Pay Gap July 2, 2022
  • No Soft Landing, No Return to Normal for US Economy, Says Fed July 2, 2022
  • U.S. 5-year offshore drilling plan contemplates zero to 11 auctions July 2, 2022
  • Summer travel is in full swing, so is the traffic heading to Cape Cod ahead of this Fourth of July weekend July 1, 2022
FREE Cape Cod News

Copyright © 2022 Free Cape Cod News

Navigate Site

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

Follow Us

No Result
View All Result
  • FREE Cape Cod News
  • News
    • News
    • Cape Cod 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 © 2022 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