John Muir, Racial Politics and the Restoration of Indigenous Lands

This article is tailored from an episode of our podcast “Civic.” Click the audio participant under to listen to the full story. 

The racial reckoning that adopted the homicide of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer impressed the reexamination of many historic figures, together with John Muir, the man typically referred to as “the father of the national parks.” 

Even the Sierra Club, which Muir based, issued an announcement in June 2020 acknowledging some racist language in his early writings. It learn, partially: “Muir was not immune to the racism peddled by many in the early conservation movement. 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.”  

Muir has been honored extensively, along with his title on many websites and establishments, together with 28 colleges, a school, a quantity of mountains, a number of trails, a glacier, a forest, a seaside, a medical heart, a freeway and Muir Woods National Monument, one of the most visited locations in the Bay Area. But in the time since the Sierra Club issued its nuanced assertion, some have come to imagine that Muir’s legacy needs to be diminished as a result of of his racist statements, regardless of his contributions to the preservation of wilderness and later writings praising native tribes. 

John Muir is such a touchstone and cultural icon for Californians that “Civic” determined to have a look once more at his legacy by touring to Yosemite National Park in Mariposa County. 

Choosing which tales to inform

Lee Stetson has studied John Muir and carried out as Muir in six one-man reveals he wrote about the Nineteenth- and early Twentieth-century naturalist. Stetson has thought lengthy and onerous about Muir’s legacy and the disparaging statements he made about impoverished folks he encountered in his early journeys. 

“Context is the question,” Stetson stated. “We have to consider the comments from a young man who was first encountering the Black people in the South as he walked down to the Florida keys from Kentucky.” Muir’s feedback on the Indian cultures that he met associated to what Stetson referred to as the “shattered cultures,” or tribes decimated by displacement. 

Muir referred to as the handful of Miwuk dwelling in Yosemite who had survived a racial genocide “dirty.” But his later writings present that his angle shifted over time.

“When he arrived in Alaska” in 1899, Stetson stated, “he was accompanied by and guided by Indians. He became incredibly fond of them. He was engaged with Indian cultures that were fully intact. His understanding of their loyalties, their families, their culture in general, was certainly very positive in every way.”

Regardless of whether or not one agrees with the argument for placing John Muir in historic context, in the case of nationwide parks, we frequently neglect the folks for the bushes. But some of the Miwuk — individuals who nonetheless name Yosemite and the land surrounding it house — say the credit score given to Muir for his stewardship and preservation efforts are overstated. 

“We were the first stewards of the land to be there,” stated Sandra Roan Chapman, chairperson of the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation. “They say John Muir found Eden. He didn’t find Eden. It was always there.” 

“Everything you read about in Yosemite is about John Muir,” she stated, including that members of different tribes have informed her they really feel the means she does, questioning why Muir’s title is on so many websites which can be important to Indigenous folks. “Why do we always have to have John Muir on our sites? So, to me, it’s like, if it wasn’t him, it would have been somebody else.” 

She stated that when Muir entered Yosemite, he knew nothing about the impoverished folks in the area who survived by working for largely white vacationers. 

One would possibly argue that debating John Muir’s legacy facilities the give attention to one man, slightly than sharing the historical past of displacement, violence and inequity confronted by native tribes.  

The members of the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation have extra urgent issues to ponder than John Muir’s legacy. They are preventing for federal recognition, buying assets for his or her neighborhood and retaining their tradition alive. They not too long ago reached an settlement with the National Park Service giving them management of the web site of a former native village in Yosemite Valley that was demolished by the park service in the Nineteen Sixties. Construction on the web site is beneath strategy to give the tribes a cultural and instructional heart in the coronary heart of Yosemite. (The Public Press will share tales about these developments in future reporting.)

Rather than dwell on the damaging issues Muir stated, Chapman stated she prefers to give attention to the potentialities for her tribe and others.

“They banished us out of Yosemite, but we’re still here,” she stated. “And because we have our laughter, and we have our ceremonies, and we stay positive with everything that we’ve gone through, all the hardships and everything that we’ve had, we still stay positive. And that’s what you have to do.” 

Fighting for nature

San Francisco prides itself on being inexperienced, however a lot of these bragging rights come from the clear hydro energy from the O’Shaughnessy Dam at the mouth of Hetch Hetchy Valley. Since the completion of the system carrying water from Yosemite in the early Nineteen Thirties, it has given San Franciscans pristine water to drink and with which to flush their bathrooms. 

Muir spent the later years of his life preventing the building of the dam, taking a serious position in a nationwide marketing campaign to defeat the undertaking. Despite his efforts, the bushes in the valley had been minimize for lumber and the sacred websites of the Miwuk had been drowned when dam building started in 1916. 

In addition to his work as an actor and playwright, Stetson served on the Mariposa County Board of Supervisors from 2011 to 2015 and has sturdy emotions about the misplaced valley.  

“To drown it to a depth of 400 feet was to essentially obliterate a great national treasure,” he stated. “They could very easily have stored that water downstream. We could do that today. There would be some loss of electrical power that is currently generated, but that can be replaced.”

Stetson is a supporter of the Restore Hetch Hetchy motion that desires to take away the dam and retailer the water downstream. 

“You could easily blow a hole in it — most of that sand would pour out that has built up at the bottom of it,” Stetson stated. 

“In a few generations, we could have that valley back to us to a significant degree,” he stated. “It would have a bathtub ring around it for a number of centuries. But hey, the planet can handle a couple of centuries.”

Echoing Muir

In our interview with Stetson, we had him tackle the position of Muir, one thing he has performed in his performs and at stay occasions the world over, utilizing his deep data of the man’s writings and experiences. 

In the most essential political second of his life, John Muir satisfied President Teddy Roosevelt to spend three days tenting with him in Yosemite in May of 1903. Muir influenced the nature-loving president to increase Yosemite and create extra nationwide parks and monuments, setting a big precedent for land conservation. 

I requested Stetson, talking as Muir, the place he would take political leaders immediately. 

“The Hetch Hetchy Reservoir,” he stated. “I think one could find a great deal of instruction in it. And then, take them to Yosemite Valley and to show them what the Hetch Hetchy could look like. To preserve it is to preserve the loving process of creation. It is an enormously important thing to be doing.”

Stetson as Muir answered our last query: What would you inform the common particular person about why we nonetheless want wilderness?

“To go to it,” he stated. “Go, as a result of all people must be variety, not less than to themselves. And go as a result of all people wants magnificence in addition to bread, in locations to wish and then play, the place nature might heal and cheer and give power to physique and soul alike.

“Go quietly, go alone, no harm will befall you. Go often, go all your life. As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed. But nature’s sources — Yosemite sources, national park sources — will never fail you.”