Sierra Club Reckons with Racist History

[Pouring Rain and Blairing Music]

Sierra Club Reckons with Racist History

The 128-year-old conservation organization, in a Wednesday post on its website titled “Pulling Down Our Own Monuments,” acknowledged that some of its history has “caused significant and immeasurable harm” and distanced itself from its own founder, the renown naturalist John Muir.

“As defenders of Black life pull down Confederate monuments across the country, we must also take this moment to reexamine our past and our substantial role in perpetuating white supremacy,” Michael Brune, the group’s executive director, wrote.

Muir, who founded Sierra Club in 1892, was a champion of wilderness preservation and is revered as the “father of the national parks.” But he also made racist comments about both Black and Indigenous Americans...

I’m really getting tired of people freaking out over what people said 130 years ago. Muir’s legacy is not one of supporting slavery, but one of conserving America’s natural beauty; there’s a big difference there and I think many on the left are missing that. I’m not going to defend what Muir said (because it isn’t defensible by today’s standards and it doesn’t deserve to be defended regardless), but people should be focusing on preserving the natural environment or stopping police brutality without worrying about what someone who generally did good things said over a hundred years ago.

[brucejoel99]

Their post on this was really insightful: https://www.sierraclub.org/michael-brune/2020/07/john-muir-early-history-sierra-club

My read is that they aren't disowning John Muir or "cancelling" him, but are rather just acknowledging that their history is messy & complex, & that they wanna do better.

[GP270watch]

These are the right first steps, good moves.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Just wait until all those black people in Louisiana find out what King Louis XIV's opinion of them was.

[longtimelurker]

If the Lutheran Church can reject their founder's anti-Semitic teachings while still remaining Lutherans, then the Sierra Club can acknowledge some racist actions and statements by its founder John Muir and still hold Muir in respect for the great bulk of his life's work.

https://www.jta.org/1994/05/06/archive/lutheran-church-formally-rejects-luthers-anti-semitic-teachings

[beaver2.0]

This is just stupid.  I'm not denying he said bad things, but his legacy is not one of racism, it's one of environmentalism.  Acknowledge he wasn't perfect, but he does not need to be erased from our history.

Same thing applies to many other people.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

This is from the article they linked to:

It is also true that Muir’s views did change over time. He was 29 on his walk to the Gulf, and not much older when he first entered California. Later in his life, he traveled to Alaska. Muir lived among various tribes, including the Chukchis and Thlinkit. “He grew to respect and honor their beliefs, actions, and life styles,” wrote scholar Richard Fleck, in a 1978 article in the journal, American Indian Quarterly. “He, too, would evolve and change from his somewhat ambivalent stance toward various Indian cultures to a positive admiration.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-miseducation-of-john-muir