"What could be unlovable about a man who directly helped preserve Yosemite and Sequoia as parks, who co-founded the Sierra Club and is considered the father of the national parks system because of the admiration for wilderness that he inspired?
The answer: his overt racism toward Black people and Native Americans, including the Miwok tribe that inhabited Yosemite Valley long before the arrival of the white men who expelled them. Muir’s racism hasn’t exactly been a secret, but it’s not well known, either. Hey, he’s the guy we put on our state’s quarter in 2005, not a man famous for hateful viewpoints.
That is, until this week, when the Sierra Club openly acknowledged the truth about Muir. And it didn’t stop there; the environmentalist organization also called out the white supremacists and eugenicists who were prominent early members of the group, and reminded us that people of color were at times excluded from the club.
Though the Sierra Club’s announcement didn’t go into detail, it’s known that Muir supported ejecting Native Americans from their lands to make way for people-free open spaces. He described the Miwok people, most of whom had been killed or driven from Yosemite by the time he arrived in 1868, in the ugliest of terms, writing that they were “dirty,” “altogether hideous” and “seem to have no right place in the landscape.”"
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-07-23/john-muir-conservation-movement-racism-eugenics
The answer: his overt racism toward Black people and Native Americans, including the Miwok tribe that inhabited Yosemite Valley long before the arrival of the white men who expelled them. Muir’s racism hasn’t exactly been a secret, but it’s not well known, either. Hey, he’s the guy we put on our state’s quarter in 2005, not a man famous for hateful viewpoints.
That is, until this week, when the Sierra Club openly acknowledged the truth about Muir. And it didn’t stop there; the environmentalist organization also called out the white supremacists and eugenicists who were prominent early members of the group, and reminded us that people of color were at times excluded from the club.
Though the Sierra Club’s announcement didn’t go into detail, it’s known that Muir supported ejecting Native Americans from their lands to make way for people-free open spaces. He described the Miwok people, most of whom had been killed or driven from Yosemite by the time he arrived in 1868, in the ugliest of terms, writing that they were “dirty,” “altogether hideous” and “seem to have no right place in the landscape.”"
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-07-23/john-muir-conservation-movement-racism-eugenics