Now Scots ‘Father of the National Park’ under scrutiny for race views
HE was given the nickname of ‘Father of the National Parks’ in his adopted North American home.
But the legacy of Scottish environmentalist John Muir has now been put under the spotlight of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The collective has grown in prominence in the wake of the death in May of African-American George Floyd, 46, who died after a policeman knelt on his neck in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Footage sparked global outrage and protests, with demonstrators also removing memorials of figures linked to the slave trade.
John Muir has become the latest target and the Sierra Club, the
American grassroots environmental club which the naturalist helped to form in the late 1800s, has threatened to ‘take down some of our own monuments’.
Muir, who died in 1914, was born in Dunbar, East Lothian, but emigrated with his family to Wisconsin when he was 11. He went on to play a key role in preserving the Yosemite Valley and Sequoia National Park, and co-founded the Sierra Club in 1892.
The John Muir Way, a trail stretching from Helensburgh, Dunbartonshire, to Dunbar, was named in his honour.
However, in a scathing blog post, the Sierra Club’s executive director Michael Brune has acknowledged Muir made ‘derogatory comments’ about black people and Native Americans. Mr
Brune said: ‘In these early years, the Sierra Club was basically a mountaineering club for middleand upper-class white people who worked to preserve the wilderness they hiked through.
‘Wilderness that had begun to need protection only a few decades earlier, when white settlers violently displaced the indigenous peoples who had lived on and taken care of the land for thousands of years.
‘The Sierra Club maintained that basic orientation until at least the 1960s because membership remained exclusive. Membership could only be granted through sponsorship from existing members, some of whom screened out any applicants of colour.’
Mr Brune added that Muir was ‘not immune to the racism peddled by many in the early conservation movement’.
He said: ‘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. 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 colour who come into contact with the Sierra Club.’
The Sierra Club is now planning to ‘redesign’ its leadership, with a $5million (£3.9million) commitment ‘to make long-overdue investments in our staff of colour and our environmental and racial justice work’.
‘Derogatory comments’