Sierra Club calls out founder John Muir for ‘racist’ remarks
Should parks, schools be renamed as part of reassessment of the famed naturalist?
The Sierra Club has called founder John Muir America’s most influential naturalist. His work inspired the preservation of such wonders as Yosemite and the Grand Canyon.
But in a stunning turn this week, the 128-year-old club’s current executive director, Michael Brune, said “it’s time to take down some of our own monuments” and called out Muir for having made “derogatory comments about Black people and Indigenous peoples that drew on deeply harmful racist stereotypes.”
Such remarks, Brune wrote, and Muir’s association with white supremacists who were early members and leaders of what would become the country’s largest environmental organization, “continue to hurt and alienate Indigenous people and people of color who come into contact with the Sierra Club.”
The club’s reassessment of its founder — coming at a time when the country is reevaluating how it honors a host of historical figures with racist pasts, from Con
federate generals to former presidents — swiftly called into question the widespread honors to the man known as the father of our national parks.
A linked article notes Muir (1838-1914) “has at least one high school, 21 elementary schools, six middle schools and one college named after him, as well as a glacier, a mountain, a woods, a cabin, an inlet, a highway, a library, a motel, a medical center, a tea room and a minor planet.”
In the Bay Area, they include Muir Woods National Monument in Marin County, the John Muir National Historic Site near Martinez and John Muir Health system in Walnut Creek. There are John Muir elementary schools in San Francisco, Berkeley, Martinez and San Jose, where a middle school also is named after him, as is one in San Leandro.
Already, it’s sparked a torrid debate on over renaming. John Muir Health said Wednesday its name originated as part of an elementary school naming contest when the Walnut Creek Medical Center was being built in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and that its board will “examine the history and legacy of the John Muir name” and consider “recommendations on this complex topic.”
“The views of John Muir in no way reflect the mission and values of John Muir Health,” the company said in a statement. “We stand for equity, diversity, inclusion, dignity and mutual respect.”
Joshua Frank, an editor at political magazine and website CounterPunch, tweeted “we must rename the John Muir Wilderness,” the 100 miles in the Inyo National Forest from Mammoth Lakes to Mount Whitney.
But others rejected the idea as “cancel culture” run amok, arguing Muir’s contributions outweigh his racial views that were hardly unusual in his day, and which the Sierra Club’s Brune noted “evolved later in his life.”
“Canceling Muir would be a travesty to everything the environmental movement stands for,” tweeted Mark Topaz, a graphic designer and businessman.
According to an Atlas Obscura article Brune linked to his post, Muir described Cherokee homes he encountered as “wigwams of savages,” and Indigenous people in California as “superstitious,” “lazy” and “dirty.” He made similar remarks about Blacks during a trip through the South in the late 1860s, referring to them as “Sambos” who didn’t work hard.
The Atlas Obscura article notes however that those “hateful words” were “not the sum total of Muir’s perspective,” adding that in his trip through the South, he “bemoans the bigoted mindset he encounters amongst whites.”
Chantal DeGuzman of Concord, who visited the Muir National Historic Site with her daughter Amanda DeGuzman and her granddaughter Jade Guzman, 4, was still trying to process it all Wednesday.
“We heard it on the news this morning, but I didn’t know this about John Muir,” DeGuzman said. “So I’m learning.”
The club’s reassessment of its founder comes amid a broader reckoning in an environmental movement that has been criticized as overwhelmingly white, wealthy and more focused on wildlife and parks than pollution in poor neighborhoods. Brune and the club didn’t comment whether Muir’s name should no longer be honored elsewhere.
Loretta J. Ross, associate professor of women and gender at Smith College, likened it to the recent decision of Planned Parenthood of Greater New York removing the name of founder Margaret Sanger over her “harmful connections to the eugenics movement.”
“I believe every generation has the human right to make the decisions in the struggle for freedom that are right for them, so I don’t disagree with removing Muir’s statue no more than I disagree with removing Sanger’s name from that Planned Parenthood building in New York City,” Ross said. “These are decisions that are made by the people on the front lines of activism who I refuse to second guess.”
But she added, “I also don’t believe in repudiating people who had large impacts on the struggle for freedom and justice just because they were imperfect people. Judging people in the distant past by modern standards lifts them out of the context of their times and sometimes lacks nuance and reinforces the ‘cancel culture,’ which I oppose.”