In this corner, NATURALIST John Muir!:



Oh, come on! "Nature" is just a dog-whistle for stuff White people like. #WildernessTooRaciss!

Bully for you, chilly for me ...

And 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. 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 color who come into contact with the Sierra Club.

The whiteness and privilege of our early membership fed into a very dangerous idea -- one that’s still circulating today. It’s the idea that exploring, enjoying, and protecting the outdoors can be separated from human affairs. Such willful ignorance is what allows some people to shut their eyes to the reality that the wild places we love are also the ancestral homelands of Native peoples, forced off their lands in the decades or centuries before they became national parks. It allows them to overlook, too, the fact that only people insulated from systemic racism and brutality can afford to focus solely on preserving wilderness. Black communities, Indigenous communities, and communities of color continue to endure the traumatic burden of fighting for their right to a healthy environment while simultaneously fighting for freedom from discrimination and police violence.

The persistence of this misguided idea is part of the reason why we still get comments from our own members telling us to “stay in our lane,” and stop talking about issues of race, equity, and privilege.

But as writer Julian Brave NoiseCat says, “The environment is no longer a white sanctuary. The messy business of society, power, and race is everywhere and intertwined.”

... and in this corner, environmental ACTIVIST, vist, vist, ... Michael Brune:

In October 2012, the need to solve the climate crisis was brought into sharp relief when "superstorm" Sandy ravaged the East Coast, including Brune’s hometown. The storm flooded his parents' home, which had been built by his father and uncle nearly fifty years before.

We will create a dialogue with, and resources for, our members about the intersection between racism and environmental justice issues, and invest in our HR and training capacities to ensure that staff, volunteers, and members are held accountable for any harm they inflict upon members of our Sierra Club community who identify as Black, Indigenous, or people of color. We will also spend the next year studying our history and determining which of our monuments need to be renamed or pulled down entirely.

In subsequent posts in this series, we'll talk in much more depth about the steps we’re taking to rebuild the Sierra Club on a basis of racial and social justice and to try to repair the harm we’ve caused. I know that the steps I’ve outlined above are only the beginnings of what will be a years-long process to reckon with our history, regain trust from the communities we have harmed, and create a diverse and equitable Sierra Club for the 21st century.

Just another photo of John Muir with Teddy Roosevelt, and others:



That's the "Grizzly Giant" tree, a Giant Sequoia still standing in the Mariposa Grove area of Yosemite Park. The volume of wood is 34,000 ft³.