Sierra Club Says It Must Confront the Racism of John Muir

For decades, the Sierra Club has lauded John Muir, a founder of the environmental organization, as a towering figure in American conservationism and a man whose writings and advocacy helped to preserve Yosemite as a national park.

But on Wednesday, the organization’s president, Michael Brune, said it was time for some “truth telling” about Muir’s racist views and the white supremacist beliefs of its original members.

Muir “made derogatory comments about Black people and Indigenous peoples that drew on deeply harmful racist stereotypes, though his views evolved later in his life,” Mr. Brune wrote in a post on the club’s website. “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.”

Some of Muir’s writings characterized Black Americans and Native Americans as dirty and lazy, and while white settlers had already forcefully displaced many Native Americans from the Yosemite Valley by the time Muir arrived, he considered their presence in the Sierra Nevada as a blemish on an otherwise picturesque landscape.