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Robert McNally discusses John Muir’s life and work in America’s violent campaigns of Indigenous land dispossession and genocide.

Image courtesy of interviewee. May 30, 2024

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This video discusses the author's research and insights regarding John Muir, often hailed as the father of the American National Park system, and his views towards Native Americans. The author initially became intrigued by Muir's visit to the Modoc War battlefield after researching the Modoc War in California. Muir's writings after this visit were noted for their disparaging descriptions of the Modoc people, leading the author to explore whether these views reflected Muir's opinions of specific events or a broader attitude towards Indigenous peoples.

Throughout the research, the author delves into Muir's extensive writings and journals, uncovering his complex and often problematic perspectives shaped by the racial stereotypes of his time. Although Muir played a crucial role in promoting conservation and the creation of national parks, his vision often excluded Indigenous peoples who historically inhabited these lands. The author critiques Muir's belief that nature and humanity should be separate, which contributed to conservation policies that displaced Native communities.

This video contrasts Muir’s legacy with contemporary movements, highlighting new co-management efforts between Indigenous peoples and federal land managers, illustrated by the example of the Bears Ears National Monument. This video shift reflects an increasingly inclusive vision of national parks, fundamentally different from Muir's. The author emphasizes the importance of recognizing both Muir's contributions and his shortcomings to understand the evolving relationship between environmental conservation and Indigenous rights in the United States today.

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This book kind of came out in my prior book It was,

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which is called The Modoc War,

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which is about a seemingly obscure Indian war in California.

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It ended in 1873.

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And in the course of doing the research, I just, just kind

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of chanced upon the discovery that John Muir, the father,

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often referred to as the father

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of the American National Park system,

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had visited the Modoc war battlefield about a YA year

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after, the war was over.

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And that just intrigued me.

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And so I started digging into that little journey

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and read the newspaper articles he, he wrote coming out

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of it, which were remarkably disparaging

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of the Modoc people,

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and described them in terms

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that made them sound like demons and devils.

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And I really began to wonder whether that was his reactions

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to the specific battles and horrors of that particular war,

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or whether it represented a more general attitude

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of his towards America's indigenous people.

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And that's what led me to start doing the research

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and led ultimately to the book.

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It was relatively straightforward.

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Um, what I focused on primarily was John Muir's thinking

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his words and so forth.

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He was a relatively, he was a tortured

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but pro prolific writer.

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He put out a lot of books.

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I read all of his published work, arranged

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that within the narrative of his life.

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And then I began digging back into his journals

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and his correspondence, looking for the unpublished work

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that also reflected upon what he was thinking and doing.

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And then I put that all together.

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I I was very lucky in that there is a terrific,

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archive, online archive of John Muir's materials,

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particularly his correspondence, his journals

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and his, drawings.

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He was a very gifted, sketcher

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right over at the University of the Pacific, which is

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little over an hour from me in Stockton, California.

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And it is, much of it is available online.

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And so there was this essentially a research load

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that I was able to, to dig into.

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Well, he, he, he, he really, like I said, he's referred to

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as the father of the National Parks,

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which is a little overdone, but,

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but it's, it's kind of okay.

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He is, he came along at just the right time when there was

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a, a wellspring of interest in preserving wild America

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because it was being, increasingly,

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eroded by rising population, rising industry,

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a market hunting and so forth.

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And he helped to create that body of writing

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that really promoted what became the National Park system,

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which preserved many, many iconic American landscapes.

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And for example, there is this off repeated picture

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of him standing with Teddy Roosevelt on Glacier Point

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and Yosemite National Park, where

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Muir talked Roosevelt into putting Yosemite Valley

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inside Yosemite National Park, was a big coup

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that disturbed the state of California,

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but really helped protect that particular space.

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And he did that kind of thing over and over.

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And his, his writings too, gave Americans who didn't go

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to the National parks or climb mountains,

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a vi vicarious experience of what this was like.

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And so he really is a, he's sort

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of right near the spiritual heart

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of the American Conservation

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and preservation movement and remains there.

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I mean, you know, that's one of the, I mean, you know,

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John Muir helped found the Sierra Club

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and, his influence,

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therefore is his extremely wide,

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even in today's environmental movement,

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he worked extremely hard.

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I mean, he, he would write and rewrite and rewrite again,

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and then rewrite some more.

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And I mean, he was just an obsessive writer.

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Um, he was actually a remarkable man in terms of he had a,

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a deep-seated, essentially Calvinistic morality

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that he had inherited from his upbringing.

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And, that's really, there's nothing really

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to be said about any feelings on Muir's part.

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He was not a cynic, he was not a skeptic.

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He was not a nasty dude.

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Um, the problem he had was that he was,

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he sort of drew upon racial stereotypes of the time,

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racist stereotypes,

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and had a view that basically people of his kind

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that is Scot's, Anglo-Saxons, Germans, Norwegians,

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et cetera, were gen generally people who were,

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they were the ones who should be running things

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and everybody else should be taking orders from them.

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And this was particularly problematic when you get

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to the issue of the national parks,

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because all of them were once upon a time, tribal homelands,

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therefore, any, any,

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and additionally, he had this idea that nature

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and the human world are essentially separate.

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And if we're really gonna understand nature, that is Eden,

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the, the, state of creation

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before mankind got thrown out.

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You need to have these pristine landscapes

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that nobody lives in.

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So he had this kind of a notion of nature as sanctuary, not

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as home, not as sustaining environment.

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And unfortunately, that led to a lot of,

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or it contributed to the overall policy

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of the way national Parks ran,

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towards the indigenous peoples who had once lived there and,

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and taken their sustenance from those particular landscapes.

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He's not, I mean, he, he sta I think he stands out

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because of his influence.

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It's, it is that, I mean, the,

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the at this attitude toward native peoples was relatively

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common throughout the American group.

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And if you look at the times when he was really active,

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in the, he was, he was a wilderness influencer,

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essentially from 1890 up until right about the time

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of his death in 1914.

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And he really did draw upon the stereotypes towards Indians

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that were very much around at that time.

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That said, however, one should remember

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that there were Americans

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who had different attitudes towards Native people.

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Uh, he, two of them were actually his friends.

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One was a guy named Charles Lumi, who was a magazine editor

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who had lived with Pueblo people in New Mexico

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after he had a stroke at a very early age

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when he was recovering.

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And he absolutely admired their culture,

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and he brought them to Los Angeles where he ended up living

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and putting up fiesta with,

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with Pueblo people doing dances and so forth.

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And there another one was c heart Miriam,

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who was originally a physician who became a, a field

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zoologist and then became very interested in the, the,

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indigenous cultures of Native California,

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and spent the last 25, 30 years

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of his career researching them.

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And he had a very high opinion of

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who native people in this state were.

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And curiously, muran,

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those men's attitudes never wore off on Muir.

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He always maintained a sense of superiority and difference.

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He saw native people as distinctly other,

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and essentially alien from folks like him.

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And that's, that's not so much a personal feeling as

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that he was pulling from the sort of institutional

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and systemic attitudes towards Native people at that time,

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attitudes that really are only being eroded

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inside the United States within the past, you know, 20

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to 30 years and are starting to really rise at this point.

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It, it's interesting thing about nature is

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that he had this sense of nature as sanctuary that he wanted

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to be in it with, maybe with people like him

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who would achieve some kind

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of a spiritual enlightened within this sanctuary.

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And he often refers to nature as a cathedral,

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and something to important to remember is

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that you don't live in a cathedral, you go to worship there.

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And that was really his attitude.

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And unfortunately that works against those people,

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particularly the tribal people

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who were drawing their sustenance in their

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homelands from 'em.

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And he saw in the same way, unfortunately, he didn't have,

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didn't perceive well that the tribal people lived

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with a very small footprint.

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They didn't beat the place up.

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That was the tourists, you know,

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and who were people like him in a lot of ways.

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And he could not understand

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how you could live in a wilderness

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and also maintain its wilderness quality.

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And that led to something

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that is now called fortress conservation, which is in,

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or the Yosemite model very interestingly, which is

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that you draw a line around a wildlife sanctuary

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and then you kick all the indigenous people out,

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and then you put, essentially soldiers game wardens

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around it to keep them out.

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I remember seeing this exactly in Kenya,

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on the Masai Mara, it's a shame.

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I mean, because that, the curious thing is

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that there is an in good empirical evidence

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that when you let the tribal people stay, they know how

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to live there, and the wildlife actually flourishes much

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more than if you eliminate them.

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And so, but unfortunately Muir did not see that.

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Very few people, however, at that time, saw that

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somewhat mutes the criticism of on that basis.

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But unfortunately it created a, a paradigm

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of wild lands management that has continued to haunt,

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all kind.

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I mean, not just in the United States,

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but like I said, I've seen it in Africa.

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Oh, wow. He, there's a whole lot of things.

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I mean, I mean, there's, there's a way.

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He's a kind of secular saint

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of the wild in the United States,

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and I think he, he, he kind of earned that.

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I mean, there, his writing continues to be influential.

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People talk about him.

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He has this larger than life sort of stature.

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I mean, he's kind of like an iconic president in some

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respects, like Abraham Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt.

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I mean, there's, they kind of rise

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above whatever they did in their own human failings.

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And, and that's a large part of his legacy.

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He also founded the Sierra Club.

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Um, I mean, it wasn't only his energy.

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There were some other people behind him

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who really did all the, the hard footwork to make it happen.

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But it created a, a really helped propel the,

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environmental movement in this country.

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And now I, it's in a very good place

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because it's being headed up by Ben Jealous, who used

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to be the head of the, naacp, the National Association

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of, of, colored people

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and for the advancement of colored people.

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So he was a, whereas Muir was trying to keep people out

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of the woods, Ben jealous in the Sierra Club are turning

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towards issues of environmental justice,

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which very much affect communities of color

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and seeing that there's a common ground

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between saving a wilderness

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and saving a community that's affected by say,

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oil refinery waste.

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And I think that's a really important widening.

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And to mirror's credit,

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he helped create this organizational frame

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that is now pushing that forward.

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The one thing is, I, I don't really want them thinking

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of mirror as a secular saint.

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The problem with saints is saints don't do anything wrong.

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And he did. I mean, it's just pure and simple.

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He, he did indeed draw on these racist stereotypes that,

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to the disadvantage of those particular peoples and casts.

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And that's unfortunate.

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I I really would hope that if,

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if they come away from this book with

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where I go towards the end of it, which is

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what does a more inclusive vision of the national parks

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and the national wildernesses look like?

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And the, the new paradigm for

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that is the Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern

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Utah, which is, was actually not only is it being now run

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by five tribes from Southeast Utah, it was their idea.

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They got p they did all the groundwork, which is huge

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to create a proposal that went to President Obama in 2016

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and led him to set up this national monument

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under the Antiquities Act.

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And now those five tribes called the Bears Ears Intertribal

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Coalition are actually participating in,

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on a co-management level

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with the federal government. That's

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A really cool paradigm.

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And it's, it's spreading remarkably rapidly.

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There are almost 200 sorts

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of these cooperative arrangements now between tribal peoples

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and federal land managers.

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And that's really good

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because that begins cre,

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whereas Muir saw an exclusive vision of the National Parks.

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This is taking the national parks

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and making them inclusive, looking at the wider America.

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And I hope people come away with, from my book

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with the sense of how necessary that is

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and how we are in fact heading in that direction.

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