Sierra Club Confronts Racism of John Muir, Lack of Diversity

The Sierra Club is addressing what it calls “our substantial role in perpetuating white supremacy,” staring with iconic club founder John Muir.

“Muir was not immune to the racism peddled by many in the early conservation movement,” Executive Director Michael Brune wrote on the club’s website. “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.”

But confronting the legacy of Muir and other Sierra Club leaders in its early days is a small part of the club’s effort to promote diversity.

Brune said the leadership structure will be changed so that Black, Indigenous, and other leaders of color at the Sierra Club comprise the majority of the team making top-level organizational decisions. Changes will also be made to elevate the voices and experiences of staff of color across the organization.

The club’s board will be asked to allow $5 million from next year’s budget—and more in the years to come—to go toward making investments in staff members of color and environmental and racial justice work.

Echoing the movement to remove Confederate statues, Brune said the club will spend the next year “studying our history and determining which of our monuments need to be renamed or pulled down entirely.”

That work will involve confronting the 128-year-old Sierra Club’s beginnings as a mountaineering club for middle- and upper-class white people who worked to preserve the wilderness they hiked through—wilderness that once belonged to Indigenous peoples.

“The Sierra Club maintained that basic orientation until at least the 1960s because membership remained exclusive,” Brune wrote. “Membership could only be granted through sponsorship from existing members, some of whom screened out any applicants of color.”

Muir was not alone among early club leaders with racist views, Brune wrote, citing Joseph LeConte and David Starr Jordan, both vocal advocates for white supremacy and eugenics.

Brune said it would take years for the Sierra Club to reconcile with its past.

“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.”

Featured photo courtesy Inga Aksamit