ENVIRONMENTALISM – RACISM -EUGENICS – AND JOHN MUIR a conversation with Alicia Kwon here on substack

My Great Love For Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks, and the preservation of the Wilderness for all to enjoy, came with a great price.

My last post featured many of my photographs from my walks in the mountains and wilderness areas and protected lands or National parks in the Western United states. In my post I spoke of the importance of humans to responsibly balance our taking from Nature with our respect and care of Nature. We claim stewardship over Nature, yet we seem to be way more destructive to Nature than beneficial.

Which can be read here:

I included several quotes from Naturalists like me, whose thoughts resonated with my own. One naturalist that I quoted a few times was John Muir. Today, I received a comment in regard to the “REAL” intentions, the actual behavior and the harmful, no! I mean devastating outcomes that were perpetrated by John Muir, and fellow eugenicists.  In this post I would like to address the issue of Environmentalism and its connection to racism, eugenics, elitism and white supremacy.

 In conversation with Alicia Kwon,

Alicia’s comment on my previous post:

"Being in Nature reminds us of our symbiotic relationship with it, our need to dominate it must be exchanged with our desire to work with it and understand the delicate balance of actions we take"

I love this quote, along with your deep and sensitive connection with nature and its guidance. There is so much to learn from the journey and you write beautifully!

If we could all learn to walk in symbiotic harmony, the world would be glorious for all creatures, great and small. The history of conservation/environmentalism unfortunately is full of people who may have had an appreciation for nature not for their fellow kindred human beings, and although I know most of my friends and fellow sub stackers who quote some of them are well intentioned, it hurts me in a deep way I cannot fully explain. I feel it so much as an empath I sometimes react harshly to it. So I will try to be as gentle as I can.

The history of the conquering of what is now understood to be The United States is filled with people who did horrible things in the name of beautiful things. I learned this year about The Doctrine of Christian Discovery - these legitimized the taking of the persons, places and things of Indigenous Peoples of what we now call the Americans and what is known to many Indigenous Peoples as Turtle Island. John Muir and many other environmentalists/conservationists had a deep appreciation of nature - while denigrating the original peoples who knew far better than colonizers how to care for her in the beautiful ways you describe us as being symbiotic. Here is an article I think is very generous to John Muir: https://www.sfpublicpress.org/john-muir-racial-politics-and-the-restoration-of-indigenous-lands-in-yosemite/

I know your motives are pure and I didn't know about any of this til recently either. I see a continuing genocide happening of the Indigenous Peoples the world over and it breaks my heart. It's not a past tense thing. So I am really sensitive about this issue because I feel like when people quote John Muir, it kind of sends an unconscious message that he stands for goodness, when really he stands for, in my opinion, a privileged white man who was on a journey like we all are, who fucked it up a lot, learned a lot and yet never took the steps to put the land back where it should belong: In indigenous hands. I have "vibe based" pet peeves against numerous others who are popularly quotes whom I have sleuthed out and one I cannot peg down but I know in my deepest gut he is bad news yet some of the finest people adore him. It's hard to know what you know and have others not see it. It can feel lonely. There are lots of things I don't know that others do that I am learning from others, too. I love your appreciation for beauty and for wanting us all to live in a state of joy and appreciation and wonder. My criticism of the quote and John Muir has absolutely nothing to do with you or your beautiful writing. I feel that when those quotes are used they are an endorsement of that person as an icon/inspirational figure that unconsciously gives our consent to the more subtle forms of genocide of indigenous peoples that continue.

My response

I can understand your sensitivity/response to seeing what looks like praise for a man, who’s words and actions did not add up to his IDEALS: Respect for “ALL” life.  From accounts, and your own realization as you stated, his anger and disrespect were towards Humanity in general. But, it was the indigenous people in North America who paid horribly for that mindset, a travesty that continues today. This attack is primarily focused on all indigenous people of lands around the world, on the poor, and less educated, on the those that are of color, to all of us who are not “Elites” or of the Ruling class.

John Muir, a naturalist, environmentalist and primary leader in establishing Yosemite National Park and Sequioa National park, both in California is known and honored as a teacher who taught generations of people to see the sacredness of nature.

We started taking our children from the time they were toddlers to Yosemite every summer, for camping, and hiking and enjoying the magnificence of Nature here in Yosemite.

Muir believed that national parks and forests should be preserved in their entirety, meaning that their resources should be rendered off-limits to industrial interests. He strongly advocated against sustainable use of resources within national forests.

 “Muir’s enduring contributions to the conservation and preservation of America’s wilderness have been far-reaching. His conviction that wilderness areas should be federally protected as national parks has given generations of U.S. citizens and tourists an opportunity to appreciate America’s landscapes as they exist in the absence of human industrial influence”

https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Muir

It was here high on the mountainside, over looking the landscape that I coined the phrase “The Sound of Eternity” It was the only way I could define the Silence that was permeated with the Sounds of Nature. Today as I write this post, I realize that the Indigenous People who once lived here shared my love and devotion to this astonishing place of exquisite beauty.

Alicia:

“The history of the conquering of what is now understood to be The United States is filled with people who did horrible things in the name of beautiful things.”

Kara:

You make a compelling point here. It seems all history is based on doing horrible things in the name of beauty…so how are we to rectify this issue?

. I am beginning to see that eugenicists are often people who proclaim an allegiance to nature while completely attempting to disconnect humanity from nature. While they worship nature, they have a hatred for people. They want the natural environment and the wilderness all for themselves.   They will stop at nothing to achieve this, even if it means devastating the natural world with poisons, and pesticides, burning down the forests, ripping off the mountain tops, creating deserts by water diversion, and weather manipulation, contaminating the oceans with garbage and toxins, oil spills, and nuclear/radioactive testing, endless wars, raping the earth of natural resources for military and monetary gain, stealing the wealth that nature so freely gives and hording it for the few while the rest suffer, toil, and die in agony.

We all NEED nature, we all are nature, we’ve lost our way, all these things I discussed a little in my last post. We have come to such an imbalance that we are all sick. Historical documentation of the indigenous people of the Americas proclaim that it is the people who destroy the land, and are not good stewards requiring Government to step in and take control. They install their social programs to engineer humanity into a state of constant struggle and forced to comply with destructive laws that have led to the devastation and raping of earths bountiful gifts, while they point the finger at the people. The saying goes when you point your finger, there are three fingers pointing right back at you.

These elites who program everything for destruction, make themselves completely known NOW as the members of the WEF. They are the ones responsible for social engineering, structuring culture all along to create disharmony, imbalance, over consumption, addiction to materialism, demolition of nature to build technology, destroying the family, wars of hatred and separation, pitting man against man and deliberately bringing about conditions of dis-ease states of all life and torturous death.  So John Muir, a man who I admired for his recognition of the magnificence and the importance of taking care of our Natural world, who saw Nature as his muse as I have, who felt joy sleeping in the forests, communing with the animals, contemplating the beauty of this world while sitting by the river, had a darker side.

He revered Nature on his thousand mile walk, while he reviled humans. To be honest there are plenty of days that I have much anger towards myself and my fellow humans as well, because we all are responsible for standing up and fighting against the tyranny, yet we do not, we accept it, we allow it, we do not question it. If any of us humans were once good stewards of the land, we are not today, while we are collecting our material wealth, polluting the land by our living habits, embracing the technology that is killing us, feeding our addictions, and ignoring not only our own health but that of Nature that provides EVERYTHING for us.  Muir pointed his wrath at a particular group of humans, the indigenous people that lived in the lands that he so prized.

A giant Sequioa

“This is the dark side of the Muir mythology, and one that was highlighted on his Southern journey. The man who thought of nature as a cathedral, and regarded, “whales and elephants, dancing, humming gnats,” and even “invisibly small mischievous microbes” as divine, regarded Native Americans as subhuman. Later, in California, he called them: “dirty,” “garrulous as jays,” “superstitious,” “lazy”. Such denigration is particularly surprising, as Muir’s spiritual embrace of nature could have been taken right out of a Native American mind. “Frankly, I think that is where he missed the boat big time,” says Hunt.

“He totally missed the beauty and knowledge that Native American culture could offer, and what that could add to his own world view.”

Was Muir so caught up in Manifest Destiny that he refused to notice what came before? Was he so caught up with plants that he failed to notice who first tended them? Was he still under the influence of his parochial father, who once said, in a debate with a Wisconsin neighbor, “it could never have been the intention of God to allow Indians to rove and hunt over so fertile a country and hold it forever in unproductive wildness while Scotch and Irish and English farmers could put it to so much better use.” Or, was Muir’s aversion to Native Americans merely a product of his dislike for people he saw as technologically backwards? The distinction might not even matter.

For the full story: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-miseducation-of-john-muir

Alicia:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/primate-diaries/how-john-muir-s-brand-of-conservation-led-to-the-decline-of-yosemite/

The historical story of how Yosemite was stolen by military force from the Native American’s who were the long time stewards of the land.

It was this skewed interpretation of U.S. wilderness that John Muir had successfully promoted, a vision that has haunted the conservation movement ever since. In his famous nineteenth-century travel writings in the Sierra Nevada Mountains Muir described Yosemite not just as a picturesque marvel of nature, but as something divine that was beyond human frailties. The landscape of the “Sierra Cathedral Mountains” was a “temple lighted from above. But no temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite,” he wrote. It was a place that was “pure wildness” and where “no mark of man is visible upon it.”

“It’s not that Muir didn’t encounter native peoples in his travels. He did, but he found them to be “most ugly, and some of them altogether hideous.” For a wilderness as pure as his holy Yosemite “they seemed to have no right place in the landscape, and I was glad to see them fading out of sight down the pass.” But, ironically, these “strange creatures” as Muir described them were the ones responsible for many of the features that gave Yosemite Valley its park-like appearance, the “landscape gardens” that Muir so valued. It is this forgotten legacy that has undermined many of the successes in the U.S. and even the global conservation movement today, one that traces directly back to John Savage and John Muir and the first protected wilderness site that later became the model followed around the world.”

This article goes on to explain in detail how exactly the indigenous people of the region cared for the land, their impact on the wealth and health of the land, and the differences between their approach and the military/government approach installed by Muir. Very informative and worth your time to read.

There are no easy answers about how we as Humanity, should go about being good stewards of the land, while at the same time, sharing all of Mother Nature. But it definitely has never been handled correctly or successfully by the government CORPORATIONS, and Kingdoms, who hold the power, and all the wealth, while stealing from all other living beings Mother Nature’s gifts of life.

As many of us know the last 4 years have been an assault on freedom, coming in many disguises dished out in the forms of Transhumanism, through genetic manipulation, poisonous and mandatory vaccination, forced confinement, fear through propaganda resulting in loss of personal power and leading to helplessness and dis-ease, and down right genocide of not only the Human race, but the animals, and plants that we depend on.