In 2020, in the wake of the 2020 police murder of George Floyd,  and the movement to remove Confederate monuments across the country, Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club, wrote a controversial editorial accusing Muir of racist thoughts and announced that the club would shift towards investing in racial justice work and determine which of its monuments need to be renamed or removed. On July 22, 2020, the Brune wrote:  “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.”

As the New York Times explains in a 2023 article, “The blog post was an effort to acknowledge the group’s failings, but it drew a public rebuke from some board members and sparked a fierce internal fight.

“The Sierra Club, Mr. Brune wrote, had caused “significant and immeasurable harm,” adding that “as defenders of Black life pull down Confederate monuments across the country, we must also take this moment to re-examine our past and our substantial role in perpetuating white supremacy.”

“The post sparked a backlash from inside and outside the organization, with some board members publicly criticizing Mr. Brune and other prominent environmentalists and disputing his characterization of Mr. Muir. Mr. Brune left the organization in August 2021.”

Although some of Muir’s associates cited by Brune and others, such as Joseph LeConte, David Starr Jordan, and Henry Fairfield Osborn were closely related to the early eugenics movement in the United States. Muir did not espouse such beliefs which had its heyday only after his death. Throughout his life, he strongly believed in the equality of all people, despite their many differences.

Aaron Mair, who in 2015 became the first Black president of the Sierra Club board, stated that the contents and framing of Muir in Brune’s post “are a misrepresentation”. Mair went on to state that Michael Brune, “did not consult him or the other two Black board members before pushing ahead on what he called a “revisionist” and “ahistorical” account of Muir’s writings, thoughts and life.” Mair, along with two other Sierra Club board members, Chad Hanson and Mary Ann Nelson, wrote a response to Brune’s attack on Muir, writing:

…while some of Muir’s colleagues promoted White supremacist myths and exclusionary views regarding national parks and forests, Muir spoke out about the importance of making these areas accessible and encouraging all people to experience them, writing, “Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our hearts; and if people in general could be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in the way of forest preservation would vanish.” He came to believe deeply in the equality of all people, writing, “We all flow from one fountain Soul. All are expressions of one Love. God does not appear, and flow out, only from narrow chinks and round bored wells here and there in favored races and places.”

When Michael Brune published his original diatribe against John Muir, he did not consult with the Sierra Club’s own established “John Muir Education Team” which was composed of a dozen Muir scholars. If Brune and the Sierra Club’s Board of Directors had consulted with that team, they would have shown that Muir is actually an examplar for the kind of evolution and transformation we need as a society. Muir largely – if incompletely by modern standards – overcame cultural prejudices that were widespread during his time and in his culture. The issue could have been used in a positive way to promote greater inclusion and diversity rather than using shaming to promote anger and divisiveness.  And yet, ironically  the Board chose to sanction two of its own board members who attempted to set the record straight about John Muir, because their article “left many leaders within the Sierra Club feeling undermined.”

Unfortunately, what Michael Brune originally wrote  has been translated by many into an inaccurate blanket belief that  “John Muir was a racist” without regard to the full context of Muir’s writings and his life experiences. This is despite the fact that the Sierra Club itself put together a special task force to study Michael Brune’s original allegation.  The Task Force – with a majority of racial minority members – concluded that while John Muir used derogatory language about Indigenous people which “created harm,” in fact:

“Muir later recognized and appreciated the achievements of Indigenous people and spoke about the equality of all people and the importance of making public lands accessible for all.”

This Sierra Club Task Force also examined Muir’s relationships with prominent scientists of the day like Henry Fairfield Osborne Sr., Joseph LeConte Sr., and David Starr Jordan, who long after Muir’s death espoused pseudoscientific theories that people of color were inferior, and ultimately the task force concluding:  “There is no evidence John Muir supported their beliefs.” 

The task force’s official messaging guidance, later formally approved and adopted by the full Sierra Club Board of Directors, reads:

“John Muir, one of the Sierra Club’s founders, sparked the movement to preserve millions of acres of land from logging and mining, and inspired generations of people to protect nature. The Sierra Club recognizes the importance of Muir’s conservation efforts with regard to designation of national parks, national forests, and rangelands, which prevented hundreds of millions of acres from being privatized and transferred into the hands of white logging, mining, and livestock grazing corporations enabled by 19th century colonization laws like the Timber and Stone Act, Homestead Acts, and Desert Lands Act. John Muir is a complex historical figure and a symbol of the early conservation movement. The Sierra Club acknowledges that John Muir used derogatory language about Black Americans and Indigenous people that created harm. Muir later recognized and appreciated the achievements of Indigenous people and spoke about the equality of all people and the importance of making public lands accessible for all.”

Despite this clarification, and considerable internal and public debate over the issue, the Club has increasingly chosen to distance itself from its founder, and its board of directors and staff have even publicly and inconsistently departed from that statement – which was intended to be the Club’s internal messaging guidance. Concerned about issues of race, the Sierra Club in 2020 even abandoned the name for its long-standing John Muir Award in 2020, and dropped use of his name for its highest donors, the John Muir Society, in 2023.  (See more details about these actions below.)  These moves have cost the Club a considerable number of long-term members and a considerable amount of money.

A few comments from more knowledgeable Sierra Club members and non-members of like, in particular Muir scholars and historians, help show that those truly familiar with Muir’s extensive writings do not accept the blanket accusation of racism levied against Muir, calling for a far more nuanced view:

Writing less than a month after the Brune opinion piece, Jacquetta Megarry contended that the Sierra Club had nothing to apologize for in John Muir, observing “The anachronistic self-flagellation of the club’s present leaders does nothing to serve its long-term goals. They are displaying considerable ignorance of their founder member’s early life, his nuanced writings and above all of the attitudes prevalent when he lived.”

Lee Stetson (well known for three decades of live portrayal performances of Muir and a recipient of awards from the Sierra Club) wrote, “To attribute racist comments to Muir…You’d have to ignore his Alaskan immersion in the fully intact Indian cultures of Northwest, to disregard his entire lifetime of considered thoughts and good deeds, and to turn your back on any kind of historical perspective. It’s unjust and stupid, but you could do it.”

Likewise, the preeminent Muir biographer, Dr. Donald Worster, soon responded to the Brune posting, coming to the same conclusion:  “Muir has been dead for more than a century, but if he could speak from the grave, I can easily imagine him agreeing that systemic racism is bad and should be repudiated, for he never published a word in support of black slavery, racial segregation, the Confederacy, forced sterilization of minorities, or genocidal policies toward Native Americans.”

Noted science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson wrote, “The current Sierra Club board of directors should be removed for egregious and unnecessary damage to the reputation of John Muir and of the Sierra Club as a rational group of people. (Read more about noted science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson’s views about the Sierra Club and John Muir here.)

Sierra Club national Board member Chad Hanson further wrote in response: “Muir wrote repeatedly about the intelligence and dignity of Native Americans, and honored how traditional Indigenous peoples lived in peaceful coexistence with Nature and wild creatures, expressing his view that Native peoples ‘rank above’ white settlers, who he increasingly described as selfish, base, and lacking honor. This would become a constant theme in Muir’s writings, as he attacked the dominant white culture’s destructive and greedy ways, and its anthrosupremacist mindset that placed humans above all else and recognized no intrinsic value in ecosystems or wildlife species beyond whatever profit could be gained by exploiting them.”

In 2021, Guy Saperstein, one of America’s leading long-time Civil Rights attorneys and long-time President of the Sierra Club Foundation, wrote to the Sierra Club Board directors: “A year and a half ago, I stated my objections to the gratuitous trash job the Sierra Club had done on its founder, John Muir. Since then, the scholarship supporting Muir’s legacy has only gotten stronger and the attack on his name weaker. The Sierra Club’s attack on him appears even dumber than it did then.”

Although Muir’s views are typically represented as a change from his earliest days to maturity and appreciation upon meeting the Alaska Natives, Muir expressed egalitarian principles even earlier.

Muir’s major modern biographer, Donald Worster, discovered a somewhat obscure newspaper article, written by Muir in 1876. In it, Muir suggested a “Centennial [of the Declaration of Independence] Freedom Act” or “law of rest” that would “set free the many urban slaves” by mandating vacation time for “men, women and children of every creed and color from every nation under the sun.”

Muir did in fact speak and write more than once about the equality of all people, “regardless of color, or race,” and wrote about the immorality of slavery in his final book, Travels in Alaska. When talking with the Alaska Natives, Muir said:

…how we were all children of one father; sketched the characteristics of the different races of mankind, showing that no matter how far apart their countries were, how they differed in color, size, language, etc. and no matter how different and how various the ways in which they got a living, that the white man and all the people of the world were essentially alike, that we all had ten fingers and toes and our bodies were the same, whether white, brown, black or different colors, and speak different languages.