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While I do not long to just criticize Muir, to start off the discussion of him I think it is necessary to express what may be the greatest flaw Muir's view on the environment holds.

In Chapter 5 of The Mountains in California, Muir describes the Native Americans as, "mostly ugly, and some of them altogether hideous". He made unnecessary judgements like saying the dirt on their faces was probably so ancient it would carry important geological results if researched.

Muir describes these human beings as specimen, and regards them as a fleeting moment.

What particularly interests me in this is the fact that they can be included in a portrait of what the landscape is, but do not think the empathy and emotion that paints such people in the picture exists in any other color than a dark gray that ruins the beauty of the valley.

Despite a peaceful interaction, Muir later writes in the same chapter that he felt nervous sleeping in the proximity of them. A statement that later becomes filled with irony when one considers that for over a century after, their presence in this moment would go largely unrecognized in the history of the Yosemite.

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Kantor and the Preservation of American Culture

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Kantor and the Preservation of American Culture

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In Kantor's conclusion, the words "National parks do not preserve what the West was; they preserve a West which never was" stand out. These words call out a common, problematic concept that rids Native American culture from the idea of nature. People often say that history is written by the victors, the most dominant faction gains control of the whole. Muir, coming from a position of privilege, was able to control the narrative around topics of nature to fit his narrative. While privilege can be used as a powerful tool to reach the minds of many, in this case it just disregarded the silenced voices. Nature was described as always being something they made it, it became cultural. One may argue it was always cultural, but the culture presented in the National Parks originally was natural whereas what was preserved was devoid of any natural means.

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Kantor and Muir both made arguments against policy, albeit Kantor's policies were specific whereas Muir's were more general. Kantor's issue with many policies is that they had "no teeth", and that many involving Native Americans were simply just nice sounding words on a page. They were almost like a consultation prize for centuries of pain.

Muir on the other hand had an interesting point of view that he made clear in a speech, "One soldier in the woods, armed with authority and a gun, would be more effective in forest preservation than millions of forbidding notices.". This idea of the militarization of nature is not unlike American values which do seem to favor rapid militarization, but it does present an argument of who is allowed to be violent in nature? Is one soldier in the woods a policy worth defending over the empty promises given to those who inhabited the woods first?

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Perhaps the most profound aspect of Kantor's argument within his piece is the fact that his conclusion is really quite simple. Kantor is not actually asking for the full returning of the parks to the Native Americans, although I am sure this would be something enjoyed.

Kantor is asking that the parks at least do a better job at educating people about the lands and the history. Not to criticize classmates or agree to heavily with Kantor, but I saw comments saying that nothing about this can be so simple however I viewed this concept as very simple.

Between the two writers, we saw one manage to help erase the history and create new history. In the modern world, why is it such a hard request to include education?

Muir believed that the best way to experience nature was to see it yourself, on a spiritual level if possible. While this is a statement I feel can be generally agreed upon, the nature they are seeing fails to educate you on the land's history. Kantor's wish for the land to be honest is rooted in realistic expectations, as nothing can be done to actually make up for the centuries lost.

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When talking about Yellowstone, Kantor said, "America had created its first uninhabited wilderness." What is interesting about this comment is so simple and able to be read without fully digested. To say that America had created its first uninhabited wilderness is to summarize years of pain and suffering. To this day, I feel like many still probably think about a pre-colonial time as quite empty and a "new world". As well, when people go to reconnect with nature they mean escape from society for a while. If we are to talk about nature and culture then what Kantor has proposed is an idea of a black and white separation created by the government.

In a way, America has never had a separation of Nature and Culture. If one were to ask where you could find strictly culture or strictly nature at any point in American history with any location, there would be no clear answer.

An "uninhabited wilderness" is just one that has been robbed of its culture, and yet that reflects culture.

If all of that can be true, then who is to say if the parks are even natural?

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Michelle Nijhuis wrote an interesting piece that I do think points out something that Kantor fails to mention within his piece. Nijhuis points out the idea of conservation as a whole and how, while Muir's ideas were fundamentally corrupted with white supremacy or at the very least he was compliant with racism, Muir did start the Sierra Club which has done a lot of good with preservation.

Nijhuis wrote, "Conservation is, after all, accomplished by humans, and a movement that includes more of us will be more successful." While I do think it is possible for the concept of a large support system to become a large mob if their support is full of hate, the club seems to have done a lot of good that has not erased the past, but Muir's impact did help to stop a lot of damaging projects and the like.

I think this is necessary to point out that it is easy for some people like Kantor to criticize the problematic elements of environmentalists, but that two things can be true at the same time. Muir may have built an idea of nature that is largely against Native Americans, but his idea of nature still rallied those to protect certain elements of nature.

While the concept of nature that was protected rids itself of the original, natural cultural and replacing it with one created by a small club, one must consider the idea that the club helped protect the environment.

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Who can say if the parks even are natural? The apparent answer to the question I posed in a Kantor post is Muir.

According to the National Park Service's official website, Muir popularized the idea of "nature should be protected for its own sake."

He seemed to argue that humans should experience nature, but shouldn't really interfere with it. While I do think that this statement misses the mark given how directly humans are allowed to affect nature in other writings by him, I think it presents a very interesting opposition to Kantor's view.

While Muir may have had clear prejudice against Native Americans, he did view nature as something that everyone should be able to experience in their own right, assuming they view it with what he deemed as a respectful lens that did not seem to encompass all people's traditions, and imagined a place for nature to thrive and just be viewed.

This preservation of Nature that does not necessarily protect humans, although climate change of course harms us all, is different than Kantor's view of special rights being owed to Native Americans. However, Muir's viewpoint on her lacks the nuance of admitting that in order to achieve this dream it would have to cancel the human interference already culturally going on.

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It should be noted that the statement from the National Park Service comes in a category listed as "Kids/Youth/Teens Learn". What is important about this is it shows a lasting impact from Muir that won't just affect how researchers of the environment view the environment and its history, but also young and impressionable people. This is not a good or a bad observation of Muir, and instead stating that he was in a privileged position where his words matter to more than the few who choose to really study them. 

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One interesting comparison between Kantor and Muir that goes beyond critics racism against Native Americans is their view on hunting. While I am not sure that Kantor gives a very specific point on hunting and the ethics of it, Kantor argues that Native Americans, specifically in Alaska, should be offered more rights than just being able to hunt the wildlife.

It is interesting Kantor does believe that hunting wildlife should be a right afforded to Native Americans, because Muir seemed to advocate against hunting in general. The Sierra Club's own website expresses how much he believed wildlife not only deserved to not be hunted but also should have been given the right to communicate with us as we have a great deal to learn from them.

While I do not believe Kantor's belief in the rights the Native Americans should have in modern America has much personal thoughts about hunting in general, it is interesting to see the two appear to have differing opinions with such different contexts.

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Muir and Kantor do differ in one way that is stated in "Don't Cancel John Muir", which is of course the concept that Muir is a product of his time. While Muir could influence others, Muir reflected a sentiment in America that had already been ongoing and existed on governmental levels.

In an ironic way, Kantor's argument can only exist due to the very liberal movements that started with the internet or at the very least connection of the world through development. Kantor is allowed to make this arguments so freely due to what some people would argue is the most cultural, or lack of nature, space in the world: the online world. While I do not feel like nature cannot exist online as the internet can harm and save nature while also providing a glimpse into human nature, it still is a bit of a unique predicament for Kantor and Muir.

I do not feel like it excuses anyone to say "they're a product of their time" to disregard their harmful acts, it has to be considered that environmentalism is viewed very differently now and the environment is in a very different place. It is not a deep observation, but it is a necessary distinction.

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Kantor also indirectly brings up the concept of Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons being kind of a viewpoint against Native Americans. Writers like Muir, and evidently the majority of the government for centuries, had to have had some sense of Native Americans being catalysts of overconsumption. There is a sense that Native Americans not being able to coexist with the animals and settlers.

The idea is of course ludicrous because it is a very colonial viewpoint that assumes all people are naturally drawn to making borderlines, taking out of consideration the fact that the Native Americans had peacefully existed in the area long before it was "discovered" without any real issues of coexisting. It is of course the colonizers who could not coexist and fell into overconsumption as, even in trying to protect the land, Kantor points out that efforts to move them off the land caused a Native American extinction.

What is most interesting about this failure to coexist is that Kantor points out there was an attempt at erasing their history through writers stating there was little to none Native American influence in these locations, something that is easily proved by archaeologists/anthropologists. This all raises the question: how was the west won?