by Ryan M. Yonk
On March 1, Yosemite National Park
changed vendors, dumping Delaware North in favor of Aramark, with a $2 billion
concession contract for the next 15 years. The shift prompted visitors to snap
up items from the Ahwahnee Hotel and Curry Village, longstanding landmarks soon
to be renamed. The true Yosemite memorabilia, however, goes all the way back to
the days of John Muir.
The influential naturalist and
conservationist has been called a “wilderness prophet” and the father of our
national parks. Dozens of places are named after him and his writings
contributed greatly to the creation of Sequoia, Mount Rainier, Petrified
Forest, Grand Canyon, and Yosemite National Parks.
John Muir was an advocate of views
that perceive human activity at odds with the “balance of nature.” He devoted
his life to creating parks and wild areas that did not contain people, with the
exception of naturalists and tourists. Many of his ideas took shape when he
visited and lived in California’s Yosemite Valley, a place of stunning natural
beauty.
There he saw the Miwok Indians
growing crops, white settlers raising sheep, and miners seeking gold and other
minerals. Muir decided that “the other occupants had to go.”Although Muir
claimed to oppose the oppression of Native Americans, he fully supported the
extraction of Miwoks from Yosemite, referring to them as “dirty,” “deadly,” and
“lazy.”
For John Muir, it was more important
to maintain the “balance of nature” than to allow the Miwok Indians to live off
the land. Muir’s ideology about the “balance of nature” within national parks
was so influential that the Yosemite model spread to other national parks,
including Yellowstone, where the forced evictions killed 300 Shoshone in one
day.
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