In The Breakthrough Institute article, “John Muir’s tormented landscape: Why conservation’s original sin always returns,” Nelson Institute dean, Paul Robbin and associate professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Sarah Moore explore the history of conservation in the United States and the trauma that surrounds a sometimes violent past through the lens of John Muir’s memoir, Boyhood and Youth.
Throughout the article, Robbins and Moore discuss the ways in which early conservationists such as Muir interacted with Native populations as well as the ways in which Native populations were written about and portrayed in these early publications. They discuss the connection between conservation and genocide and how these uncomfortable truths can be reconciled. In particular, they identify how Muir’s own traumas and reflections in Boyhood and Youth may offer lessons about how the United States can reconcile with its own difficult past.