John Muir in Native America
Muir's romantic vision obscured Indigenous ownership of the land—but a new generation is pulling away the veil
Photo-Illustrations by Cristiana Couceiro
Gerard Baker began his illustrious career with the National Park Service at 20. As a young patrol ranger in the 1970s, he often overheard the park interpreters while he collected trash or mowed lawns. "One thing I noticed," the Mandan/Hidatsa man from the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota told me, "is that we were never talked about. From the early, early days of the philosophies on American Indians, we were looked at as being nothing but so-called animals without even a soul. The animal that they move out of the way so they can have the land. And so, when they start making national parks, they didn't think about taking Indian land. They didn't think about that we had spiritual places. They didn't talk about that." When Baker started out in the Park Service, the park interpreters were mostly white, and the stories they told reflected white viewpoints—and blind spots.