Podcast | How historic racism limits access to the PNW wilderness
Many preservation advocates, from John Muir to Teddy Roosevelt, held discriminatory views that continue to affect equality in outdoor recreation.
Alison Mariella Désir and Knute Berger dig into the complexities of history on the set of Mossback’s Northwest. (Michael McClinton/Cascade PBS)
A few seasons ago, the Mossback’s Northwest video series profiled Catherine Montgomery, an early 20th-century wilderness advocate who has been dubbed “the Mother of the Pacific Crest Trail.”
But after the video aired, a viewer reached out with some more information: Catherine Montgomery, a “progressive” of her time, expressed extremely racist views.
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This, unfortunately, isn’t a new story. Many American heroes, including in the context of wilderness access and preservation, perpetuated racism and exclusion. Cascade PBS’s resident historian Knute Berger invited Alison Mariella Désir, host of the Cascade PBS video series Out & Back, to join him in an episode of Mossback’s Northwest to discuss these uncomfortable and lesser-known truths.
In this episode of Mossback, Berger joins Désir and co-host Stephen Hegg to dig even deeper into the big questions of wilderness access: How many celebrated environmentalists, from John Muir to John James Audubon, did and said unconscionable things? What do we do with this knowledge? And what impact has this history of bigotry had on the experiences of people of color in outdoor recreation today? Plus, Désir shares stories rarely told about the ways people of color have always participated in – and championed access to – the great outdoors.
