Robert Aquinas McNally

In the early days of the Sierra Nevada's national parks, the cavalry chased out shepherds, sheep, and Native hunters. Read it here.

With a little help from his friends, John Muir pitched national parks as wild sanctuaries for spiritually starved Americans. It proved a great PR strategy. Read it here.

Food shaming targets unwanted people as less than human. Read it here.

Built on anti-Indigenous violence, the Yosemite model started here then spread around the world. Read it here.

President Biden's proclamation declaring Sept. 2024 National Wilderness Month takes a wider, more inclusive view of the wild. Read about it here.

Labor Day weekend marks the 55th anniversary of my maiden backpack into the High Sierra. Awe was about to happen. Read it here.

Project 2025's blueprint for Christian nationalist autocracy calls for repealing the law. For wild spaces and the tribes, that's bad. Read it here.

Only a minority of the Native Californians destroyed in the 19th century fell to gunshot, knife, or hatchet. Genocide has less ghoulish ways to wreak its lethal harm. Read about it here.

For over a century after Yosemite's conquest, tribal people lived and worked in the national park. That couldn't last, of course. Read about it here.

Conquest turned in part on renaming conquered land to erase the least presence of the tribes. Then there were the lice. Conquest turned in part on renaming conquered land to erase the least presence of the tribes. Then there were the lice. Read it here.