Correspondent Tom Wilmer interviewed Robert McNally back in September 2024 about his new book Cast Out of Eden, chronicling the untold story of John Muir—
When McNally’s podcast interview aired it subsequently received so many positive comments that we are re-sharing McNally’s conversation as a best-of-the-best Journeys of Discover podcast.
McNalley says, ”Cast Out of Eden tells this neglected part of Muir’s story—from Lowland Scotland and the Wisconsin frontier to the Sierra Nevada’s granite heights and Alaska’s glacial fjords—and his take on the tribal nations he encountered and embrace of an ethos that forced those tribes from their homelands.
Although Muir questioned and worked against Euro-Americans’ distrust of wild spaces and deep-seated desire to tame and exploit them, his view excluded Native Americans as fallen peoples who stained the wilderness’s pristine sanctity.
Fortunately, in a transformation that a resurrected and updated Muir might approve, this long-standing injustice is beginning to be undone, as Indigenous nations and the federal government work together to ensure that quintessentially American lands from Bears Ears to Yosemite serve all Americans equally.
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