Nature Gap: Why Outdoor Spaces Lack Diversity and Inclusion

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• The reasons behind this go beyond the fact that people of color are three times more likely than white people to live in places that have no immediate access to nature.

• For Muir, who co-founded the organization in 1892, Indigenous people “seemed to have no right place in the landscape” despite the fact that they had lived there for thousands of years. He also believed that Indigenous peoples’ villages and their ways of life should be destroyed in order to have “unblighted, unredeemed wilderness.”

• He approached her to politely ask if she could put a leash on her dog, per the park rules, and she refused. After he started recording the exchange, Cooper called 911 to report that “an African-American man is threatening me and my dog.”

• No, no, no. Blacks did it, and despite all odds, they found a way to enjoy outdoor recreation and they made significant contributions to national parks and the great outdoors in the United States.'”