How does the outdoor industry profit off of “the wilderness” as an extractive, consumable experience? How have outdoor apparel companies benefited from sanitizing the history of national parks and public lands? And what does it mean to recognize the colonial mentality behind certain forms of exploration — bagging peaks, checking off trails, and securing photographs of scenic spots without going any deeper?
In our latest Green Dreamer podcast episode, I speak with Joseph Whitson, a political ecologist and the author of Marketing the Wilderness.
Join us as we peel back the layers of the recreation-industrial complex — politicizing the idea of “protecting the wilderness” often portrayed as a bipartisan interest — and sit with what it means to travel, hike, and recreate in the “great outdoors” while confronting questions of complicity ~
Highlights from our conversation I’m still sitting with…
This part on the often extractive dynamic around outdoor recreation and “exploration”…
Joseph Whitson: When we talk about exploration, when it comes to how it’s represented in outdoor marketing, recreation, it’s one directional, right? It’s conquering, it’s bagging peaks. It’s checking off trails, checking off places that you’re going to go.
That conquering language is directly related to a very real era of exploration in American past, one that was connected to real violence and a history of genocide in the United States.
There’s a direct connection between those languages, although right now it’s this kind of performance of that. We’re pretending to be explorers, we’re pretending to be pioneers, we’re pretending to be adventurous when we go out, because those ideas are so attached to other ideas about masculinity and about what it means to be American, kind of self-actualization.
They’re really powerful marketing tools. So there’s a reason the outdoor recreation leans into these archetypes. […]
So that leads into kind of the continued wilderness management of these places as opposed to a much more relational model.
So yeah, what is the alternative? I think curiosity has to be married to reciprocity. It can’t be uni-directional. We’re not there to just learn about the land. We have to bring ourselves to that. What are we giving back to the land? How are we stewarding the land? How is the land given agency over itself in certain ways, as opposed to just thinking about the land as this inanimate piece that we go and we produce ourselves on? It’s a very different way of thinking, and one that’s a little bit less commodifiable than this exploration ideal.
This part on the colonial vision of “wilderness” that outdoors recreation companies have perpetuated and profited off of…
Joseph Whitson: In Yosemite National Park, up to the early 20th century, there were still Ahwahnechee people that lived in the park. But by the mid-20th century they had been fully removed, and it was to produce this new version of what I call untrammeled wilderness. That language comes from the Wilderness Act, and then it was picked up by outdoor recreation companies.
So early 20th century, tourism, railroads, outdoor recreation was still part of building this. We see that in Abercrombie and Fitch, LL Bean. Mid 20s, later 20th century, these companies are still around, but we see this huge explosion in outdoor recreation, Patagonia, The North Face, Black Diamond, some of these climbing companies… And they’re the ones who really pushed this new narrative of ‘pristine nature,’ of exploration, of the new version of wilderness.
This part on how Joseph came to critique the outdoor recreation industrial complex…
Joseph Whitson: One of the things that we did was we worked very closely with the local Dakota tribes in the Twin Cities on interpretation, on how they wanted stories to be told. […] Being in that space, it was a big learning space for me….
At the same time, because none of these jobs pay enough, I was doing, you know, kind of influencer work, working with outdoor companies here in the Twin Cities and some outside as well. Photography, writing, telling the stories of products. Telling stories of tourism agencies. How are we selling land in a certain way?
Those companies and those communities were not thinking about Indigenous peoples at all. They were not thinking about what our responsibility is. They were portraying a wilderness area. They were talking about exploration. They were talking about kind of reproducing some of these tropes that I talk about in the book but without any relationship. […]
In marketing, we talk a lot about audience and who is our audience... The stuff I read in marketing, the wilderness, the book, this is not anything that’s new to Indigenous peoples. But other white outdoor recreations people that I was working with, these companies, people who are climbers, runners, outdoors people. They are constantly surprised.
You’d think it’d be something people have thought about, but they [often haven’t].
So for me it was thinking about, how can I, who have some of these relationships, be a conduit?
Cozy up and tap in ~
Tune into our full audio discussion with the embedded audio player on Substack or via Green Dreamer EP475; and join as a supporting subscriber to watch the bonus video version of our conversation here!
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You can also make a one-time donation via here.
About our guest ~
Dr. Joseph Whitson is a political ecologist and marketing strategist who writes about public lands, the outdoor industry, and environmental justice issues. His work bridges the gap between scholarly research and practical application, aiming to promote sustainability and equity in the outdoors.
Artistic credits ~
(B/c we cherish art from real humans!!)
Follow and browse more from our episode artwork’s illustrator: Margaux Samson-Abadie (Instagram @nanofevrier)
Jive to this episode’s musical offering: “Eden” by Ryne Meadow
Sink in deeper ~
Marketing the Wilderness: Outdoor Recreation, Indigenous Activism, and the Battle Over Public Lands, a book by Joseph Whitson
Playing Indian, a book by Philip J. Deloria
Learn more about the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition
Read how Indigenous youths finish historic journey down Klamath River after dams removed
Discover High Country News
Rhizome out further ~
Mark David Spence: Unpacking the colonial roots of how national parks were established (Ep292)
Hilding Neilson: Astro-colonialism and honoring the stories of our dark skies (Ep413)
Imagine, embody, alchemize ~
To support Green Dreamer and to translate our intellectual explorations into more embodied practice, I welcome you to join alchemize, our 12-week, audio-based program of daily imagination and creative practices — an experimental invitation to sit with the mess, stretch comforts and alternatives, and disrupt status quo ways of thinking, sensing, being, and relating. Learn more here.
What’s next?
Coming soon are our interviews with:
Kirsten Bradley of Milkwood on community building through a permaculture lens;
Carry Somers of The Nature of Fashion: A Botanical Story of Our Material Lives;
Adrian Sutherland of The Work of Our Hands: A Cree Meditation on the Real World; and more...
Stay tuned, and thank you so much for supporting our interviews and this reader-powered newsletter!! x
