How Detroit Outdoors Gets More People Outside
It was hopefully the first of many camping adventures to come in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and Maya, along with her new friends stared up into the clear night sky. Their youthful excitement cut through the quiet of the late-night, and almost as if in response to their energy, shooting stars streaked across their view. It was the first time they had seen shooting stars. From this one special moment friendships and adventures continue to grow, and it's rooted in Detroit Outdoors.
It was hopefully the first of many camping adventures to come in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and Maya, along with her new friends stared up into the clear night sky. Their youthful excitement cut through the quiet of the late-night, and almost as if in response to their energy, shooting stars streaked across their view. It was the first time they had seen shooting stars. From this one special moment friendships and adventures continue to grow, and it's rooted in Detroit Outdoors.
The seeds for what would eventually become Detroit Outdoors were planted when First Lady Michelle Obama kicked off the Let's Move! Outside initiative. Multiple organizations in Detroit, including Detroit Parks & Recreation and YMCA Metro Detroit, faced the challenges in providing access: resources were tight, and the only campground in the city, Scout Hollow, was unusable. But, as Garrett Dempsey, Detroit Outdoors Program Director, put it, they were "realizing if we work together, and with a wider network of supporters...we could do some great things for Detroit youth and communities." It was that collaboration, and the impactful results of working together, that drove a lasting solution: the formation of a gear library, a training program, and the revitalization of Scout Hollow. The collaborative effort gave birth to an organization that has grown way beyond the answer to a challenge from the First Lady, by making memories, changing lives, and ultimately fostering community.
Detroit Outdoors is a collaboration between the Sierra Club Outdoors for All Campaign, YMCA of Metro Detroit, and Detroit Parks and Recreation, and is one part gear library, one part leadership training, one part youth program, and one part community connector. With expertise and weather-appropriate apparel and equipment available for loan, members and leaders ensure that youth, families, and anyone in the community that wants to get outdoors has the right skills and gear to make it happen. Detroit Outdoors gear library also shares space and gear with other local organizations. One such partner, Black to the Land, is a coalition of Black, Brown, and Indigenous Nature Enthusiasts and Environment Activists/Educators, intent on helping fellow BIPOC actively engage in meaningful outdoor adventures; such as Maya’s camping trip on the Upper Peninsula. Since receiving its first grant in 2017, Detroit Outdoors has been steadily growing in popularity and impact.
That impact goes beyond access to the outdoors. The programs and experiences made possible by Detroit Outdoors transform connections to the land: whether it's just someone's block, or land we all share.
Improving access is central to their mission, but at its core, access itself has an emotional, human component: trust. "It just seems when you look at the dominant narrative and what we see in the media... not everybody feels comfortable going to these public lands," Garrett explains. "We want to be a part of connecting all people to the outdoors. Helping everybody see a place for themselves in the outdoors." Gear and training play a part in that, but building trusting relationships is key. If people don't feel comfortable in an outdoor space, or with the people in that space with them, the gear won't matter.
"As far as the community connections, I think those connections have gotten a lot deeper," says Chris Jackson, Camping and Conservation Coordinator. Getting comfortable in outdoor spaces makes it easier to invite others into it. In turn, the effects of the program help to nurture trusting relationships, strengthening the fabric of the community just as much as the individuals that see their first shooting stars. "People have these life-changing experiences," says Chris, "So they share them with people, and people want to go have that experience, too."
As of December 2021, there is one gear library with over 1,000 items available for loan. But Detroit Outdoors has a vision (and the enthusiasm of the community) to expand to serve much more of the city, and beyond: with a gear library in every rec center, more green and outdoor spaces to share, and gear for more types of outdoor adventures. It's going to take partnerships across multiple levels with land managers, outdoor brands, and community organizations to make that happen. Showers Pass is thrilled to be a part of that, with an initial donation of over $6000 in new outdoor apparel donated in October 2021, but that is just one small piece of a much broader goal. Support from more organizations across multiple dimensions is needed to continue to nurture relationships, improve resource quantity and quality, and expand programming.
You can get involved, no matter where you are: Showers Pass' Enjoy All Elements program is continuing its partnership with Detroit Outdoors into 2022. With every #EnjoyAllElements tagged Instagram photo, every purchase on ShowersPass.com, and every hour logged through the challenge hub at EnjoyAllElements.com, Showers Pass will increase our donation to Detroit Outdoors and Outdoors Empowered Network.
Post by Sarah Jean Charniak, Showers Pass
NEWS: Sierra Club apologizes for John Muir's racist views
On Wednesday, July 22, 2020 the Sierra Club apologized for the legacy of John Muir's racism and its impacts on the environmental and conservation movements. I deeply appreciate the awareness and work that it takes to reckon with a history of complicity with structural racism, white supremacy, and colonialism. I have linked the article on NPR, and two articles from the Washington Post.
WASHINGTON POST: The Sierra Club apologized Wednesday for racist remarks its founder, naturalist John Muir, made more then a century ago as the influential environmental group grapples with a harmful history that perpetuated white supremacy. [...]
Muir, who founded the club in 1892, helped spawn the environmental movement and is called “father of our national parks,” figures prominently in what [ED Michael] Brune called a “truth-telling” about the group’s early history.[...]But Richard White, a Stanford history professor, said Muir’s advocacy for wilderness has an inherent racial bias.
Muir’s image of pristine wilderness unshaped by humans only existed if native people weren’t part of it. Even though they had been there for thousands of years, Muir wrote that they “seemed to have no right place in the landscape.” American Indians needed to be removed in order to reinvent those places as untouched.
“There is a dark underside here that will not be erased by just saying Muir was a racist,” White said. “I would leave Muir’s name on things but explain that, as hard as it may be to accept, it is not just Muir who was racist. The way we created the wilderness areas we now rightly prize was racist.” [...]“For all the harms the Sierra Club has caused, and continues to cause, to Black people, Indigenous people, and other people of color, I am deeply sorry,” Brune wrote.
I have struggled with this legacy, particularly as a parent teaching my children to both love the outdoors and be aware of the structural racism in the lands that we love. Together we have learned the many ways that parks, visitor centers, and other public lands give atrocities the passive tense and erase and/or romanticize indigenous history.
I acknowledge all the ways that I have benefited from this legacy, and, in particular, benefited from living on the occupied territory of the Yelamu Ramaytush Ohlone. Of course, recognition and apology are only the first steps of this process, and I rededicate myself to our OEN commitment to reducing barriers and participating in and leading the necessary culture change in the outdoors.
Be well,
Seraph
Washington Post (paywall)
Sierra Club apologizes for founder John Muir’s racist views
Liberal, progressive — and racist? The Sierra Club faces its white-supremacist history.
NPR
Institutional Racism In Outdoor Spaces
A week ago, George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis and Christian Cooper was threatened with police violence while birding in New York City. These incidents come on the heels of the murders of Breonna Taylor by the police, and Ahmaud Arbery while jogging, and a long history of police brutality and vigilante lynchings against Blacks and African Americans and other People of Color. Countless lives before them have also been threatened, harmed, or taken due to racism and bias against different races, ethnicities, and cultures. It must stop.
We all bore witness to the racist and mortal threat that Christian Cooper experienced while birding in New York City. This incident is indicative of the life-or-death consequences that can occur when our outdoor commons are appropriated by white privilege.
Cultural and institutional racism claims the outdoors as a “white space” and the Outdoors Empowered Network stands in solidarity with communities around the country and world for whom this form of white supremacy causes significant and lasting harm.
The Outdoors Empowered Network is composed of organizations from around the country striving to increase youth access to and enjoyment of the outdoors. We deeply believe in the potential for nature to bring health and wellbeing to young people and their families of all backgrounds and identities, but this can only happen when outdoor spaces are safe and outdoor leaders are sensitive to the realities of racism, inequity, and generational trauma.
All people should have equitable access to nature and the outdoors, but this requires actual safety, not just words and intentions. As long as the specter of racialized violence and hatred is present in outdoor common spaces, People of Color will not have equitable access or equitable experiences. Outdoors Empowered Network is committed to leading the culture change required to break down these barriers and dismantle the systems perpetuating untenable inequities and violence.
OEN Advisory Council, Board of Directors, and Staff
Appalachian Mountain Club
Bay Area Wilderness Training
Detroit Outdoors
Forest Preserves Of Cook County
Get Outdoors Leadville!
The Mountaineers
Video Short December 2019
Check out our two minute short, that shows what a difference the network, and connecting to the outdoors, can make!