Wilderness as Marketing Strategy: Joseph Whitson on the Outdoor Industry, Colonialism, and Land Back Futures

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Jessica DeWitt: As I mentioned in our prior communications, I feel as though we are intellectual kindred spirits! As someone who has focused most of my academic research and public writing on parks, public lands, and recreation and regularly uses and thinks critically about marketing, social media, and other digital communications tools in relation to environmental topics, Marketing the Wilderness resonated with me on multiple levels.

Can you start off by talking about your background and how your path eventually led to the writing of this book?

Joseph Whitson: For sure! This book comes out of a few different experiences. Before I started my grad program, I was working for a local park district in their heritage management division. In this job, I first encountered a lot of the laws and policies governing tribal consultation and worked with folks really dedicated to understanding and sensitively interpreting the layered histories of these outdoor spaces, especially Indigenous histories. At the same time, I was doing brand and marketing work for some outdoor companies, who were deeply unconcerned about representing these complexities and leaned into an aesthetic that in fact erased those histories.

When I started my American Studies grad program, I wanted to understand why this was the case—which led to a series of deeper questions including how these representations came to be, what political work they were doing, the tactics involved, and how they were being challenged by Indigenous communities. 

Cover of Marketing the Wilderness by Joseph Whitson

JD: Resonating in the background of your entire book is this idea of wildernessing. Can you explain this concept and how it interacts with other conceptions of wilderness.

JW: Wildernessing is the realization of our conceptions of wilderness. First we represent land as untouched, pristine, uninhabited—and then we craft policy and shape behavior in such a way that the land reflects that idea. Outdoor recreation is part of both the representation and the realization. 

This process is a part of the structure of settler colonialism in the United States and Canada. The wildernesses we create are designed not only to support recreational uses of land over and often at the expense of other traditional and contemporary Indigenous uses of the land, but also to reify a colonial relationship to land for settlers. They (we) are set up as explorers in an unspoiled Eden, reenacting the process of discovery and conquest. 

The wildernesses we create are designed not only to support recreational uses of land over and often at the expense of other traditional and contemporary Indigenous uses of the land, but also to reify a colonial relationship to land for settlers.

One of the things I show in my book, however, is that “wilderness” didn’t always mean what it does today, even for outdoor recreators. So the wildernessing that happened a hundred or more years ago, the conceptions of what wilderness should look like and the policies that shaped outdoor spaces to fit those conceptions, was different than what is happening today. Importantly, this isn’t inevitable, but because outdoor corporations profit off of this type of representation and land management, they are invested in maintaining it—even setting it up as the only alternative to extractive industries and total environmental exploitation. 

JD: I have argued that any argument for conservation that centers on the idea that “parks are not for profit” is inherently flawed and symptomatic of white privilege and denial in conservationist spaces that ultimately gatekeeps who can and cannot profit from public land. The outdoor recreation industry, as presented in your book, is an absolutely perfect example of this phenomena. Can you explain how the outdoor recreation industry has perfected its exploitation of the wilderness model in order to profit from colonial land theft while maintaining a positive public image?

JW: For outdoor recreation companies, the land is in many ways the product they are selling. Their profit comes from selling access to these lands either, as scholars like Rachel Gross argue, through providing gear that lets you properly experience the wilderness or by providing services like guiding. This is a $1.2 trillion industry that could not survive in the way it does without open, accessible public lands managed by the government—lands that exist as the result of Indigenous removal and genocide. This last part is not only uncomfortable for recreators, it undermines the claim settler states have over these lands. The wilderness model at once sweeps that uncomfortable history under the rug while, as I mentioned above, allowing non-Native recreators an embodied way of staking a fresh claim to the land. Which, in turn, is profitable to the industry.

However, the issue is more than just the outdoor industry profiting off of stolen land. It is that outdoor recreation provides a powerful, positive cover for continued settler-state control of the land—and this is true in both the U.S. and Canada. The wilderness model is a powerful idea, but the policies and protections supporting it are perpetually vulnerable. We have seen time and again, now perhaps more than ever, that when energy, security, or profit are on the line, recreational wilderness spaces can quickly be sacrificed. The economic power and goodwill created by our love of outdoor recreation and the need for wilderness in order to recreate is a bulwark against extraction, but it also justifies continued control by the very entity threatening the land. 

Most recent Instagram post from Patagonia as of 21 July 2025.

JD: A key part of Marketing the Wilderness is the Indigenous activism aspect. How are Indigenous peoples using social media and other tools to challenge the outdoor industry’s wilderness narratives? And how do you understand your work in relation to these activists? How are you showing up as an ally or accomplice in this space? 

JW: When social media first emerged as a medium with political agency, there was a lot of hope for the ways people could harness it to push back against entrenched systems of power. It was seen as more accessible, more democratic, a powerful tool for collective organizing and coalition building. We saw BLM and the Arab Spring come out of this momentum. But that optimism has faded over the last decade as we’ve seen social media used instead as a tool of surveillance, control, and misinformation—and, above all, a tool to monopolize attention and sell things to people. People have begun to ask whether social media can be a site of activism anymore? 

The thing is that Indigenous people have long worked to push back against colonial narrative and control under circumstances of heavy surveillance, control, and misinformation in the physical world. I won’t get into specific strategies here, but harnessing the power of social media is about understanding how information flows across these systems—what are the nodes of influence, who is watching and how are they watching, how does the algorithm drive visibility from one update to another? On Instagram, where I was mostly interacting, activists play into these flows to augment messages and against these flows to confuse the digital panopticon. 

For outdoor narratives in particular, I see folks calling out harmful representations in direct ways, addressing companies and marketers directly in ways that would be much harder in non-digital spaces. I also see Indigenous people putting themselves into the narratives in unexpected ways, ways that through satire or embodied presence undermine the wilderness mythology and force companies and consumers to stop and think a little deeper about what they take for granted about nature. 

For myself, being an ally is a question of audience. Indigenous people don’t need to be reminded of the role wilderness capitalism plays in the colonial project, but non-Native folks continually do.

For myself, being an ally is a question of audience. Indigenous people don’t need to be reminded of the role wilderness capitalism plays in the colonial project, but non-Native folks continually do. I see my work and this book as one way (and hopefully just one of many ways) that non-Native outdoor recreators can learn about and confront their own complicities in settler colonialism. One can only truly speak from one’s own experience (if that), but my experience as a white outdoorsperson working through these questions is one that is widely shared and my hope is that I can reach audiences that other activists may miss with a story that they can relate to. 

JD: My pathway into park scholarship is an intensely personal one. I grew up outside of a state park, and my family’s livelihood depended on the tourism that the park generated. My deep-seated affinity for parks and public lands regularly pushes up against my now serious criticisms of them as colonial institutions. Do you also experience this tension? If so, how do you reconcile this contradiction? 

JW: Yeah, absolutely. These parks are incredibly meaningful to a lot of people and obviously important economically and ecologically as well. As humans, we are drawn to outdoor spaces, and we are ourselves fundamentally part of the natural world. Study after study have shown the importance of being in natural areas to our health and wellbeing. And at the same time, they have these difficult histories and in their current form, continue to be parts of the ongoing structural colonial project. So there is always going to be a tension.

For me, part of addressing this tension is building a deeper relationship with the spaces I recreate in and with their communities of life. And this starts with learning about them. What are the histories of these spaces? Who are the people who lived here? Who did or continues to call this place home? What are the plant and animals that live here? Can you identify them? How do they relate to each other? What were the political and social choices made that shaped this landscape, and why were those choices made, and for whom were they made? You should for sure be doing this for the landscape you live in, even if it is urban. But you should also make an attempt for the places you are visiting, anywhere you are spending time. 

Answering these types of questions, learning about a place, builds a different kind of investment in it. They are no longer just beautiful backgrounds upon which you traverse, they are rich, layered, complex, giving ecosystems of which you are a part. You’re going to fight for a place like this differently, you’re going to protect it differently, and that is part of your reciprocal responsibility. 

In the end though, there will always be some kind of tension, some kind of compromise, and we have to be ok sitting in that place. 

A Land Back flag flies under the US Flag outside Aitkin County Courthouse in Aitkin, Minnesota
“A Land Back flag flies under the US Flag outside Aitkin County Courthouse in Aitkin, Minnesota” by Lorie Shaull is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

JD: I like to point out to people that parks and other public lands are very new in the grand scheme of things, and there is no reason to assume that they will exist in perpetuity in their current form. This year, as we see a new onslaught of federal threats to these public lands, US (and Canadian) citizens are rightfully worried about the future of these spaces. However, instead of moving forward and thinking about how we could improve our land management systems to be more just and to heed Indigenous calls for land back initiatives, the current environment seems to be leading to a doubling down on popular narratives of public land virtuosity and wilderness mythology. I really appreciated that you ended Marketing the Wilderness with a look to the future. Can you talk about what you see as possible pathways forward and if the current political climate has changed your viewpoint on the future since the book was published? 

JW: The wilderness model that emerged nearly a century ago is fracturing. It is increasingly hard to pretend that the wild spaces are truly untouched. Part of this is the result of things like climate change which affect every landscape, unlike more local impacts from traditional extraction and development, and part of it is a more widespread understanding about the history of the land driven by Indigenous activists.

What this means is that something needs to replace it. Doubling down on the wilderness mythology, which is what we’re seeing right now in response to the new threats, is understandable, but it’s a short term solution at best. It’s a system not just vulnerable to the current attacks—repeals of protections, expansion of extraction industries, and privatization—but conducive to it. The current political climate makes it more urgent, not less, that we reimagine what our relationship as Americans, and as Canadians, is to the natural world. 

The current political climate makes it more urgent, not less, that we reimagine what our relationship as Americans, and as Canadians, is to the natural world.

In the conclusion of my book, I suggest a handful of alternatives to our current system that I think are possible including a range of repatriation efforts, greater political rights for non-human entities, or even just a more balanced understanding of our current system that doesn’t rely on the purity of wilderness or the profitability of land. It’s easy to feel like our current system is inevitable, but there are more sustainable, most just, more reciprocal ways to engage with land. It just takes imagination and will. 

Learn More About Marketing the Wilderness

Dr. Joseph Whitson is a political ecologist and marketing strategist who writes about public lands, the outdoor industry, and Indigenous & environmental justice issues. His work bridges the gap between scholarly research and practical application, aiming to promote sustainability and equity in the outdoors.

Feature Image: “Northface Backpack” by m01229 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
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Jessica DeWitt

NiCHE Editor-in-Chief, Social Media Editor at Jessica M. DeWitt: Editing and Consulting
is an environmental historian of Canada and the United States, editor, project manager, consultant, and digital communications strategist. She earned her PhD in History from the University of Saskatchewan in 2019. She is an executive member, editor-in-chief, and social media editor for the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE). She is the Managing Editor for the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines and Associate Editor for Environmental Humanities. Closer to home, she is the President of the Saskatchewan History and Folklore Society, a Coordinating Team member of Showing Up for Racial Justice Saskatoon-Treaty Six, and a Conservation Advisory Committee member for the Meewasin Valley Authority. She focuses on developing digital techniques and communications that bridge the divide between academia and the general public in order to democratize knowledge access. You can find out more about her and her freelance services at jessicamdewitt.com.

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