A comeback story: Ken Burns’ ‘The American Buffalo’ details ‘an unmitigated tragedy’

Enter: “The American Buffalo,” a look at the animal’s perilous journey and its leap from extinction.

The story, Burns says, is an “unmitigated tragedy. The first episode is incredibly difficult to watch when a species that numbered as many as 50 or 60 million dwindled down to under a thousand.”

With the help of many, however, those numbers shifted, and the buffalo is no longer in jeopardy.

The documentary, Burns says, is really the first two acts of a three-act play. “To save a species as a zoo animal or an exhibition animal in a corral isn’t the same as saving them as wild and free… and that’s now going on.” Thanks to private citizens, the federal government and more than 80 tribes, they’re getting the same freedom deer and moose enjoy.

Connections

The Native American angle is particularly crucial.

“Tribes right now are returning bison to their communities,” says Rosalyn LaPier, a historian who is a member of the Blackfeet Metis. “One is for spiritual reasons but the other is for food sovereignty reasons. A lot of tribal communities are reintroducing bison (into their diet). On my home reservation, our tribe butchers our own bison and we can either buy that in a local grocery store or through our system of food that we share with elders and others who are low income.”

The meat, Burns says, is leaner and healthier. “And all of this sustainable.”

At one point, however, the buffalo – or bison – were targeted. Buffalo Bill, for example, “bragged of killing more than 4,000 buffalo,” Burns says. “At the end, he’s saving buffalo.” Theodore Roosevelt, who was called a white supremacist “was one of the best conservation presidents. He led the way in that regard. He thought the extermination of the buffalo was inevitable and a little bit sad. ‘It’s going to help us handle our Indian question,’ meaning ‘kill the buffalo, kill the Indian.’”

Unpacking the American buffalo story revealed the complexity of people involved, including those who were the animal’s advocates.

“You definitely know where we stand in ‘The Civil War’ about slavery,” Burns says. “You definitely know where we stand about the buffalo in this film. But, at the same time, we’re trying to create a bandwidth in which we can tolerate the complexity of human stuff. That’s how we get along with other people.”

A story of resilience

Burns says telling those stories also lets him talk about resilience – resilience of the species and resilience of the Native people who depended on them.

“I think we all carry the memories of all those things that we’ve done,” he says. “We’re not in a debate about censoring history. That doesn’t work. If we are exceptional, then we need to be incredibly self-critical at every moment and to dive deep into the stories, perhaps even more into the stories that are uncomfortable than in the comforting bromides that pass for American history.”

Julianna Brannum, a consulting producer and a member of the Comanche Nation, says there’s now a sense that “we’re almost rejoicing that we’re back together. It’s a spiritual moment for me when I interact with the buffalo.”

Adds LaPier: “I know it’s not just indigenous people who are interested in reestablishing this kind of relationship with bison. It’s non-indigenous people as well.”

To tell the story, Burns and his crew started researching and filming in 2020. “We were up and down the northern and southern plains,” says Producer Julie Dunfey. “We filmed a lot in Montana, Texas, Oklahoma and South Dakota.” Because of the pandemic, the team did 18 months of production work in six, calling on wildlife cinematographers “who could go out in their backyard without having to fly or stay in a hotel and do some filming with us. Tapping a lot of talent out there really enriches the visual part of the film.”

“The American Buffalo” airs Oct. 16 and 17 on PBS.