Ken Burns’ latest film chronicles the slaughter and revival of the ‘American Buffalo’

“The American Buffalo,” Ken Burns’ upcoming documentary, took four years to produce, but the idea behind it can be traced back more than 30 years.

Burns recently found an earlier version of a bison movie proposal in his files. It was written in the mid-1990s and has been discussed since the late 1980s. The legendary filmmaker, known for his sprawling, multi-episode historical documentaries, says that sometimes a film idea gets the green light right away and spreads in a relatively short amount of time. But the story of the bison — and its role in American history — took a back seat while Burns made a bunch of other big movies.

“And now I’m starting to think that I needed that time — we needed that time — to do this,” he says in an interview with the Montana Free Press. “To finish ‘Lewis and Clark,’ to do ‘The National Parks,’ to do ‘The Dust Bowl,’ to do all the other projects that we’ve done, and finally get down to telling this story.”

“The American Buffalo” is a four-hour, two-part series that will premiere on PBS in October, though Burns will be in Missoula for a free preview on June 8. It was written by Dayton Duncan, who wrote “Dust Bowl” and other Burns documentaries, and produced by Julie Dunphy, who produced “Country Music,” among others. Much of it was filmed in Montana, and the film contains numerous interviews with Montana historians. It takes viewers through 10,000 years of North American history to tell the story of the iconic creature and the events and people that influenced it.

The film pays particular attention to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when bison were nearly extinct and then, incredibly, revived. Classic western characters appear – Buffalo Bill Cody, for example – and familiar ground is covered, but the film focuses specifically on the experiences of indigenous people, focusing on the bison’s inextricable relationship with the indigenous people of North America for thousands of years and what happened when that link was attacked. Much of this story is told from an indigenous perspective, through interviews with scholars, tribal leaders, and land experts who provide worldviews and knowledge that disrupt the classic narrative.

“We spent a long time absolutely certain that only one point of view ever mattered,” says Burns. “Even if he sympathized with other points of view, he still had his own kind of tyranny. And at that point we just have to stop and learn from other people.”

When MTFP caught up with Burns, he had just come from work on the film’s audio mix. Rewatching it inspired him. “It occupies every inch of my mind,” he says.

Even though he knows every inch of her, he still finds the reality of the story shocking.

“One thing that stuck in my heart today,” says Burns, “is something [retired University of Montana history professor] Dan Flores says [in his interview] for it being the largest slaughter of animals in the history of the world. Obviously, not just the buffalo, but the elk, and the antelope, and the wolf, and the coyote, and everything. And it’s stunning if you think about it.”

Burns calls “The American Buffalo” a story in three acts. The first act establishes how integrated the bison and the native people were with their landscape. Babies were swaddled in buffalo robes, and when they grew old and died, they were swaddled in them again. By the end of the act, when the destruction of the bison devastates these complex spiritual and ecological connections, the film turns to the true horror of it. Rotting corpses and picked bones illustrate the grotesque waste. But the pain of it all is specifically conveyed through interviews with local residents woven into the film, who reveal the trauma of it in such a personal way.

In an interview, Rosalyn LaPierre, a Blackfeet and Métis writer, environmental historian and ethnobotanist who teaches in UM’s Environmental Studies Program, explains the rolling topographic slopes where bison bathe and drink. The levees served animals on the prairie, but also hosted the growth of medicinal plants. When the bison were almost killed, the unused rollers no longer grew these plants.

But American Buffalo is meant to be a story of hope, and the second act seeks to tell the story of different people—each with their own motives and imperfections—trying to bring back the bison herds.

“And the third act is this big question, like, what are we going to do now?” Burns says. “Yes, the buffalo is saved, but do you know where is the ecosystem that supports them? right If they stay in storage, they get fat. If they are only in protected lands.

If The American Buffalo had been created 30 years ago, it would not have been able to document some of the triumphs that bison and indigenous peoples have recently experienced. In 2020, the National Bison Area—established in 1908 by the federal government on the Flathead Indian Reservation without tribal consent—was restored to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. Now called the Bison Range, the 18,000 acres of undeveloped land is home to 350 bison and growing. Germaine White, Information and Education Specialist at CSKT, was interviewed for the film. She told MTFP that the documentary tells an important story that many people — even those who grew up in Montana just hours from bison range — don’t fully understand.

“I think the story of the bison is one of the most compelling and heartbreaking wildlife stories in all of American history,” she says. “And I think the extraordinary, extraordinary efforts that are being made right now to restore the bison herds — that has made me incredibly hopeful for the indigenous people. The recovery of plains bison and bison numbers is a huge effort to rebalance the natural world in a way that we don’t even fully understand yet.”

For White, the film also holds some hope for the country’s tradition of telling stories about the West. Getting to the heart of painful stories, she notes, can pave the way for restorative solutions.

“It’s like Nazi Germany,” she says. “What was so incredibly brave of Germany after World War II is that they owned it. I don’t know that this country has ever really faced our history. It’s a very dark story, and I don’t know if the systematic genocide, land theft, and subsequent efforts at erasure is a story that’s been so widely told. But I think this is a time when people understand that it’s important to tell the complexity of our story. All this.”

Burns agrees.

“It’s about accepting that something and the opposite of something — as Wynton Marsalis told me in our jazz series — can be true at the same time,” he says. “And that’s life. I mean, that’s the genius of Shakespeare. This is the best poetry, this is the best movies. All of them are complex and full of subtext and contradictions. And so you tell it’s a good story. Stories are distinguished because they are not arguments. That’s all we do now is argue. right And writer Richard Powers said that the best arguments in the world won’t change a person’s point of view. The only thing that can do that is a good story.

Burns made his 1996 documentary The West with a certain determination to avoid buying into the fables and mythologies of white people about gunslingers and outlaws. He wanted to dig deeper. But better storytelling sometimes requires filmmakers to evolve with the times as culture changes. Now there is more pressure to center local voices in arts and education, not just a seat at the table, but a leading role. Burns says that bringing to the fore the perspectives of people like White and Lapierre, who understand the story on a more personal, ancestral level, gave the film more depth. The film’s third act, which features commentary from land expert George Horse Kepcher Jr., Aaniiih, is an invitation to viewers to entertain a set of values ​​about land, economics, ecology, and even storytelling itself.

“I love the West and I love buffalo,” Burns says. “And I love trying to tell stories. But I think maybe if I had to describe it – how I feel about it – it’s in terms of George Horse Capture Jr. What he says contradicts Manifest Destiny. And it just helps stop that arrogant impulse of my accumulated knowledge and dissolves it on the spot. What you’re left with is a kind of peaceful silence that comes from him that begs you to see things from a different perspective.

A screening of the film hosted by Montana PBS will screen at the Wilma Theater in Missoula on Thursday, June 8. The event features a panel discussion with Ken Burns, writer Dayton Duncan, producer Julie Dunphy, historian Rosalyn LaPierre, and National Wildlife Federation Buffalo Tribal Program Senior Manager Jason Baldes. Doors open at 6.30pm and the event – free to the public – starts at 7pm