The American Buffalo - General Discussion

[DanaK]

PBS 2-part documentary on the fall and rise of the buffalo in the US. Directed by longtime PBS collaborator Ken Burns. Part 1 will premiere on October 16 and Part 2 on October 17, 8-10pm ET each night. The doc will also stream on all station-branded PBS platforms

Press release from January https://www.pbs.org/about/about-pbs/blogs/news/new-ken-burns-film-explores-history-of-the-american-buffalo/

Trailer

 

[Shrek]

Looking forward to seeing this even though I know I'm going to get upset watching them almost being wiped out which I presume will be the first part.

[Bastet]

I prefer the ones Lynn Novick co-directs with him, but I'll always check out a Ken Burns documentary.  This is a subject that interests me, and I'm pleased to read Julianna Brannum (she is Comanche, and has produced several documentaries about indigenous people) is a consulting producer on this, and the director emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian was the senior advisor.

I'm pretty familiar with the story that will be told in the first part; from the PBS press release:

Quote

For thousands of generations, buffalo have evolved alongside Indigenous people who relied on them for food and shelter, and, in exchange for killing them, revered the animal. The stories of Native people anchor the series, including the Kiowa, Comanche and Cheyenne of the Southern Plains; the Pawnee of the Central Plains; the Salish, Kootenai, Lakota, Mandan-Hidatasa, Aaniiih, Crow, Northern Cheyenne and Blackfeet from the Northern Plains; and others.

The film includes interviews with leading Native American scholars, land experts and Tribal Nation members. Among those interviewed were Gerard Baker (Mandan-Hidatsa), George Horse Capture, Jr. (Aaniiih), Rosalyn LaPier (Blackfeet of Montana and Métis), N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa), Marcia Pablo (Pend d’Oreille and Kootenai), Ron Parker (Comanche), Dustin Tahmahkera (Comanche) and Germaine White (Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes).

“The story of American bison,” historian Rosalyn LaPier says in the film, “really is two different stories. It’s a story of Indigenous people and their relationship with the bison for thousands of years. And then, enter not just the Europeans, but the Americans…that’s a completely different story. That really is a story of utter destruction.”

But I think a lot of part two's details will be new to me; from that same release:

Quote

But the other, lesser-known part of this story, told in the film’s second episode, is about the people who set out to save the species from extermination and how they did it. Their actions provide compelling proof that we are equally capable of pulling back from the brink of environmental catastrophe if we set our minds to it.

Both parts of the larger narrative are filled with unforgettable stories and people, including Old Lady Horse, a Kiowa woman who describes her tribe’s spiritual and practical relationship with the bison, and Charles Jesse “Buffalo” Jones, a mercenary hunter who took part in the elimination of 3 million buffalo, then turned to rescuing motherless calves and starting a small herd that would eventually provide seed stock for others. The eloquent words of Pretty-Shield, a Crow medicine woman, describe the utter devastation felt by all the tribes at the destruction of the great herds, while crusading conservationist George Bird Grinnell’s editorials explore how central Yellowstone National Park’s small herd became to the survival of the species.

The buffalo were brought back from the brink of extinction by a diverse and unlikely collection of Americans, such as Native American families on reservations in South Dakota and Montana, the legendary cattleman Charles Goodnight and his wife Molly in the Texas Panhandle, and Austin Corbin, the Long Island railroad magnate who owned an exotic game preserve in New Hampshire. There was also Ernest Harold Baynes, an eccentric nature writer, who trained a pair of young bison bulls to pull a wagon and took them on tour to help launch a national movement to save the species. Other, more famous champions of the movement included the Bronx Zoo’s William T. Hornaday; William “Buffalo Bill” Cody; and Theodore Roosevelt, who hurried west as an impulsive young man to shoot a bison before they were all gone, and then, as president of the United States, created the first federal bison reserves in the West. The film also introduces Quanah Parker, the Comanche leader who went from waging war against the U.S. Army and the hide hunters to a man of peace, who lived to see the buffalo return to his homeland.

Today, there are approximately 350,000 buffalo in the U.S., most of them descendants of 77 animals from five founding herds at the start of the 20th century, and their numbers are increasing. THE AMERICAN BUFFALO concludes with a brief look at some of the ongoing restoration efforts and the central role the Tribal Nations have had in their return.

 

Edited October 1, 2023 by Bastet

[DanaK]

Outside Magazine looks at the series and talks to Ken Burns

https://www.outsideonline.com/culture/books-media/american-buffalo-ken-burns/

Also, “Homecoming” is a short film on PBS digital sites that will bring the story of the Buffalo to the present. It will premiere on October 18

https://www.pbs.org/about/about-pbs/blogs/news/homecoming-debuting-october-18-brings-the-story-of-the-american-buffalo-to-the-present/

[DanaK]

A mixed review, with the writer thinking it's a lesser Ken Burns doc, but also thinks the 2nd half is superlative

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-reviews/the-american-buffalo-review-1235618018/

The above article brings up something interesting. The story of the Buffalo, especially its near decimation, is intertwined with the story of the Native Americans. But while we reconsidered our treatment of the Buffalo, it didn't make us reconsider our treatment of the Native Americans

[DanaK]

Man, there’s a lot to unpack in Part 1. It floors me that those Whites killing the buffalos for their skins didn’t bother to make more use of the carcass, including the meat and that those killing the animal and those removing the skins did such poor jobs that only 1 in 4 carcasses produced a useable hide. Americans have been so destructive to the wildlife of this country at various periods, including the extinction of the passenger pigeon (which surprisingly wasn’t mentioned here). It’s no wonder the Buffalo almost went extinct

Obviously the spoken/unspoken policy of the American government to kill the Buffalo in order to tame the Native Americans dependent on them was terrible and added to the horrible ways we treated them

I kind of felt they should have used someone other than Peter Coyote as narrator for this, maybe a Native American would have been better

[kaygeeret]

I am ashamed at how ignorant I felt at the end of epi. 1

While I was aware of the slaughter, I was not aware of the subtext - destroy the native tribes.

I was aware of the need for some items but not the total waste of the rest of the animal.  I almost threw up at the sight of the mountain of bones with people posing on them.

Or the slaughter because they threatened cows?  Ugh.

I knew many of the facts but never spent the time putting the story together.

Once again Thank You Ken Burns.

[DanaK]

Again, a lot to unpack with Part 2. But you almost want to punch the air with the info that a lot of the current Buffalo are now being raised on reservations, with the Native people now overseeing them again. Maybe I’ll think of more to say later

[pasdetrois]

I appreciate that Burns has chosen to highlight the relationship between buffalo and the tribes' efforts to survive genocide. I loved the explanation about how each part of the animal served its purpose and was never wasted by Native people. I've listened to contemporary Natives chat about still using the old ways to cure hides.

Fun fact from the show: there were buffalo in the DC area! More recently there was a privately owned herd in Virginia - near Harrisonburg I think.

I was quite taken with the ancient tribal calendars, each filled with events unique to the tribes who maintained a calendar. Yet all of them noted the remarkable meteor shower of 1833.

The tribes are helping repopulate the buffalo with efforts to very carefully track and reproduce the purest bloodlines. They are working with animal scientists and ranchers.

 

Edited October 18, 2023 by pasdetrois

[Bastet]

I've only watched part one so far, but from that I have to agree with this from the review linked above:

Quote

The American Buffalo feels less like a standalone story than an excerpt from a much longer, more ambitious documentary that Burns surely knows he shouldn’t be the person to make.

Maybe it's because there wasn't anything in part one I didn't already know.  (And - having taken a Federal Indian Law class in law school that was one of my favorites of my entire time there - I really, really wanted the guy talking about how the federal government kept violating its treaties with the tribes to note they actually abrogated every single one.)  But it was still good, and I was particularly moved by Old Lady Horse, especially this folktale:
 

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The buffalo saw that their day was over. They could protect their people no longer. Sadly, the last remnant of the great herd gathered in council, and decided what they would do.

The Kiowas were camped on the north side of Mount Scott, those of them who were still free to camp.  One young woman got up very early, in the morning. The dawn mist was still rising from Medicine Creek, and as she looked across the water, peering through the haze, she saw the last buffalo herd appear like a spirit dream.

Straight to Mount Scott the leader of the herd walked.  Behind him came the cows and their calves, and the few young males who had survived.  As the woman watched, the face of the mountain opened. 

Inside Mount Scott the world was green and fresh, as it had been when she was a small girl. The rivers ran clear, not red.  The wild plums were in blossom, chasing the red buds up the inside slopes.  Into this world of beauty the buffalo walked, never to be seen again.

 

Edited October 30, 2023 by Bastet

[Bastet]

On 10/14/2023 at 9:43 AM, DanaK said:

But while we reconsidered our treatment of the Buffalo, it didn't make us reconsider our treatment of the Native Americans

To the extent that just as our slaughter of the buffalo was at the expense of Native Americans, so were some of our restoration efforts (we took some of the tiny bit of land we stole and oh so generously designated it as reservations, with all the obvious inherent atrocities, and then we took some of that tiny bit back to make buffalo preserves)!  The depths of depravity the U.S. government has, since its inception and to this day, sank to with respect to indigenous people will never cease to disgust me.

I knew more than I thought I would about the facts unveiled in part two, but it was still gripping.  What a motley crew of people we have to thank for bringing the bison back from extinction -- many of whom did the right thing for a very wrong reason!  As per usual, racism is a big factor.  People wanting to preserve them so they can make money off of them.  People wanting to keep them around so they can have the thrill of killing them.  Toxic masculinity making fragile egos fear modern culture was making American men soft and thus wanting to perpetuate hunting.

The most I hate everyone segment of part two for me was how, after all those years in which the heads (and the rest of the carcass, sans hide) were left on the prairie to rot, once the species was nearly extinct, every saloon wanted to have a buffalo head mounted on the wall as a "rugged America, rah rah" symbol, so now those previously discarded heads were worth hundreds, so cue the poachers further decimating the small numbers that remained.

The numbers are stark, how many of our existing buffalo herds are in private hands and treated like cattle (not that it's fair we treat cattle as we do, but that's a separate documentary!), so it was hopeful to learn the tide is slowly turning, with more herds brought under Native stewardship.  It was very touching to learn of the Lakota ceremony where an elder woman of the tribe was the one to say um, let's ask the buffalo if they want to come back, and the consensus was they want to come back -- but as buffalo, not cattle.  Because, yeah, if we're just penning them in and breeding them for slaughter, we haven't actually restored a damn thing no matter what their numbers.

I also liked learning how many of the wealthy men who bought and furthered herds did so because their wives demanded it.  White and indigenous, women played a key role in this, and it's about damn time that's acknowledged.

[Shrek]

Those of you who found this documentary interesting may also find this an interesting read from the BBC.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20231102-why-grazing-bisoncould-be-good-for-the-planet

[DoctorAtomic]

On 10/16/2023 at 8:15 PM, DanaK said:

Man, there’s a lot to unpack in Part 1. It floors me that those Whites killing the buffalos for their skins didn’t bother to make more use of the carcass, including the meat and that those killing the animal and those removing the skins did such poor jobs that only 1 in 4 carcasses produced a useable hide.

The inefficiency alone was galling. I think it's an artefact of the hubris inherent in Manifest Destiny. I can't imagine no one thought to rear them and put up some ranches like they eventually did with cattle. 

On 10/29/2023 at 9:35 PM, Bastet said:

they actually abrogated every single one.

"And then gold was discovered."

I've only just seen part one. 

I saw a buffalo irl! From the car. At a distance. We weren't expecting them there (West Yellowstone). Every year the local news has something about how a buffalo totally pwns some hiker trying to take a selfie.  

 

Edited November 10, 2023 by DoctorAtomic