Dartmouth Events

Ken Burns and writer Dayton Duncan in person. Discussion follows.

Ken Burns and his team have crafted a new two-part, four-hour biography of this improbable, shaggy beast that has found itself at the center of many of the country's most mythic and heartbreaking tales. The series takes viewers on a journey through more than 10,000 years of North American history and across some of the continent's most iconic landscapes, tracing the animal's evolution, significance to the Great Plains, near demise and relationship to the Indigenous People of North America. 
 
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 experiences of Native people anchor the series, and the film includes interviews with leading Native American scholars, land experts and Tribal Nation members. "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 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. 

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