Over several decades in the 1800s, the American Great Plains was the setting for the most destructive annihilation of wildlife in the history of the world. Driven by greed, bloodlust and Manifest Destiny, this carnage of animals drove one species, the buffalo, to the brink of extinction. Once numbered in the many tens of millions, there were only a few hundred of the mammals alive by end of the century.
Ken Burns’s two-part, four-hour “The American Buffalo” (PBS) braids the biography of the animal with the Native American experience, tracing two parallel and overlapping historical tracks of heartbreak and mass eradication.
The horrible justification for the buffalo slaughter — to deprive its hide, meat and religious significance from the Indigenous people who had cohabitated with the animal for more than 10,000 years — is depicted within a story that also provides a multi-generational theme of resilience and hope.
TheWrap: The topic of the buffalo was featured in other projects you’ve worked on, but are you glad that you waited longer to make it?
Yes, I am.