hi I'm Heather Marie montia and you are watching PBS books thank you for joining us PBS books is honored to be here with award-winning filmmaker and writer Dayton Duncan to discuss his latest projects the American buffalo a film by Ken Burns and blood memory the tragic Decline and improbable resurrection of the American buffalo the American buffalo is the biography of America's national mammal that found itself at the center of many of the country's most heartbreaking Tales this docu series is new and it's a two-part 4-Hour series it premiered in October October 16th and 17th let's take a moment and watch the trailer my people in the buffalo have a shared history together the Buffalo was sacred and they could not imagine existence without the Buffalo they were put on this Earth to help us survive to think that our greed and our industrialization would blink this thing out this is the buffalo's Last Chance they've survived we've survived we both [Music] persisted the American buffalo can be streamed at pbs.org on passport or check your local listing today's conversation is especially important as we celebrate American heritage month and in our in our partnership with the American Indian Library Association so let's meet our guest Dayton Duncan is award-winning writer and filmmaker he is the author of 14 books and more than 30 years of collaboration with Ken Burns as a writer and producer of historical documentaries including the West Lewis and Clark the dustow Benjamin Franklin country music and and the national parks for which he won two Emmy Awards welcome Dayton OH it's a pleasure to be with you oh it's so great to have you here I'm so excited for the conversation um and just let let me just say that the film and the book are outstanding they are they are tragic I felt as I read and watched them there were moments that I I I cried I teared up it's it's really moving and it tells such an important narrative that I think for too long has gone Untold so thank you for your work you are a filmmaker and a featured guest for the American buffalo and also the co-author of a newly released companion book Blood memory can you discuss your role in each of these projects and what inspired you to be involved well I've been fascinated by the story of the American buffalo since uh I worked on my very first book uh called out west in which I retraced the Lewis and Clark Trail in the early 1980s um telling my experiences and what I saw along that historic Route uh what they saw and experienced uh you know in 1804 to 1806 and then had to describe the differences uh what what happened in American history between their journey and mine and the Buffalo was one of the big changes when they when they were traveling across the Great Plains in 1804 1805 1806 they Buffalo were everywhere they were part of a huge Wildlife U aggregation on the uh on the American planes and um nearly 200 years later I I had to go out of my way to even find any and so um so I went looking and fortunately for me I ran into a young Mandan hadasa Indian by the name of Gerard Baker who was working for the National Park Service at Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota and one of his duties was to take care of the small buffalo herd that the park had and um Gerard and I became friends we had a lot of Adventures um with Buffalo including a time he had to shoot two of them that escaped from the Park and we're too far to be brought back we skinned those buffaloes he showed me a big knife that holding a glistening part of the Raw Liver of one of the bowls and said it's our tradition that we eat a piece of uh of of liver right off the bat to get the strength and the wisdom of the Buffalo and J 65 and uh if he's holding a knife toward your face and says eat this Raw Liver you eat that Raw Liver um but he also uh inul ated in me as we became friends um in something much deeper uh about the Buffalo how their story and the story of native people is um intertwined it's they're they're Inseparable and if you're telling the story of American Indians you have to tell the story of the American buffalo and if you're telling the story of the American buffalo you have to tell the story of American Indians because of their centrality to Plains tribes in in particular so he got me started on it and um I've been wanting to do this film and this book uh for whatever that is 40 some years Ken and I did a number of films in which we told parts of the story uh in our story about Lewis and Clark we told the story about the um uncountable numbers that that that they came across and our film on the American West our big series we tell the story of the hid Hunters who descended on the planes in the 1870s and brought them to the brink of uh Extinction and in National Parks we told the story of the role that Yellowstone National Park played as the home of the only remaining free roaming herd of buffalo though the protections weren't uh effective and poachers were bringing them down eventually to fewer than two dozen uh but I kept you know wanting to tell the story from the beginning which is to go back 10,000 years um of history of the animal and the people who relied on it for their sustenance both physical and spiritual um and then tell the story as our nation followed Lewis and Clark West um what happened to the Buffalo but at the same time it touches on so many other aspects of American history and we drew up proposals at different times uh in the 1990s and uh in the early 2000s but other other film projects um intervened and so it kept being pushed back and I'm the luckiest man in the world that we finally got uh the chance to you know to put it all together okay well today we're here to discuss the American buffalo um and your book Blood memory but before we do I'm we've spoken a lot about your relationship and your working relationship with Ken burs how did you initially meet and you know how did that Journey how did it progress I mean it's been a long time well it wasn't a nationwide search that he undertook to uh you know to draw me into his circle of very talented people that make his documentaries for PBS uh he and I became friends when he first moved to New Hampshire in 1979 and and um we re recognized that we shared a couple of passions I was working on my early books and he would be kind enough to read them as I they were in progress and give me his thoughts on them and he was working on his early films and he was kind enough to draw me in look at those things in progress and give my comments on them not as an expert but as a a storytelling and we recognize that we shared two passions one is that we both believe in the power of narrative storytelling uh in as a way to bring history to life and to educate people uh about are complicated sometimes contradictory and sometimes tragic and in sometimes exultant uh moments and he also like me shares this very deep belief in the uh the founding document for our nation the Declaration of Independence um and the radical proposition that all people are created equal uh that they have certain inherent rights self-evident rights as Benjamin Franklin called them um and also the this passion to try to tell the journey that our nation has made uh to try to live up to those Noble ideas and it's been uh torturous sometimes winding often uh stop and go Journey uh and uh still unfulfilled and all the stories that U I was interested in are ones that he was interested in too I gave him a in 1989 I gave him a list of stories I thought my friend ought to you know take up in the in his own journey of bringing these films to the American public and um when he started on the very first one um of that list on the American West he said if I'm going to do this I would like you to I need to have you be part of it so I joined as a co-writer and a Consulting producer and and the rest is sort of history I mean as I said earlier I'm the luckiest person that I know um I've been able over 30 some years to embark on uh stories with him that I felt either already passionate about or curious about and do all the research uh which I like to do uh my job uh required me to then meet all the people who know the most about it besides reading everything I could about a topic my job as a producer was to go to those places where that history occurred uh and then come back with a film crew and then uh do interviews um with people on camera and some not um and then struggle with the notion of how do you pull this all information all together and make a narrative story out of it suitable for for television and bring that to Ken and talented group of other producers and editors to work collaborative on making the best work of that um that we know how and you know I've been waiting for 32 years for someone to come and tap me on the shoulder with a clipboard from high above and say Mr Duncan you know there's been a big mistake this isn't what you're supposed to be doing you're supposed to do something else um and and I escaped that somehow and um was able to you know raise my family at the same time so if someone's got a better suited calling and job over the last two years than me then we can go out out back and fight it out but I I I stand by my statement that I'm the luckiest person that I know well that's an incredible story um so starting from the very Basics I know someone has already asked me I don't have the answer which is why is it called the American buffalo when the when the the real term is bison bison and well sure uh I mean it's not like we didn't know that yes of course so uh so we made a very deliberate choice and it's based on this their real name is both Buffalo and and their Latin binomial by scientists is bison bison um but they've been known for centuries uh by uh people in the United States as and and other places as American uh Buffalo and we use quotes and other things from historical characters who all refer to them as Buffalo we're not going to send a little alert out oh that's wrong because it isn't they they they apply to both of them there are two other U species of animals that are also called though not that's not their scientific name Buffalo one in uh Africa the Cape buffalo and one in Asia called the water buffalo but they aren't Buffalo either they have their own Latin names um and they're not the same species either so you know I we're in the Communication business and I think we're we use the terms bison and buffalo uh interchangeably throughout the um throughout the film and throughout the book that I've written um and U you know stand by it that's you know it's it's it's not wrong um most people particularly native people uh who obviously referred to it by other names uh of the multitude of languages they had but when they speak of it when they're speaking English uh in our film more often referred to them as Buffalo than than bison so you know we we we mentioned in the film at the very start you know after we're calling them Buffalo they said which scientists call bison bison so um you know I get a little impatient I think sometimes with those who want to say oh no no no no they're not Buffalo they're bison are they Buffalo or are they bison yes yes and yes is my answer thank you so um for and and you've touched on this a little bit Native Americans um they have a very special relationship with the Buffalo especially the Native Americans who were lived on the Great Plains and there there as your your fil film clearly outlines there's this interconnect connectedness um could you talk a little bit about really the extent of that interconnectedness and also what is the significance of Wich mountains and The White Buffalo sure the um this dates back 10,000 years the modern bison which was a survivor of a mass extinction of large animals on the North American continent about 10 or 12,000 years ago which included mastadon woolly mammoths camels um and other species of Bison which were much larger than the modern one um is uh they've co-evolved with the the people who were here at that time native people who um relied on them um as I said earlier they they they were everything particularly on the PLS I if I can digress just one second uh at the time there were buffalo in Florida and Georgia uh a Jamestown colonist going up the pomac river in uh in 16 the 1600s early 1600s uh when he arrived at what is now Washington DC the first thing he came across was a herd of buffalo George Washington hunted buffalo on the Ohio River as a Young Man Daniel Boon when he was leading settlers from Virginia into what's now Kentucky was folling what is called a buffalo Trace uh the best way to get over the mountains that the bison and Nati people had known for centuries and when he got to what's now Kentucky he said the Buffalo here are more numerous than the cattle back in Virginia by 1800 the settlement of the East and the uh expansion toward the Mississippi meant that they were essentially gone east of um east of the Mississippi but so the Great Plains was their is their favorite habitat but wasn't their only one but by the early 1800s it was principally their their only habitat and for the Plains Indians the the Buffalo is Central to both their livelihood and their view of how they fit in with the natural world which is different than the view that was brought to this continent when Columbus arrived and then the colonists arrived for them the you know human beings and all the rest of the natural world the wildlife and even Flora and other things were on a were part of a larger web of equal existence um and in fact with the Buffalo they felt a special as number of people told us kinship with them they were their brothers um and they felt that they in their Reliance on them was also part of a covenant if you will of demanding uh respect for the animal ceremonies U you know uh involved in the fact that you were killing them for your subsistence and for the hides that you Ed to cover your teepees keep yourself warm in the winter for their uh bones to use in work tools everything that the Buffalo had they put to use at the same time they wrapped it into their cosmology the Buffalo was the representation of the great of the sun which itself was a repr representation of this larger great mystery you know the sun raised the grass the Buffalo ate the grass the native people ate the Buffalo they saw that as a part of a seamless web of uh of existence that demanded uh a sacred connection um and it's it's really hard you know I I sort of knew that you know that you can say that well they relied on it and um for both things and that's a nice couple of sentences but uh in doing this project and basically through my tutelage from my friend Gerard Baker um I wanted to make sure that we felt it the way that native people feel it it's not something a little dry sentence or something on a on a piece of of of Paper it is it is Holy and sacred to them um and we want to get that across part of that sacred notion is many tribes believe that the Buffalo were the uh emerged in onto Earth even before human beings many times they according to their um Legends and their beliefs they came from crevices in the ground or holes and mountains like in the sacred Black Hills to the Lakota and the Cheyenne on the Southern Plains for the kamanche and the caias and the southern Cheyenne they recognized the witcha mountains as the place of emergence of Buffalo and then uh people they also believed that be when Buffalo were hard to find as they sometimes would be that it was something that the human beings had done wrong some breaking of that Covenant that they removed themselves from being found and used and most often when that happened that was back to where they came from into those into uh Mount Scott as it's now called on the witch mountains or into Wind Cave U into the black hills and other tribes had other places where they would remove themselves and only through ceremony the help of folk you know figures Heroes sometimes Heroes that could you know be both bison and human uh and these extra ceremonies were required to to to bring them back um and um you know I uh we tell the story in the film in in the book about particularly about the witcha mountains and that sacred place and tell the story of a woman named old lady horse who told an anthropologist in the early 1900s about the story that she was told about the last buffalo herd during the slaughter that took place in the 1870s and how this last buffalo herd walked back to and then into Mount Scott that had opened up to to that herd and inside the mountain as she says everything was green and the water was clear not red and that's where they went and when I got going on the historical story um the first buffalo herd to be returned to the Great Plains uh oddly enough were 15 Buffalo from the Bronx Sue in New York City okay they were loaded on the train and taken back to the witcha mountains where President theore Roosevelt had declared a place for this first restoration of of of Buffalo and it was right in the view of Mount Scott wow I mean when I when I started thinking about that you know the the r about wasn't thinking of old lady hores no you sign that not based on everything you taught me no the people who gathered there um the commanches and kaas including the kamanche leader quana Parker they were crying the old people were because here the Buffalo were returning as we you know we had learned our lesson apparently and so here they they were uh returning and there were children there who'd never seen a buffalo and only heard about them in their stories and um this person that both Ken and I consider a friend but admire tremendously uh and Scott mamade who's a Kai will pullit a prize-winning author and poet and I recommend anything he wrote to anyone who's listening to my words um was one of the important interviewees in our in our film and he talks about both what old lady horse that Vision in the first episode um about their disappearance and how tragic that was how profoundly tragic it was and then he talks again when their return there about um about the joy that that caused and as he said it makes the story whole um well and I just want to note that I I noticed up you know I I just okay well we're going to we're going to the witch mountains aren't we I mean you you even dedicated your book to Mama day so I I I know it's it's a was a tremendous connection well this story as you're outlining it is such a complex story of the American buffalo what I thought we could do is just take a moment to show a brief clip to everyone to see some of the amazing work that that you and Ken and everyone at Florentine films put together great in the spring of 1805 the Lewis and Clark expedition reached what is now Montana near where the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers meet moving farther west than any white Americans had ever gone along the way they had encountered tribes of Native people who for hundreds of generations had called The Bountiful land home Wildlife seemed to be everywhere and in astonishing numbers Mary weather Lewis wrote particularly the Buffalo the whole face of the country was covered with herds of Buffalo elk and antelopes the Buffalo frequently approach us more nearly to discover what we are and in some instances pursue us a considerable distance apparently with that V you less than a century later in 1887 another Expedition would explore the same region they H to find some buffalos to kill and then preserve for an exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City they searched for three months without seeing a single [Music] one everything the kaas had came from the Buffalo their Tes were made of Buffalo hide so were their clothes and morusin they ate buffalo meat most of all the Buffalo was part of the Cowa religion the priests used parts of the Buffalo to make their prayers when they healed people or when they sang to the powers above the Buffalo were the life of the K was old lady horse they are the national mammal of the United States the largest land animals in the Western Hemisphere a species that scientists call bison bison nourished by one of the world's greatest grasslands they proliferated into herds of uncountable numbers and in turn by their grazing nurtured the Prairie that sustained them for more than 10,000 years they evolved alongside indigenous people who relied on them for food and shelter and in exchange for killing them revered them so much of my blood memory has to do with Buffalo we have regard for each other and we we are friends we are brothers we are related so I I you know think of them in a particular way and it's always with with reverence newcomers to the continent found them fascinating at first but in time came to consider them a hindrance and then a source of profit for a growing [Music] nation in the space of only a decade they were slaughtered by the Millions for their hides with their carcasses left to rot on the Prairies the species itself teetering on the brink of Disappearing forever from the face of the [Music] Earth the story of American Bison really is two different stories it really is 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 and that's a completely different story and that really is a story of utter destruction it's not just a story of This Magnificent animal it takes us into all the different corners of our history and how we interact with one another as human beings it is a heartbreaking story of a collision of two different views of how human being should interact with the natural world and there's a tragedy at the very heart of that story at the same time as you follow it a little bit farther down that trail it can offer us [Music] hope I love how you end that sentence with hope because there are moments that I really needed hope as I watch the documentary um I just want to reset the conversation for those people out there just joining us I'm Heather Marie montia and I'm here with Dayton Duncan discussing the film The American buffalo and his book Blood memory the tragic Decline and improbable resurrection of the American buffalo it is a companion book for the film and uh Dayton I'm hoping you could share with us a little bit about the book what's inside it what can we expect to see when did you decide you you've spoken about H how long the process to make this film took when did you decide I'm writing a book and here it's going going to be what was that process like well as I said earlier you know this has been part of my bloodstream if not blood memory um uh for 40 some years and um you know I've been waiting patiently for my best friend who's also America's uh best documentary filmmaker uh to finally get it on our schedule to you know to create um you know i' done a lot of research for early books and for some of our earlier films that touched on parts of it but I really wanted to bring it all um finally together and um I can't express the joy I had when we finally got it on our schedule and I could devote myself uh to it about four years ago um the you know it's um as you say it's a know this is a tragic story about as tragic a story um as any one you want to come across because it's not just the the sort of seemingly impossible destruction of tens of millions of those animals in the space of less than a century and then most much of it in the space of a decade it's also the story of what that meant um to the people who relied on it which is a double makes it a double tragedy the the fate of the Buffalo as so many Native people told us um is parallel to their own you know Buffalo were reduced in numbers as they were they were confined to zoos as they were confined to Res reservations um at the darkest moments of uh Native American history on this continent in the late 1890s and you know you said that you cry sometimes when you were watching and I wrote the darn thing and have seen it you know hundreds of times and and uh I tear still tear up occasionally on that as well but the but equal to that story and we we approach history Ken and I all of us at Florentine films to try to present history with clear eyes you know looking at straight in the eye not looking up at it as you know some sort of special thing that that oh don't tell us any bad things that happened nor do we look at it you know with disdain looking down saying oh well we're so much morally Superior than than the people who preceded us we recognize that like human beings um our nation's history our nation and its history is filled with contradictions and complexities and only by acknowledging them coming to grips with them is there any chance for Hope and so the second episode of our film um after this heartbreaking destruction and the knowledge of of of just how deep U that destru ction went for human beings as well is about these unlikely group of individuals who on their own decided Well U I'm Gonna Save a few Buffalo and start my own herd or we're going to keep some alive and put them in in zoos and they're they're a mly group believe me they had they had different motives um different um techniques if you will and eventually it um gained enough momentum to become a national movement in the early 1900s to really save them from Extinction that is to say not just in a few tiny herds and not just in a few Zoo around the nation but on larger Landscapes and in larger numbers and in enough different places that they could be considered safe from Extinction to me that's a actually that's a lesser known story than the story of the destruction but it's equally important because what why is that it what does it tell us it tells us yes we are capable of immense destruction to the natural world we dealt with this in our the national parks and in the Dust Bowl as well but in certain instances we're also capable of changing direction and usually that change in Direction doesn't come from the top down it comes from from the bottom up um and I find that to be a very encouraging and inspiring hopeful um story and that's that's basically what we devote most of our second episode to you know um there's a quote in our film in the start of episode two that I also put into our film about the National Parks from one of my favorite we're talking about books so I'm going to throw out that you know Wallace stegner is one of my favorite authors history storian and novelist and uh as I said about Scott Maday um if you haven't read anything of Wallace sner go find it and read it he has this quote that says we are the most dangerous species on the planet and every other species including the Earth itself has caused the fear our power to exterminate that's a that's a very true statement when you start thinking about and a scary one as well certainly them but he says but we are also the only species who when it chooses to do so and that's the important part of that sentence when it chooses to do so will do everything it can to save what it otherwise might destroy and that is also part of our story but it's not just it's not just one or the other it's the two together that is the story of the American buffalo um and I think that's that you know when I threw that one in the script I told Ken I said I'm reusing stagner and uh I said the problem's going to be maybe we should just run that statement and show on the first part of it you know dead buffalo stacks of bison bones and on the second half shows some Cales scampering around their mamas uh in a you know in in in modern times and we can cut this 4our film down to about you know 45 seconds because that's that's the story we're telling you know it's interesting because you included a quote by um from Theodore Roosevelt's writing that really struck me and it was I'd heard the story of the American buffalo but I hadn't necessarily thought about that it was a conscious decision and you what you included was its destruction was a necessary was was a condition necessary for the advance of the white civilization in the west above all the extermination of the Buffalo was the only way to solve the Indian question and and I hadn't really thought about it like that um and and obviously your film also underscores that but Theodore Roosevelt plays such as you point out an interesting role in all of this as a hunter as a conservationist as you know this dual Duality um can you talk a little bit because he is one of those improvable um Champions or advocates in a way yeah I mean he's uh one of several examples in the film and and the book about a a journey that he makes in his own mind and Consciousness I mean he also said and this is one of the first books that he wrote after he became a Rancher for a while in the dtas uh and after he rushed to the West in the first place because he heard the Buffalo were disappearing and why did he Rush there with such urgency he wanted to shoot one so he could H hang its head on the wall in his home in Sagamore Hill that's you know that was what motivated him initially and when he was writing about his adventures there that I came across that quote which also says so in essence the ex the uh ex extermination of the Buffalo was a blessing he uses that word um and he was not alone in those uh in those thoughts fortunately for us all uh by the end of our film and as he progressed in his life under the T Le I would say of George bird grenell one of the early conservationists also a fellow Hunter but a conservation he became the greatest conservation president in our nation's history he created national parks national monuments National Wildlife refugees all sorts of things including the first two national bison ranges in Oklahoma and up in Northwestern uh Montana um and he became a friend of quana Parker and um spent you know only Theodore Roosevelt I guess you can think of a president of the United States goes out hunting coyotes with a commanche and then spends the night on that as president spends the night on the porch on a Indian Reservation of that new friend that he uh has made so it this goes back to that statement I made earlier about it's not one or the other it's the whole right we're very cleare eyed about his beliefs about um white superiority um about what he felt was at one time in his life at least felt that the getting rid of the of the Buffalo was necessary for our nation um and I he didn't necessarily Chang all of his views um he you know was pretty steadfast in his belief that certain white people were genetically Superior to people who other whites but also particularly other um other races that's just part of him that's who he is and and in in dealing with history but I think a lot of times people make the mistake of as I said earlier either idolizing or just thoroughly despising and discarding someone um who has a a role to play in our history who is full of just chalk full of contradictions um but yeah Rosevelt um he's a we' you know we've dealt with Roosevelt in many of our films and Ken and and uh and Jeff Ward who wrote it did a series on all the Roosevelts and um he's a fascinating character um and he has to be you know but he's not onedimensional um and we try to make sure that all those dimensions are shown uh and not just one half so your second episode it basically shows and highlights all of these from uh Buffalo Bill Cody to Molly goodnight like an array of of people who are helping to bring the Buffalo back today about how many Buffalo are there across the United States and can you share about some of the important work that is being done yeah I mean our um I we'd like to say that um our history we we deal with history and not today not the present and journalism uh that's that's that's history in the in the early moments of becoming history and you need a c a generation or so to be able to look back and and make a judgment about what really happened and what was important and what might what might have seemed important but turned out um not to be so we we end our film essentially uh around 199 1933 um when the American Bison Society declared that its job was done it had been organized for 20 years and was its mission was to save the Bison from Extinction they said well they're now 4,400 and some uh bison in the United States our work is done they're safe from Extinction meaning real Extinction meaning none could be left um but as we point out in the final minutes of our film that's really not quite enough uh you know being saved from a literal Extinction um is not quite the same uh as being saved from what some is called ecological Extinction which is to say you're not existing in enough places in the way that you normally had existed and so we we mention in passing well not in passing but to to conclude our film that there is this movement going on there's uh anywhere from 350,000 or more buffalo in the United States now many of them are on private ranches that are raised specifically for Slaughter some of them get shipped off to feeding lots and uh slaughter houses but but there are 20,000 uh under uh you know sort of conservation herds if you will uh under the federal government and some state governments and there's another 20,000 and it's growing constantly um on reservations uh being um you know being raised and protected uh by native people and that's a that to me is the real exciting thing that's happening now there are 80 tribes or more in the United States um you know to to their reservations that have brought um herds or small numbers and are growing larger and larger herds on larger and larger Landscapes to both restore the Prairie but Bo so you know what our film shows I hope is is why this is so exciting is the this connection that had lasted 10,000 years and was essentially severed at you know in the space of several decades near the end of the [Music] 1800s that Severance lasted more than aund and some years and the bringing back of Buffalo to their ancestral homelands to be uh in conjunction with the people who have the most most knowledge and the longest history with them is both important and terribly exciting and and our hope is that um that our film you know sets the sort of the historical foundation for people to understand really how important and exciting those efforts are well I just want to go back to your book as we we kind of wrap up the conversation a little bit and talk about the process so many will imagine it's Ken Burn's film you're a writer so it's it's stunning but your book is it's stunning there are color photographs of both art uh photography um Native indigenous hide paintings how did you select um the the beautiful material not only the the words but also how did you decide what goes in when in the book because I know it said you had something like 30 hours of on camera interviews and obviously this book tells the story but it tells more than the film it's it's really incredible well um you know I the research for to write a film is when I for me is the same as if I was going to write a book I want to go as deep as I can um into the topic to learn as much as I can to talk to the people who know the most about it to go to the places uh where it occurred and then um and then the writing starts which is you know an essentially solitary process um my wife Diane and my son will who served as a research assistant for me were my first readers in in the early drafts and then finally I'm ready to to present it to Ken and the team um at Florentine um and it's always much longer than I know the film will be um and then it gets carved down as it must to fit the time period that we've you know allotted to us you know to tell our story and so a lot of things drop on the editing floor not because they were badly written although sometimes they are and sometimes I write things that I think is probably about as good as I can go and and this is obviously going to be in the film and then when I start seeing it um being tried in the film I said well I was sure wrong about that it really doesn't work um but um the opportunity to then do u a book in conjunction with the film allows me to put back in a lot of those details that you know um a a film script simply can't you know sustain digressions that um I think are important historically and interesting but detract from The Narrative propulsion uh of the film even entire characters uh appear in the book um that are not present in the film and many of the things in the film have much more DET in the book have much more detail than they have in the film including the use of these incredible interviews that we had with Native people uh biologists historians writers who had a lot to say and part of the process in the film making was also to Wi out those things to keep things moving and um and and so forth and so it allowed me the opportunity also to say they had important things to say here um and um and let's try to get those things back in so that's what we do that's what I do I go back to the solitary portion of uh of the writing to make it into a book that allows me to be U more long-winded as you can tell I am and uh put in all these things that I just think wow I just want to tell the you know this deeper more expansive story than uh the film can be and then because of the extensive research that our people do our crew of uh of image researchers that went you know all across the nation and archives and all sorts of places to find these incredible images um I'm I'm really proud of this book that though it's looks like just a regular book it's got four extensive sections of just color paintings pictographs newspaper headlines uh all all sorts of things that um when you get tired of when you get tired of tired of reading the me droning on and on you can just flip to one of those and spend half an hour just looking through one of those sections so uh yes it is it is a gorgeous gorgeous book um as we close the program could you if there was one takeaway you would want your readers and your viewers to take what would that one takeaway be well on the sort of the bigger scale uh of things I hope what they one thing that they might take two things if I can say the first on the cosmic scale is as John mure said and we quote him in our national parks uh film and book when we try to pick out anything by itself we find it hooked to everything else in the universe it's about this interconnection of the natural world and we are part of that natural world we're not above it we are we are we are parts of it and it's all about the interconnectedness of of of this life on this on this planet so that's the that's a big picture thing uh I what I would hope they also take away from it is that the the story of the American buffalo there are other stories as well well that can do this but the it really tells you uh it really takes you into parts of our history that are important to remember uh beginning with the profound tragedy of the near extermination of them and what that meant not only to the species not only what that meant to the Ecology of the Great Plains both of which were profound but also um to the the people who had evolved co-evolved with it for uh 10,000 years it's a story of um destruction as rosin laier says in our film uh but it's also an important story of resilience you know the Buffalo are still here they're with us uh and uh and so are native people there was a time when the Buffalo looked like it was going to be uh extinct the people also said well native people they're part of a quote Vanishing race too they're going to disappear and one thing that everybody that we've talked to over the years and particularly on this one uh Native people said we're still here you know we survived the Buffalo survived we're still here and that was you know that's that's not be that's that's because of their own resilience um and their own ability you know to persevere through some very tragic you know horrible um parts of of our history but they're still here and now they're trying to make that reconnection with the majestic animal that's our national mammal now uh that's still here too and increasing in numbers uh every day well thank you for all of your insights for this incredible conversation Dayton thank you for your passion and your dedication to telling these important narratives um as well as your dedication to the Declaration of Independence we've been focusing a lot on the obligations of the Declaration and what it means to all Americans so so thank you for all of this it's been truly an honor to to get to speak with you and to learn more about your very important work oh it's been a pleasure thank you and I hope you'll tell Kim that I didn't uh I didn't tear up that'll be he'll be surprised I will tell him just a reminder for everyone out there you can now watch the American buffalo a film by Ken Burns at pbs.org on passport and check your local listing read blood memory the tragic Decline and improvable resurrection of the American buffalo get it at your local library or your independent bookstore learn more about the American buffalo project at PBS books.org American buffalo remember to like and share these programs don't forget to follow us on Facebook and subscribe to on YouTube so you never miss an episode or a conversation with one of your favorite authors or filmmakers as always I'd like to thank my library partners and PBS stations across the country but most importantly we'd like to thank all of you for being being here with us until next time I'm Heather Marie montia and happy [Music] reading [Applause] [Music] [Applause]