We move now to a new documentary set to premiere right here on Vegas PBS.

Ahead of the United States celebrating its 250th anniversary next year, filmmaker Ken Burns is taking an extensive look at the Revolutionary War titled The American Revolution.

We held an advanced screening featuring some of this six-part documentary series here in studio and after, a panel of experts shared their takeaways.

Here's some of their discussion about the role of the Iroquois Confederacy, one of the first and longest lasting participatory democracies on Earth.

(Mark Hall-Patton) Part of what I enjoyed, and I'm looking forward to seeing the whole series, I loved the comment at the beginning about the Iroquois Confederation, especially since the American Revolution destroyed that.

That's one of the things that came out of the revolution was the six tribes ended up splitting, with four tribes going with the British and two tribes, the Oneida and the Tuscarora, going with the Patriots.

And that split that confederation, which had said very clearly, Don't disagree.

Well, that's what happened.

And I'm going to be-- It's going to be interesting to see how that is handled.

-You brought up how what we are taught in elementary school is a lot of pride and, yeah, we gave it to the British.

But there are a lot of misconceptions about I guess unity, like we just discussed.

The Iroquois Confederacy that you brought up as a democracy, how influential was that in the creation of this democracy, and how well understood do you think that is, A.B.?

(A.B.

Wilkinson) That one is somewhat debated, because some people will say, Well, Benjamin Franklin and others were looking at the Haudenosaunee, or the Iroquois Confederacy, and saying that, look at how they're united.

At first, there's five tribes, and they add the Tuscarora as the sixth.

There's no primary source that says that they exactly copied that confederacy, but it's very clear that Franklin and others who were there at the Albany Plan, they're also meeting with native peoples at that conference there.

And they knew about their strength in numbers.

And so it was, it was interesting to see a lot of this and saying, Oh, I teach that.

I tell my students that's the first meme up there is the divided snake.

And they get a kick out of that, but it failed, right?

And, yeah, I think that it's really interesting that Mark brings up that this war breaks that confederacy, and out of it rises the 13 colonies that come together.

- The American Revolution premieres Sunday, November 16, right here on Vegas PBS.

Each of the six episodes starts at 8 p.m.

for six consecutive nights.