Bison once numbered in the millions in the North America. By 1900, the large, majestic mammals were almost entirely wiped out by white settlers and the U.S. Army.
Ken Burns, one of America’s most celebrated documentarians, is the director of an upcoming series titled “The American Buffalo.”
Burns says this project is different from his previous works because it's a biography of an animal, not a person.
“The challenge was how to then understand the way in which this now national mammal, the largest land animal in North America, is so interwoven first into Native cultures, but then into our own,” Burns told KCUR’s Up To Date on Monday.
The two-part, four-hour series, which premieres on PBSon Oct. 16, documents the complicated story of how the buffalo is inextricably tied to American history and identity.
- Ken Burns, filmmaker
