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Speaker 1: This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless,

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Speaker 1: severely bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listeningcast.

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Speaker 2: You can't predict anything.

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Speaker 1: The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light.

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Speaker 1: Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting

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Speaker 1: for el First Light has performance apparel to support every

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Speaker 1: hunter in every environment. Check it out at first light

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Speaker 1: dot com. F I R S T L I T

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Speaker 1: E dot com. Hey guys, it's uh Steve and I

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Speaker 1: have such an important message that it's so important to fill.

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Speaker 1: The engineer advised me on how to hold my phone

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Speaker 1: to get the best quality where it's about six inches

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Speaker 1: from my mouth at angle, so it doesn't go when

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Speaker 1: you talk. That's how important this messages. The auction House

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Speaker 1: of Eyes met Eater Auction House of Oddities is up

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Speaker 1: live and running right now, probably the most impressive slate

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Speaker 1: of auction items to ever be compiled in the history

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Speaker 1: of Western civilization. You can go right now and bid

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Speaker 1: on a hunt at the Durham family farm with Bubbly

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Speaker 1: Doug durn himself. It's the winner's choice. You do a

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Speaker 1: buck hunt for one or a deer hunt for one.

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Speaker 1: Opening day a rifle season, so opening weekend of rifle

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Speaker 1: for one or three people, do a turkey hunt on

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Speaker 1: Doug's place, hanging out with Doug, cruising around with Doug.

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Speaker 1: We have a custom log trappers cabin from Naughty Log Homes. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so this is a totally built trapper's cabin that you

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Speaker 1: can have, get shipped out and you get assembled where

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Speaker 1: you want it. Okay. We have a art commission, an

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Speaker 1: original art commission of your choosing. Go on Instagram and

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Speaker 1: go to Jamie Jamie Underscore Wild Art. Okay, go look

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Speaker 1: at her work. You can get an art commission from her.

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Speaker 1: We have a signed arrow, a chunk of an aluminum arrow,

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Speaker 1: signed by Ted Nugent in nineteen ninety one from a

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Speaker 1: whiplash bash. And we have what in the art world

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Speaker 1: they call the provenance. We have how this arrow flowed

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Speaker 1: through ownership to get into your hands, says Ted Nugent

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Speaker 1: ninety one on an aluminum arrow shaft. Great story to

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Speaker 1: go with that. Everybody knows our beloved Seth Morris used

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Speaker 1: to go by the flip Flop Flesher. His wife is

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Speaker 1: a professional artist. She has a gallery. I mean she

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Speaker 1: makes her living with art we have original artwork from

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Speaker 1: her Kelsey Morris original artwork. We have my weather be

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Speaker 1: Mark five used in many Meat Eater episodes, forthcoming episode

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Speaker 1: where I shoot a pretty stomper mule deer in Idaho.

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Speaker 1: I killed a bull with it on a media episode,

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Speaker 1: a lot of media episodes, a left handed whether it

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Speaker 1: be Mark five and three hundred win mag that exact rifle.

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Speaker 1: We have a Carolina custom rifle that I use in

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Speaker 1: a bunch more Meat Eater episodes, including the famous Moose

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Speaker 1: Charge episode. That rifle is available for auction, and there

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Speaker 1: is a dinner for four at my house. So the

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Speaker 1: winning bidder and three guests will at a time that

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Speaker 1: we picked together, will come to my house to be

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Speaker 1: wined and dined for auction. Doug Duran was bragging up

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Speaker 1: how his auction item was kicking my dinner's ass. But

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Speaker 1: I have to point out right now that it's probably

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Speaker 1: humiliating to Doug the degree to which my dinner is

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Speaker 1: kicking his farm's ass. So you better go help Bubbly

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Speaker 1: out before he gets sad. Got to go to the

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Speaker 1: Meeater dot com and find you know, there's all kinds

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Speaker 1: of links and stuff. Auction house of Oddities or go

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Speaker 1: to at Steve even Ranella on Instagram and we will

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Speaker 1: put the auction House of Oddities link in my bio.

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Speaker 1: You'll find it. Thank you, everybody. Now back to regular programming.

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Speaker 1: All right, everybody, we're here with Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan.

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Speaker 1: When I say ken Burns, I mean that Ken Burns.

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Speaker 1: His first feature film came out in nineteen eighty one,

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Speaker 1: about the Brooklyn Bridge. Since then he has made over

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Speaker 1: three dozen films. Now, in a recent conversation you mentioned

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Speaker 1: to me thirty films, but you said about now was

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Speaker 1: surprised that someone would say about Well, I.

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Speaker 3: Never count them in that weird sort of way. I

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Speaker 3: know how many kids I have, but I I didn't.

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Speaker 3: PBS says forty now, and it's gonna pass that in.

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Speaker 1: But the funny French Schnyder says, three dozen. Listen, the.

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Speaker 3: Most important thing is that one could be a one

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Speaker 3: hour film and one could be a ten part eighteen

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Speaker 3: nineteen hour film. This still counts as one. So whatever

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Speaker 3: it is, it's a lot of hours.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and since but you agree, you have certitude that

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Speaker 1: your first film was Brooklyn Bridge in nineteen eighty one.

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Speaker 3: Actually, PBS and an app that we have called unim

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Speaker 3: which is sort of curating the evergreen themes that are

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Speaker 3: in our film. Actually not an app, it's a website

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Speaker 3: Unham as an e plurbus. Unham has released the film

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Speaker 3: I made in college as my senior thesis at Hampshire

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Speaker 3: College about Old Sturbridge village kind of the colonial Williamsburg

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Speaker 3: of New England, which is called Working in World, New England.

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Speaker 3: And it's seventeen ninety to eighteen forty kind of got

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Speaker 3: five to it and it's all live stuff. But the

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Speaker 3: last shot is a pan across a painting. Oops.

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Speaker 1: Oh, the birth is the genesis moments of the effect.

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Speaker 1: So there's forty one films major works on the Civil

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Speaker 1: War called the Civil War or and and I want

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Speaker 1: to tell you I hadn't told you this before. You've

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Speaker 1: heard this hundreds of times from thousands of people. That

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Speaker 1: overtook like that consumed our family life. That film even

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Speaker 1: even to where my parents bought the CD, would play

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Speaker 1: the music in.

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Speaker 3: The house, my children, like you, all four of them.

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Speaker 1: It was just like it consumed people in a way,

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Speaker 1: and it was it created at that time. You know,

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Speaker 1: now things are so diffuse and dispersed, but it was

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Speaker 1: like one of those recognized is one of those elements

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Speaker 1: of sort of like a shared It was unifying, like

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Speaker 1: a shared national experience.

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Speaker 3: You know, it's pretty interesting that something that tore us

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Speaker 3: in two became something that unified us in a in

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Speaker 3: a way, I think we thought we knew about the

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Speaker 3: Civil War and had kind of super views about it,

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Speaker 3: or ideas or even mythologies that were incorrect, and this

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Speaker 3: was sort of trying to tell a really deep, complicated story,

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Speaker 3: and I think people wanted to know. It's the most

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Speaker 3: important event in American history, in American history, and so

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Speaker 3: everything that we were led up to it and everything

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Speaker 3: that we've become has issued from it. So I think

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Speaker 3: there was a curiosity, no matter what idiot was making

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Speaker 3: the film, that people would be drawn to where we

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Speaker 3: came from. And the simplest thing I can say is

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Speaker 3: that before the Civil War, when speaking about our country,

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Speaker 3: we said the United States are plural, which is grammatically correct.

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Speaker 3: After the war, we said the United States is and

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Speaker 3: we still to this day, which is wrong. These group

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Speaker 3: of people is nice, is ungrammatical. So what it did

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Speaker 3: is take people when Lee was offered the head of

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Speaker 3: the Union Army and turned it down. He said I

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Speaker 3: cannot raise my sword into my country, by which he

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Speaker 3: meant Virginia. After that, when you said your country, you

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Speaker 3: met the United States of America. And so that's just

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Speaker 3: one hell of a good story. And basically the whole

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Speaker 3: eleven and a half twelve hours is how an r

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Speaker 3: became it is. Didn't solve a lot of things about race,

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Speaker 3: didn't solve a lot of other things, but it sure

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Speaker 3: at least for a while, made us.

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Speaker 1: It is so also World War Two, A major work

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Speaker 1: on World War two called The War, the Vietnam War,

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Speaker 1: also the dust Bowl, Country Music, the National Parks, the

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Speaker 1: West Jazz, and then projects centered around pivotal American figures,

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Speaker 1: including Thomas Jefferson, Mark Twain, Jackie Robinson, and currently working

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Speaker 1: on and this is what it's a little bit of

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Speaker 1: surprise in here, working working on a film about LBJ.

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Speaker 1: Working on a film about the American Revolution, which I

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Speaker 1: want to ask you about. But Leonardo da Vinci, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so that's not America.

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Speaker 3: So in dating, so when I was thinking about doing

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Speaker 3: Benjamin Franklin, I had dinner one night with one of

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Speaker 3: his biographers, Walter Isaacson, who's a dear friend maybe no

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Speaker 3: longer heard my hesitation. And Walter and I were having

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Speaker 3: dinner in Washington, d C. And all of a sudden

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Speaker 3: he started to try to sell me a twofer. He said,

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Speaker 3: you know, you know, he's this great scientist and artist,

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Speaker 3: a political artist and writer. You know he's gonna argue

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Speaker 3: he's I think, undeniably the greatest American writer of the

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Speaker 3: eighteenth century. And he's funny and all of this. But

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Speaker 3: you know, and Walter had done another biography on Leonardo

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Speaker 3: and he said, same thing. You've got this guy who's

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Speaker 3: this great scientist but also this great artist, and you

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Speaker 3: know you should do I said, look, I don't do

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Speaker 3: a non American topics. I only do American topics. But

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Speaker 3: I walked out and was talking to one of one

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Speaker 3: of the producing teams that produced the Central Mark five

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Speaker 3: and that Jackie Robinson biography that you mentioned and the

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Speaker 3: Muhammad Ali thing, and I said, Leonardo.

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Speaker 4: They said, yes, let's do it.

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Speaker 3: So I thought, why the hell not? You know, why

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Speaker 3: be stuck. We'll tell you why not my mid sixties.

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Speaker 1: Because it's it's you're you're an America.

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Speaker 3: Wait till you see, wait you see we're we're but

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Speaker 3: we're halfway through editing and it's just so exciting and riveting.

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Speaker 3: And Sarah, my oldest daughter, who's that partner, and her husband,

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Speaker 3: David McMahon, who is the other partner. I've just returned

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Speaker 3: from a year with two of my four grandchildren in Florence,

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Speaker 3: and what we've got is just an amazing stuff. And

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Speaker 3: let's remember it's Florentine Films. So we were ment no,

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Speaker 3: I see that eventually to get to somebody in in Florence, right,

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Speaker 3: So well.

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Speaker 1: I think there's gonna be there's gonna be a lot

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Speaker 1: of uh, you're gonna have to explain that, probably a

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Speaker 1: whole bunch.

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Speaker 3: The biggest thing is the is the American Revolution. That's

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Speaker 3: just consuming almost all of my bandwidth.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you mentioned to me just in passing, and of

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Speaker 1: course we need to get to what we're here to

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Speaker 1: talk about, which is your your new film, The American Buffalo.

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Speaker 1: But you mentioned to me something I wish I wish

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Speaker 1: I could remember more precisely. You said, you're working on

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Speaker 1: the American Revolution and you mentioned I think concord and

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Speaker 1: he said, and it's not what people think, or you know,

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Speaker 1: what is the because I guess it's not helpless. I

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Speaker 1: can't remember what exactly said, but you you intimated that

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Speaker 1: there's a that there's an element that has become misunderstood

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Speaker 1: about the American Revolution.

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Speaker 3: Perhaps well like the Civil War, it's less misunderstood, it's

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Speaker 3: just not understood. And that's the work that we try

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Speaker 3: to do is a pretty deep dive that helps to

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Speaker 3: sort of dissolve the you know, the the arteries that

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Speaker 3: are clogged with the false stories that it wasn't the

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Speaker 3: Civil War wasn't about slavery. It was about slavery. There's

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Speaker 3: no mention of states rights or and all of the

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Speaker 3: cation or interposition. In the South Carolina Declaration of Secession,

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Speaker 3: it mentioned slavery an awful lot. That's what it's about.

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Speaker 3: The Ku Kluk clan are not the heroes of the

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Speaker 3: post Civil War era. That's what birth of a nation

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Speaker 3: and gone with the winds suggests. So we begin to

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Speaker 3: inherit a lot of stuff, and we think that the

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Speaker 3: people who fought against the British were sturdy New England

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Speaker 3: of farmers and Virginia, you know, farmers, and they left

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Speaker 3: their work and their job the Minuteman idea, and we

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Speaker 3: only know Lexington and conquered. We kind of know Washington

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Speaker 3: crossing the Delaware for Trenton at Christmas Day. People think

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Speaker 3: it's Christmas Eve and then that's it, and they don't

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Speaker 3: know that the biggest battle of the entire thing is

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Speaker 3: the Battle of Long Island or Brooklyn, where Washington makes

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Speaker 3: classic mistakes. Another big mistake is Brandywine, the same mistake Germantown.

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Speaker 3: All of these stuff Sarah Toogain, which Washington's not involved

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Speaker 3: as a great victory. So we want to go through

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Speaker 3: the military history and get you to know. You to

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Speaker 3: know what Guilford Courthouse was about in South Carolina, or

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Speaker 3: cow Pens or Camden all in South Carolina. We want

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Speaker 3: you to know about King's Mountain and Yorktown and the

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Speaker 3: places where it's fault. It's like a three part opera,

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Speaker 3: you know, in New England, Central States, and then South Amerka.

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Speaker 3: But it's also a much more complicated picture. It isn't

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Speaker 3: just fifty five white guys in Philadelphia thinking great thoughts, right.

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Speaker 3: A lot of these guys are slave owners. A lot

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Speaker 3: of them are trying to get Indian land. A lot

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Speaker 3: of this is about getting Indian land, and so you're

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Speaker 3: now dealing with slavery, freed slaves, runaway slaves. British are

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Speaker 3: offering freedom. If you belong to a rebel, if you

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Speaker 3: belong to somebody who's loyalists, forget it. You're still a slave, right.

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Speaker 3: So there's unbelievably complicated dynamics. Women aren't involved from the

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Speaker 3: very beginning, and any army is traveling, the American army particularly,

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Speaker 3: but also the British and Hashian have wives and children

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Speaker 3: and people that are there involved in it. And you've

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Speaker 3: got French, and you've got German, and you've got British people.

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Speaker 3: Some of the British people are pro American, some are

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Speaker 3: obviously vociferously not. There's a Canadian dimension. There's loyalists among us.

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Speaker 3: At any given table, you might have twenty thirty percent

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Speaker 3: our favoring staying with the ground. A lot of people

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Speaker 3: just remain neutral. So it is our civil war is

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Speaker 3: not a civil war. There's not huge civilian deaths except

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Speaker 3: in Missouri and Kansas related to the issues of the

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Speaker 3: civil War. You know, two people die in Gettysburg. That's

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Speaker 3: not what happens in a civil war. It's a sectional war.

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Speaker 3: It is North against South. The revolution is a bloody,

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Speaker 3: violent civil war that engages all Americans Native Americans.

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Speaker 1: Well, when you said about civil war, you mean that

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Speaker 1: there were not a lot of non combatant dot.

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Speaker 3: Right people who didn't he carry a rifle at that moment,

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Speaker 3: are tird and feathered because they're a loyalist. I mean,

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Speaker 3: we just made a film on Franklin, and Franklin's own son,

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Speaker 3: William was the royal governor of New Jersey, deposed, imprisoned,

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Speaker 3: eventually released, presumed to go to England and get out

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Speaker 3: of the thing. Instead, he starts a terrorist organization dedicated

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Speaker 3: to murdering patriots. Because, by the way, there are lots

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Speaker 3: of patriot organizations dedicated to murdering loyalists. And that means

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Speaker 3: it's right within your own community, and it's from New

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Speaker 3: Hampshire down to Georgia. Georgia's more more loyalists, at least

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Speaker 3: you know in the beginning than say New Hampshire and

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Speaker 3: the New England states are, particularly in Massachusetts. But this changes.

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Speaker 3: They start a southern strategy, beginning with Savannah and then

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Speaker 3: moving to Charleston because they presume that this loyalist population

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Speaker 3: will help them pacify. As a word from Vietnam, pacify

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Speaker 3: the countryside never happens, and so they kind of shrugged

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Speaker 3: their shoulders and said, well, maybe we should just go

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Speaker 3: up to Virginia, which is the death knell of the

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Speaker 3: British attempt to keep these rebellious calmnists, none of whom

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Speaker 3: really know much about the other. The Carolinas do, but

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Speaker 3: everybody else is pretty much an independent vassal state. Plus

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Speaker 3: to the west there's forty or fifty other nations.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think we learned in doing Franklin. At

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Speaker 2: least it was driven home to me, not just because

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Speaker 2: Franklin and his son, but in the Revolutionary Wars the

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Speaker 2: Civil War. Also because there is no state, there's probably

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Speaker 2: no town in the thirteen Colonies that itself wasn't didn't

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Speaker 2: have people on different sides.

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Speaker 1: Oh I see, yeah, you know.

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Speaker 2: And I remember when we were working on the West

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Speaker 2: and writing about bleeding Kansas and Missouri, and at that

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Speaker 2: time the wars in Bosnian you know what used to

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Speaker 2: be hungry. We're going on with the bloody just murders

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Speaker 2: of your neighbors, and I thought, well, that is a

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Speaker 2: civil war. Yeah, you know, in the classic sense that

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Speaker 2: people who are neighbors and collected together or you know,

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Speaker 2: in a location are fighting each other.

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Speaker 4: And this applies to everybody.

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Speaker 3: So the oldest functioning democracy on the continent is the

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Speaker 3: Hodna Shone, often referred to as the Iroquois Confederation, made

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Speaker 3: up of six first five and then six nations. And

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Speaker 3: what the revolution does is it splits them. Some are thinking,

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Speaker 3: maybe we'll get a better deal with the Americans, but

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Speaker 3: most of them know that they should. They know the

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Speaker 3: British from history, and they're super worried, correctly that the

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Speaker 3: whole impulse of the colonists is to move westward and

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Speaker 3: take their land. In fact, our whole series begins with

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Speaker 3: we know you know how valuable our lands are. We

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Speaker 3: know you want to take that. Oh well, because that's

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Speaker 3: what this is about.

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Speaker 1: You refer to the reward system. Well, there were like participants.

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Speaker 1: Well in the participates on the American side were often

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Speaker 1: rewarded land.

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Speaker 3: That often, if you if you signed up for the duration,

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Speaker 3: you got twenty bucks. If you got signed up for

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Speaker 3: three years, you got ten bucks. But the twenty buck

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Speaker 3: folks were also palm promised Indian But the revolution happens

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Speaker 3: for really interesting reasons. One is when the British win

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Speaker 3: the French and Indian War, which the rest of the

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Speaker 3: world calls the Seven Years War. They got a huge

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Speaker 3: empire and they can't pay for it. They're bankrupt from

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Speaker 3: the war. And so they see the settlers streaming people, English, Irish,

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Speaker 3: German settlers streaming over the Appalachians in the Indian territory,

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Speaker 3: and the Indians are fighting back and saying, no, you

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Speaker 3: can't take our land. So they do a demarcation line

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Speaker 3: and say you can't go over the Appalachians. Like, go, what,

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Speaker 3: I have an opportunity to own land for the first

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Speaker 3: time in one thousand and fifteen hundred years in my

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Speaker 3: family's history. What are you going to do that? And oh,

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Speaker 3: by the way, we're so broke, we're going to begin

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Speaker 3: to acts. The least tax people on earth, the American colonists,

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Speaker 3: And so this is what it is. But there's always

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Speaker 3: that pressure to move across the Appalachian and a great

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Speaker 3: deal of the killing of the American Revolution takes place

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Speaker 3: not just from Lexington conquered in Boston, down you know,

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Speaker 3: to here, or up to Quebec or Taykwon de Rog.

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Speaker 3: It's all there, and we detail it to Yorktown down

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Speaker 3: to Charleston and Savannah and even into a mobile. But

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Speaker 3: it's in upstate New York with Native people being killed

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Speaker 3: and having their villages. These are not plains Indians nomadic people.

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Speaker 3: These are people with cities and towns and farms and orchards,

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Speaker 3: having scorched earth policy. You know. Washington was called by

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Speaker 3: many of the Iroquois Confederation tribes the town destroyer, and

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Speaker 3: they refer to the revolution as the Whirlwind. It also

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Speaker 3: happened in the Southeast, and it all so happened in

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Speaker 3: the Midwest, particularly with George Rogers Clark, who's just he's

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Speaker 3: out to he's the Attila, the hunt of the story.

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Speaker 3: He's out to just kill as many Indians as he can,

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Speaker 3: to destroy as many villages to make that area which

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Speaker 3: will later become the Northwest Territories, you know, suitable for settling.

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Speaker 3: So it's a super complicated story, and yet it engages

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Speaker 3: some of the most noble aspirations of humankind periods. So

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Speaker 3: that when someone came up to me and said, our

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Speaker 3: last film that was broadcast was called The US and

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Speaker 3: the Holocaust, I said, do you think after the birth

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Speaker 3: of Christ, the most important event in world history is

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Speaker 3: the Holocaust? I said, no, it's the birth of the

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Speaker 3: United States.

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Speaker 1: That's great. I can't wait to see that one. How

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Speaker 1: long will that one be?

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Speaker 3: That'll be twelve hours without a single photograph, right, that's

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Speaker 3: the big challenge that we practiced in Franklin. I don't

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Speaker 3: mean to suggest that it was easy. And Lewis and Clark,

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Speaker 3: which is how you tell a story in which it's

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Speaker 3: pre photographic, no photographs, no newsreel, no combat footage, no

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Speaker 3: combat footed Whenever I travel and I give a species

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Speaker 3: and if anybody's got a photograph from their relations, please

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Speaker 3: there giving my address, please send it in. But what

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Speaker 3: happens is that necessity is a mother of invention, And

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Speaker 3: so we begin to find new strategies like going out

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Speaker 3: and filming yourself graveyard gravestones and and and trees and

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Speaker 3: atmospherics what Emily Dickinson called the far theatricals of day sunrises,

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Speaker 3: sunrit sets, and and try to find new ways to

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Speaker 3: do it. And it's beginning to work. We're knock on wood,

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Speaker 3: you know, we've been editing now for several months, and

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Speaker 3: and have you know, we're beginning to feel like we

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Speaker 3: can exhale a little bit.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, uh, I also want to do a better job

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Speaker 1: of introducing Dayton Duncan after our preamble about the forthcoming

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Speaker 1: revolutionary film American Revolution. Dayton Duncan has written and produced

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Speaker 1: many films with Ken Burns country Music. You can help

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Speaker 1: me fill in the list Country Music, Lewis and Clark,

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Speaker 1: Mark Twain, The West, Dustball, dust Bowl, National Parks, National Parks.

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Speaker 2: Ratios, Drive, Ratio's Drive about the first car trip across

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Speaker 2: the United States in nineteen oh three.

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Speaker 3: The West, The West, but also worked on Civil War,

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Speaker 3: you know, lots of different projects.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I would, because we're friends. As I was writing books,

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Speaker 2: Ken would read the books that I was working on

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Speaker 2: in progress, and he'd asked me to sit in and

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Speaker 2: look at films in progress, not as an expert on

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Speaker 2: the topic, but it's just somebody who shares his passion

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Speaker 2: for narrative storytelling. And I'd say, well, this is really working.

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Speaker 2: And I was confused, here, this is dragging here. I was,

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Speaker 2: you know that do more of this and a little

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Speaker 2: less of this and that kind of thing. So I

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Speaker 2: fiddled around on the ones I didn't produce and write,

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Speaker 2: but was dedicated and lucky to work with him on

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Speaker 2: ones that were particul clear passion or interest to me.

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Speaker 1: How'd you guys meet that's good story. Did you meet

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Speaker 1: through Dayton's books or yep?

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Speaker 3: I I you know, when I decided to become a

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Speaker 3: documentary filmmaker. Strike one on PBS, Strike two in American History,

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Speaker 3: Strike three, Ye're out. I moved from New York City

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Speaker 3: to Walpole, New Hampshire, to the house i'm living in now,

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Speaker 3: to the bedroom I still sleep in forty four years ago.

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Speaker 3: But before that, in order to survive, we would take

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Speaker 3: day jobs from the BBC, who didn't want to send

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Speaker 3: a union crew from New York City all the way

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Speaker 3: up and incur all these expenses. And we just said

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Speaker 3: we won't charge per deems. We'll just get where you

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Speaker 3: need to be in New England, which was, you know,

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Speaker 3: waking up at one am to go be ready to

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Speaker 3: shoot at six am, to finish at midnight, to drive

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Speaker 3: another six hours ago on what kind of project like

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Speaker 3: one day shoot. So one day the BBC was interviewing

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Speaker 3: the Governor of New Hampshire, who was active in sort

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Speaker 3: of the adapt active reuse of some of the old

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Speaker 3: abandoned mills, the Amiskeag Mills in Manchester, New Hampshire. That

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Speaker 3: governor was named Hugh Gallen and his chief of staff

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Speaker 3: was Dayton Duncan. So the first time I met Golrok

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Speaker 3: is when.

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Speaker 2: We wanted to talk to Hugh Gallan. They had to

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Speaker 2: go through Mate, yes.

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Speaker 3: And he had a reputation already is kind of this tough.

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Speaker 3: So we did a shoot and we sort of noticed

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Speaker 3: each other, and I think he thought, oh, this child

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Speaker 3: is making a film, what is he doing? But it

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Speaker 3: turned out all right, And then later we'd bump into

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Speaker 3: each other at sort of political events in the state.

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Speaker 3: It's a small state and intimate. And then when I

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Speaker 3: was getting married, I had crossed every t and dotted

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Speaker 3: every eye except the very important marriage license, and I

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Speaker 3: needed to cut through red tape in about a day

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Speaker 3: and a half. So I called my buddy. Eventually our

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Speaker 3: wives and then my children and his children became the

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Speaker 3: dayon moved here, and so.

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Speaker 1: He gave me.

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Speaker 3: One of the books he did give me was Out West,

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Speaker 3: which is this magnificent story of Lewis and Clark, but

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Speaker 3: it's also the story of his story engaging the Lewis

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Speaker 3: and Clark trail. And I went to date and I

431
00:25:14,040 --> 00:25:16,159
Speaker 3: said man, this is a really great film. We're not

432
00:25:16,200 --> 00:25:18,240
Speaker 3: going to tell your story, but let's tell Lewis and Clark.

433
00:25:18,760 --> 00:25:21,199
Speaker 3: And so we had some stuff in the way, like

434
00:25:21,240 --> 00:25:24,800
Speaker 3: the Civil War and baseball in the West. But you know,

435
00:25:24,880 --> 00:25:29,440
Speaker 3: one of the most satisfying parts of my professional experience

436
00:25:29,480 --> 00:25:32,679
Speaker 3: has been working with Dayton, particularly on Lewis and Clark,

437
00:25:33,200 --> 00:25:37,040
Speaker 3: particularly out on the road in Montana, driving from one

438
00:25:37,080 --> 00:25:40,920
Speaker 3: town to another and looking and making jokes about, well, well,

439
00:25:40,960 --> 00:25:44,600
Speaker 3: it looks like Winnifred is way up there, and what

440
00:25:44,840 --> 00:25:46,720
Speaker 3: you know. Dayton would say, what are you going to

441
00:25:46,800 --> 00:25:48,359
Speaker 3: get when do we get into town? I said, well,

442
00:25:48,359 --> 00:25:51,679
Speaker 3: I think I'll start with a cold vs. Swas and

443
00:25:51,720 --> 00:25:55,200
Speaker 3: then I'm going to move to a salad of odive

444
00:25:55,680 --> 00:25:59,200
Speaker 3: with a vinaigrette dressing, and then I will have probably

445
00:25:59,240 --> 00:26:03,400
Speaker 3: either the Chateau Brion or the Dover Soul, and then

446
00:26:03,440 --> 00:26:07,320
Speaker 3: I hope to follow it off with a beautiful crem breulat.

447
00:26:07,680 --> 00:26:09,440
Speaker 3: And then there would be a beat and he'd say,

448
00:26:10,080 --> 00:26:12,399
Speaker 3: what do you want on your cheeseburger? And so we

449
00:26:12,400 --> 00:26:14,919
Speaker 3: would go into town and we go to the cafe

450
00:26:15,080 --> 00:26:17,919
Speaker 3: and we get a delicious cheeseburger, and then I'd repeat

451
00:26:17,920 --> 00:26:20,600
Speaker 3: it the other way I would. I would say to Dayton, well,

452
00:26:20,640 --> 00:26:22,199
Speaker 3: you know, we're coming up on it. Where do you

453
00:26:22,240 --> 00:26:25,320
Speaker 3: what do you think we should get? And he would

454
00:26:25,440 --> 00:26:27,760
Speaker 3: elaborate thing and then I would go, what do you

455
00:26:27,760 --> 00:26:30,600
Speaker 3: want on your cheeseburger? So that's it was. It was

456
00:26:30,600 --> 00:26:34,600
Speaker 3: our routine. But in that time we got we've you know,

457
00:26:34,880 --> 00:26:37,040
Speaker 3: Dayton had already known the West, but I fell in

458
00:26:37,080 --> 00:26:39,479
Speaker 3: love with it, and and he was the guide and

459
00:26:39,520 --> 00:26:42,000
Speaker 3: we'd be drinking fresca.

460
00:26:42,280 --> 00:26:44,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think one of the joys of my life.

461
00:26:44,200 --> 00:26:46,000
Speaker 2: And correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I

462
00:26:46,160 --> 00:26:49,480
Speaker 2: was with you the first time that you were ever

463
00:26:49,520 --> 00:26:54,160
Speaker 2: in South Dakota. In North Dakota, yes, and maybe Montana.

464
00:26:53,440 --> 00:26:57,320
Speaker 2: And the first time you ever saw any buffalo for

465
00:26:57,359 --> 00:26:58,680
Speaker 2: some that wasn't.

466
00:26:59,400 --> 00:27:01,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, I saw a buffalo when I was a little boy.

467
00:27:01,960 --> 00:27:05,480
Speaker 3: And it's either Philadelphia or Baltimore. I don't remember what zoo.

468
00:27:05,680 --> 00:27:09,280
Speaker 3: And I'd already's been animated as an anthropologist, sons by

469
00:27:09,359 --> 00:27:12,479
Speaker 3: native people and buffaloes and stuff like that. But I

470
00:27:12,520 --> 00:27:13,800
Speaker 3: saw a buffalo.

471
00:27:15,119 --> 00:27:20,840
Speaker 2: At the ranch where years later The Dances with Wolves

472
00:27:20,920 --> 00:27:24,320
Speaker 2: was shot. Oh, the ranch north of Pier that was

473
00:27:24,359 --> 00:27:26,320
Speaker 2: the Halk Ranch at that time, I've had a triple

474
00:27:26,400 --> 00:27:29,119
Speaker 2: U I think was the name of the ranch. They

475
00:27:29,119 --> 00:27:31,720
Speaker 2: had one of the largest herds in America at the time,

476
00:27:33,359 --> 00:27:35,480
Speaker 2: and I had met the guy that the rancher when

477
00:27:35,480 --> 00:27:39,560
Speaker 2: I was doing my book out West and interviewed him.

478
00:27:40,000 --> 00:27:44,560
Speaker 2: But then so we filmed there. But that was what

479
00:27:44,640 --> 00:27:45,840
Speaker 2: I was going to say. One of the joys of

480
00:27:45,840 --> 00:27:49,320
Speaker 2: my life was on those moments with Ken, even though

481
00:27:49,359 --> 00:27:53,119
Speaker 2: you know we're doing ridiculous hours to get up and

482
00:27:53,160 --> 00:27:55,840
Speaker 2: shoot at dawn and then drive and find the place

483
00:27:55,840 --> 00:27:59,199
Speaker 2: we're going to shoot next and go tell sunset in

484
00:27:59,320 --> 00:28:03,000
Speaker 2: the northern plains and the middle of the summer, so

485
00:28:03,040 --> 00:28:06,560
Speaker 2: you're talking about sunrise at four o'clock and sunset at ten.

486
00:28:09,040 --> 00:28:13,840
Speaker 2: But of just seeing his was important to me when

487
00:28:13,840 --> 00:28:16,399
Speaker 2: we were making that film, of seeing his eyes so

488
00:28:16,600 --> 00:28:23,920
Speaker 2: wide at the landscape, encountering the landscape of the Great Plains,

489
00:28:23,920 --> 00:28:27,440
Speaker 2: and it reminded me that we needed to make sure

490
00:28:27,720 --> 00:28:30,960
Speaker 2: in our film that we somehow because we can't show

491
00:28:31,000 --> 00:28:33,919
Speaker 2: the faces of Lewis and Clark and the members of

492
00:28:33,960 --> 00:28:38,240
Speaker 2: the Core of Discovery. We were standing with them looking

493
00:28:38,280 --> 00:28:42,240
Speaker 2: at it and using their quotes from their journals, but

494
00:28:42,360 --> 00:28:44,800
Speaker 2: to make sure we got across the sense of wonder

495
00:28:45,800 --> 00:28:49,720
Speaker 2: that they had because they know they came from this

496
00:28:49,840 --> 00:28:51,880
Speaker 2: part of the country up in New England and the

497
00:28:51,920 --> 00:28:56,320
Speaker 2: East where basically you have vertical views through gaps and

498
00:28:56,360 --> 00:29:00,760
Speaker 2: trees and stuff. And now you're in this horizontal world

499
00:29:01,000 --> 00:29:05,080
Speaker 2: and you're encountering animals that, as they would write in

500
00:29:05,200 --> 00:29:08,960
Speaker 2: their journals, not known back in the United States. I

501
00:29:08,960 --> 00:29:11,840
Speaker 2: mean they're writing that when they're in Nebraska and South Dakota.

502
00:29:11,880 --> 00:29:14,120
Speaker 2: They're talking about back in the States, you don't have

503
00:29:14,280 --> 00:29:20,640
Speaker 2: these things that barking dogs and piet sheens and prairie

504
00:29:20,720 --> 00:29:24,479
Speaker 2: dogs as John Ordway called them, and that's what they became.

505
00:29:24,640 --> 00:29:31,120
Speaker 2: And antelope and you know, jack rabbits and the and

506
00:29:31,360 --> 00:29:36,200
Speaker 2: bison they knew about, but because they used to be

507
00:29:36,240 --> 00:29:41,520
Speaker 2: in the East Coast, but not in those numbers and

508
00:29:41,600 --> 00:29:46,280
Speaker 2: the astonishing numbers grizzly bears living on the plains elk

509
00:29:46,520 --> 00:29:49,840
Speaker 2: elk one was a plain's animal at one time, and

510
00:29:50,080 --> 00:29:54,480
Speaker 2: just this wonderland of landscape and wildlife that they encountered

511
00:29:55,200 --> 00:29:59,600
Speaker 2: as the first US citizens to ever go that far west,

512
00:29:59,760 --> 00:30:06,360
Speaker 2: and as the first US citizens, white citizens to see.

513
00:30:05,800 --> 00:30:06,520
Speaker 3: In that.

514
00:30:08,560 --> 00:30:14,480
Speaker 2: You know, paradise of wonderland of wildlife and landscape, and

515
00:30:14,600 --> 00:30:19,640
Speaker 2: for me that's the marker, you know, that was what

516
00:30:19,760 --> 00:30:23,960
Speaker 2: the West was after the United States had claimed it

517
00:30:24,080 --> 00:30:27,560
Speaker 2: through the Louisiana Purchase but didn't control it. But it

518
00:30:27,720 --> 00:30:31,480
Speaker 2: was a view of a land and a people and

519
00:30:31,960 --> 00:30:37,400
Speaker 2: animals that in the next eighty years would be irrevocably changed.

520
00:30:39,240 --> 00:30:42,920
Speaker 2: And so they were the first in one respect, and

521
00:30:42,960 --> 00:30:46,760
Speaker 2: they were the last in another respect to encounter that

522
00:30:48,320 --> 00:30:51,120
Speaker 2: place that had been evolving for me ten thousand years

523
00:30:51,160 --> 00:30:55,600
Speaker 2: before the United States as officially was entering into it.

524
00:30:55,640 --> 00:30:58,920
Speaker 2: And my book Out West was about the difference between

525
00:30:58,920 --> 00:31:01,080
Speaker 2: what they saw and what I saw, and to tell

526
00:31:01,120 --> 00:31:05,560
Speaker 2: the history of the West in between those they saw.

527
00:31:05,760 --> 00:31:08,160
Speaker 1: They saw Buffalo everywhere.

528
00:31:08,240 --> 00:31:13,720
Speaker 3: It'd be like going to Kenya, right and not seeing

529
00:31:14,320 --> 00:31:17,760
Speaker 3: all the things you can see in Kenya anymore. Right,

530
00:31:17,800 --> 00:31:20,080
Speaker 3: that there's a kind of silence and a kind of

531
00:31:20,280 --> 00:31:24,320
Speaker 3: mono culture now to the prairies when it was, as

532
00:31:24,360 --> 00:31:28,400
Speaker 3: they say, are serengetti. And that's I think I think

533
00:31:28,520 --> 00:31:31,080
Speaker 3: we tried. I think we accomplished in Lewis and Clark,

534
00:31:31,680 --> 00:31:33,520
Speaker 3: and I think again in the Buffalo film, to get

535
00:31:33,560 --> 00:31:39,120
Speaker 3: a sense of just how filled the planes were with

536
00:31:39,320 --> 00:31:44,520
Speaker 3: species of both both flora as well as fauna, and

537
00:31:44,560 --> 00:31:47,640
Speaker 3: how what it would be like to imagine or now

538
00:31:47,720 --> 00:31:52,160
Speaker 3: reimagine the possibilities that there were elk, there were grizzlies,

539
00:31:52,600 --> 00:31:55,680
Speaker 3: there were wolves and so now and in a variety

540
00:31:55,720 --> 00:31:59,480
Speaker 3: of plant life that is just a spectacular eden as

541
00:31:59,280 --> 00:32:02,160
Speaker 3: as as day and says Is as people talked about it,

542
00:32:02,440 --> 00:32:05,080
Speaker 3: you know, this was this was our new the new

543
00:32:05,200 --> 00:32:07,560
Speaker 3: territory we were acquiring, and it was just full. And

544
00:32:07,560 --> 00:32:13,120
Speaker 3: then very shortly afterwards it's not full. The rounds have disappeared.

545
00:32:13,240 --> 00:32:16,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, Lewis and Clark, I say, we just saw them.

546
00:32:16,560 --> 00:32:20,880
Speaker 2: And just talking about buffalo. They saw them everywhere. Once

547
00:32:20,880 --> 00:32:25,280
Speaker 2: they reached what's now South Dakota and the plains that

548
00:32:25,360 --> 00:32:28,800
Speaker 2: I crossed in the early eighties, retracing their route, it

549
00:32:28,920 --> 00:32:33,120
Speaker 2: was a wildlife desert now, uh. And to find to

550
00:32:33,160 --> 00:32:37,000
Speaker 2: see buffalo out on a range took a lot of work.

551
00:32:37,040 --> 00:32:40,440
Speaker 2: I mean I had as a reporter, had to you know,

552
00:32:40,480 --> 00:32:42,360
Speaker 2: dig down to find out work. And I go see

553
00:32:42,400 --> 00:32:45,360
Speaker 2: some you know, and talk and learn a little bit

554
00:32:45,520 --> 00:32:51,600
Speaker 2: about them. And so South Dakota and then my friend

555
00:32:52,480 --> 00:32:55,040
Speaker 2: became my friend through that Gerard Baker who's in our

556
00:32:57,040 --> 00:32:59,160
Speaker 2: in our Lewis and Clark film, and also in our

557
00:32:59,240 --> 00:33:02,920
Speaker 2: National Parks film, and also in the West Colman, and

558
00:33:03,080 --> 00:33:05,800
Speaker 2: also in this Buffalo of Them Who's a Mandanadatsa the

559
00:33:05,960 --> 00:33:08,640
Speaker 2: tribes that sheltered Lewis and Clark in the winter of

560
00:33:08,720 --> 00:33:12,720
Speaker 2: eighteen o four eighteen o five. I got to know

561
00:33:12,840 --> 00:33:16,560
Speaker 2: him very well. But at one point he became the

562
00:33:16,720 --> 00:33:20,640
Speaker 2: district ranger of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the North Unit,

563
00:33:20,840 --> 00:33:23,240
Speaker 2: and one of his jobs was sort of managing.

564
00:33:22,880 --> 00:33:23,760
Speaker 1: Their buffalo herd.

565
00:33:23,880 --> 00:33:30,120
Speaker 2: So through him I got not only introduced, you know,

566
00:33:30,400 --> 00:33:37,080
Speaker 2: personally to buffalo, but more importantly, and we hope that

567
00:33:37,160 --> 00:33:44,200
Speaker 2: our film gets this across, the importance that they had

568
00:33:45,240 --> 00:33:49,840
Speaker 2: both for sustenance physical sustenance, but also for spiritual sustenance

569
00:33:49,960 --> 00:33:53,920
Speaker 2: for Native people who had been living with them for

570
00:33:53,960 --> 00:33:58,880
Speaker 2: ten thousand years. And he really got that across to me.

571
00:34:00,760 --> 00:34:03,200
Speaker 2: And that's what another thing we hope in this film

572
00:34:04,000 --> 00:34:08,839
Speaker 2: that we make perfectly clear. You know, you can say it, well,

573
00:34:08,960 --> 00:34:11,160
Speaker 2: they've been living them for ten thousand years and everything,

574
00:34:11,200 --> 00:34:13,719
Speaker 2: and then they were gone and that was really devastating.

575
00:34:14,840 --> 00:34:21,360
Speaker 2: That just doesn't touch it, you know, about how how intricate, intricate,

576
00:34:21,680 --> 00:34:27,560
Speaker 2: it intocreate in whatever how closely thank you they were.

577
00:34:27,719 --> 00:34:31,320
Speaker 2: Their lives were intertwined and the meaning that they had

578
00:34:31,920 --> 00:34:36,600
Speaker 2: for people beyond you know, the food or the hides

579
00:34:37,000 --> 00:34:41,000
Speaker 2: or the bones that they would use for different different things.

580
00:34:41,120 --> 00:34:44,040
Speaker 2: It was part of existence and it was part of

581
00:34:44,080 --> 00:34:44,640
Speaker 2: a web of.

582
00:34:46,320 --> 00:34:46,680
Speaker 1: Being.

583
00:34:49,200 --> 00:34:53,799
Speaker 2: That is, you can you can talk about it, but

584
00:34:53,920 --> 00:34:56,840
Speaker 2: having people like Gerard and other people that we interviewed

585
00:34:56,840 --> 00:34:59,880
Speaker 2: in our film describe it because they're talking about their people.

586
00:35:00,239 --> 00:35:05,040
Speaker 2: Bones are out there too, talking about how deep it

587
00:35:05,200 --> 00:35:10,399
Speaker 2: was and therefore how devastating it was, and therefore how

588
00:35:10,440 --> 00:35:15,520
Speaker 2: important it is now to try to restore some more

589
00:35:15,680 --> 00:35:20,120
Speaker 2: buffalo two reservations to the land, their own ancestral lands,

590
00:35:20,160 --> 00:35:23,360
Speaker 2: the buffaloes and the ancestral lands that are laughed at

591
00:35:23,480 --> 00:35:30,760
Speaker 2: least on reservations for tribes to revive that sacred connection

592
00:35:31,640 --> 00:35:34,440
Speaker 2: that they had and also to provide them with food

593
00:35:34,480 --> 00:35:35,560
Speaker 2: sovereignty as well.

594
00:35:37,280 --> 00:35:41,080
Speaker 3: It's been broken for you know, five six generations. That's

595
00:35:41,120 --> 00:35:44,040
Speaker 3: a big break, because if you think about it, it's

596
00:35:44,080 --> 00:35:48,319
Speaker 3: six hundred generations of experience up to that point and

597
00:35:48,360 --> 00:35:50,400
Speaker 3: then all of a sudden, you know, we have in

598
00:35:50,480 --> 00:35:53,800
Speaker 3: filmmaking a phrase called POV, which means point of view,

599
00:35:54,640 --> 00:35:59,239
Speaker 3: and we tend to realize that we are susceptible to

600
00:35:59,440 --> 00:36:02,840
Speaker 3: one po and while it might be generous enough to

601
00:36:03,120 --> 00:36:07,400
Speaker 3: encompass other points of view, it does so in the

602
00:36:07,520 --> 00:36:13,319
Speaker 3: kind of sometimes patronizing kind of no bless obleiche. We well,

603
00:36:13,400 --> 00:36:17,440
Speaker 3: yes there are other views of this, but you really,

604
00:36:17,520 --> 00:36:21,279
Speaker 3: in the case of this question, have to yield to

605
00:36:21,440 --> 00:36:26,319
Speaker 3: those people who have six hundred generations of experience and

606
00:36:26,400 --> 00:36:29,960
Speaker 3: not just four or five or six generations of experience

607
00:36:30,360 --> 00:36:34,800
Speaker 3: with regard to this animal. I think for us the

608
00:36:34,840 --> 00:36:38,160
Speaker 3: ability later in our professional lives to be able to

609
00:36:38,280 --> 00:36:44,720
Speaker 3: seed to views not in just some sort of kind liberal,

610
00:36:44,880 --> 00:36:48,400
Speaker 3: bleeding heart way, but in a real full we just

611
00:36:48,480 --> 00:36:51,880
Speaker 3: give it over and challenge lots of things, presumptions about

612
00:36:51,880 --> 00:36:59,000
Speaker 3: ownership of land, presumptions about superiority as a species, presumptions

613
00:36:59,080 --> 00:37:02,560
Speaker 3: about how you act in concert with this. Because if

614
00:37:02,600 --> 00:37:05,799
Speaker 3: you're just killing a buffalo and taking the tongue, which

615
00:37:05,840 --> 00:37:09,680
Speaker 3: is the first thing, you can imagine what the effect

616
00:37:09,760 --> 00:37:12,000
Speaker 3: is on a culture that is using everything, as Dayton

617
00:37:12,080 --> 00:37:15,520
Speaker 3: is suggesting, from the tail to the snout and as

618
00:37:15,600 --> 00:37:19,640
Speaker 3: Girard says in our film, and also the snort, because

619
00:37:19,760 --> 00:37:23,520
Speaker 3: the buffalo sounds get worked into rituals, so it isn't

620
00:37:23,560 --> 00:37:26,840
Speaker 3: just using every last thing. And Dayton wrote a beautiful

621
00:37:26,880 --> 00:37:31,399
Speaker 3: thing of you know, from the moment you're born into

622
00:37:31,480 --> 00:37:34,239
Speaker 3: a warm buffalo blanket and the time you die in

623
00:37:34,320 --> 00:37:37,520
Speaker 3: a shroud of buffalo skin, all the ways in which

624
00:37:37,560 --> 00:37:42,040
Speaker 3: the buffalo is used from tail to snout, and then having,

625
00:37:42,080 --> 00:37:45,600
Speaker 3: as Dayton has said so well, this spiritual dimension. And

626
00:37:46,600 --> 00:37:49,400
Speaker 3: so we need to actually look at the story that

627
00:37:49,480 --> 00:37:53,520
Speaker 3: takes place from a variety of povs and actually seed

628
00:37:54,560 --> 00:37:58,360
Speaker 3: something even as filmmakers tightly in control of the narrative,

629
00:37:58,440 --> 00:38:01,879
Speaker 3: is that we not we may not always be right

630
00:38:02,160 --> 00:38:04,480
Speaker 3: or see it in a way. And how can we

631
00:38:04,640 --> 00:38:08,799
Speaker 3: in developing this narrative see things from what is in

632
00:38:08,840 --> 00:38:11,400
Speaker 3: many cases with regard to say, ownership of the land

633
00:38:11,760 --> 00:38:31,879
Speaker 3: or kinship with other species, entirely different point.

634
00:38:15,400 --> 00:38:27,560
Speaker 1: Of the kinship question. I think is handled really well

635
00:38:27,600 --> 00:38:32,200
Speaker 1: in the film. And again the film releases in October. Yes, yeah,

636
00:38:32,400 --> 00:38:33,640
Speaker 1: called the American Buffalo.

637
00:38:35,480 --> 00:38:38,240
Speaker 2: I think that we're sixteenth and seventeenth.

638
00:38:37,760 --> 00:38:41,839
Speaker 1: October sixteen and seventeenes a thing that does very convincingly,

639
00:38:43,080 --> 00:38:45,880
Speaker 1: and I'd like red references of it and pondered it before.

640
00:38:46,000 --> 00:38:50,600
Speaker 1: But you guys, capturedly. Well, well, is this idea of

641
00:38:52,680 --> 00:39:00,040
Speaker 1: between the planes, tribes and the animals, that there's a

642
00:39:00,080 --> 00:39:03,920
Speaker 1: spiritual dimension in otherwise there's like this this real equal footing,

643
00:39:05,040 --> 00:39:09,640
Speaker 1: meaning it was even that at one in some belief systems,

644
00:39:09,680 --> 00:39:13,320
Speaker 1: it was even at once upon a time the buffalo

645
00:39:13,360 --> 00:39:18,600
Speaker 1: were dominant over humans, but through various circumstances, the humans

646
00:39:18,640 --> 00:39:23,360
Speaker 1: became dominant over buffalo. But if humans did sort of

647
00:39:23,480 --> 00:39:28,520
Speaker 1: moral infractions against the animals, the animals would deprive themselves

648
00:39:29,080 --> 00:39:34,279
Speaker 1: and you had to to in writing about the film

649
00:39:34,360 --> 00:39:37,080
Speaker 1: later I wrote a thing for Outside magazine about the film,

650
00:39:37,080 --> 00:39:41,879
Speaker 1: and writing about it would be that bad hunting could

651
00:39:41,880 --> 00:39:44,879
Speaker 1: be more than bad luck, like bad hunting could could

652
00:39:44,960 --> 00:39:49,520
Speaker 1: be a sign of some moral transgression, meaning you needed

653
00:39:49,560 --> 00:39:50,520
Speaker 1: to make things right.

654
00:39:52,560 --> 00:39:56,279
Speaker 3: Religious karma idea right that that that there was you

655
00:39:56,360 --> 00:39:59,480
Speaker 3: had a kind of responsibility. There's a reciprocity and in

656
00:39:59,640 --> 00:40:03,040
Speaker 3: quality between all of creation, and you needed to be

657
00:40:03,120 --> 00:40:06,240
Speaker 3: in balance with that. And this is not just every tribe.

658
00:40:06,320 --> 00:40:10,160
Speaker 3: It's specific tribes have specific myths about the creation and

659
00:40:10,239 --> 00:40:13,759
Speaker 3: when man became dominant, But that dominance required a kind

660
00:40:13,760 --> 00:40:16,799
Speaker 3: of humility in the face of what the buffalo then

661
00:40:16,920 --> 00:40:20,480
Speaker 3: provided and pre horse. This is going to be a

662
00:40:20,640 --> 00:40:23,239
Speaker 3: very big deal. This is the survival of your band,

663
00:40:23,360 --> 00:40:27,560
Speaker 3: your tribe might be on the success of one hunt

664
00:40:27,680 --> 00:40:30,919
Speaker 3: that would provide you with enough meat for a month

665
00:40:30,960 --> 00:40:33,520
Speaker 3: if you got to buffalo and if you didn't, what

666
00:40:33,600 --> 00:40:36,359
Speaker 3: were you doing if they were not there? Had had

667
00:40:36,400 --> 00:40:40,759
Speaker 3: you done something wrong? And it's really a wonderful ones

668
00:40:40,800 --> 00:40:43,400
Speaker 3: And it's different from the steamroller effect.

669
00:40:43,520 --> 00:40:47,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's about respect. I mean, the cosmology is

670
00:40:49,640 --> 00:40:53,879
Speaker 2: so different a world view of human beings in their

671
00:40:53,920 --> 00:40:57,040
Speaker 2: relationship to the natural world than what was brought to

672
00:40:57,160 --> 00:41:01,799
Speaker 2: the Americas in fourteen ninety two and following, which was

673
00:41:02,320 --> 00:41:06,080
Speaker 2: we're all part of this web and we're all in

674
00:41:06,200 --> 00:41:11,040
Speaker 2: essence on an equal basis everything and it all comes

675
00:41:11,120 --> 00:41:17,319
Speaker 2: from the Sun and that great unknown that uh that

676
00:41:17,520 --> 00:41:20,759
Speaker 2: the Lakotas are called the walk on Tonka, the you know,

677
00:41:20,960 --> 00:41:26,319
Speaker 2: the great incomprehensibility. They understood that the sun was the

678
00:41:26,360 --> 00:41:31,880
Speaker 2: source of all life and the represent the biggest representation

679
00:41:32,280 --> 00:41:33,160
Speaker 2: of the Sun.

680
00:41:34,000 --> 00:41:34,920
Speaker 1: Was the buffalo.

681
00:41:35,120 --> 00:41:39,960
Speaker 2: The buffalo ate the grass that the Sun made possible

682
00:41:41,080 --> 00:41:45,840
Speaker 2: and then turned that into meat that they then relied

683
00:41:45,920 --> 00:41:49,960
Speaker 2: upon for their you know, for their food, but also

684
00:41:50,080 --> 00:41:54,200
Speaker 2: everybody part for for something else, and that the that

685
00:41:54,239 --> 00:41:57,360
Speaker 2: relationship was one in which a number of the people

686
00:41:57,400 --> 00:42:01,920
Speaker 2: we interviewed say in our film, the buffalo give themselves

687
00:42:02,000 --> 00:42:05,640
Speaker 2: to us. That's part of how this works. And yeah,

688
00:42:06,000 --> 00:42:11,000
Speaker 2: and if if we don't uh, through our ceremonies and

689
00:42:11,160 --> 00:42:15,920
Speaker 2: our practices respect that, then they might withhold that and

690
00:42:15,960 --> 00:42:17,800
Speaker 2: they would go back to where they came from a

691
00:42:17,840 --> 00:42:20,880
Speaker 2: lot of times in sacred places to them, the Wichita

692
00:42:20,880 --> 00:42:25,120
Speaker 2: Mountains in Oklahoma to the Black Hills in the Northern

693
00:42:25,160 --> 00:42:29,040
Speaker 2: Plains for the Lakota and Cheyenne, they might go go

694
00:42:29,080 --> 00:42:32,600
Speaker 2: back there, and then special ceremonies and maybe the intervention

695
00:42:32,760 --> 00:42:38,840
Speaker 2: of a culture hero were required to convince them, Okay,

696
00:42:38,880 --> 00:42:42,799
Speaker 2: we've learned our lesson where you know, we will start

697
00:42:42,800 --> 00:42:46,560
Speaker 2: a fish are we'll reset, and we'll we promise you

698
00:42:46,600 --> 00:42:49,320
Speaker 2: know that we won't. We'll try our best not to

699
00:42:49,600 --> 00:42:53,680
Speaker 2: do whatever that violation was that caused you to disappear,

700
00:42:54,560 --> 00:43:00,839
Speaker 2: and to a certain extent in our film. Remarkably, when

701
00:43:01,040 --> 00:43:07,120
Speaker 2: the first national preserve for bison back on the Plains

702
00:43:07,239 --> 00:43:12,160
Speaker 2: is created in the early nineteen hundreds through Theodore Roosevelt,

703
00:43:12,600 --> 00:43:15,600
Speaker 2: it was in the Wichita Mountains where, according to the

704
00:43:15,640 --> 00:43:18,960
Speaker 2: Kai was they would go they had first emerged, and

705
00:43:19,040 --> 00:43:22,880
Speaker 2: it's where they would go when they hadn't been respected.

706
00:43:23,120 --> 00:43:26,600
Speaker 2: And according to a legend told by a woman named

707
00:43:26,600 --> 00:43:30,760
Speaker 2: Old Lady Horse, whose words we use in the film.

708
00:43:31,120 --> 00:43:35,640
Speaker 2: She describes a girl watching the last buffalo heard after

709
00:43:35,680 --> 00:43:39,640
Speaker 2: the buffalo had been slaughtered by the hide hunters disappearing

710
00:43:40,480 --> 00:43:43,920
Speaker 2: that into what's called now Mount Scott and the Wichita

711
00:43:43,960 --> 00:43:46,440
Speaker 2: Mountains and said it opened up and inside was a

712
00:43:46,440 --> 00:43:49,120
Speaker 2: world of fresh beauty, and the rivers ran clear, and

713
00:43:49,200 --> 00:43:53,480
Speaker 2: the grass was green. And that's where they went. And

714
00:43:53,520 --> 00:44:00,319
Speaker 2: when they came back for the Kias and Comanches, was

715
00:44:01,239 --> 00:44:04,280
Speaker 2: at the Wichita Mountains where the preserve was founded. That

716
00:44:04,360 --> 00:44:07,440
Speaker 2: you know, Theodore Roosevelt believed me wasn't doing it because

717
00:44:07,480 --> 00:44:11,399
Speaker 2: he knew the legend of that Old Lady Horse had told.

718
00:44:11,640 --> 00:44:14,000
Speaker 2: It was just a good place. The federal government had

719
00:44:14,000 --> 00:44:17,840
Speaker 2: taken some of the land from the Comanche Reservation during allotment,

720
00:44:18,080 --> 00:44:19,520
Speaker 2: and it made sense.

721
00:44:21,160 --> 00:44:21,680
Speaker 1: To do it.

722
00:44:21,880 --> 00:44:26,439
Speaker 2: But there were people there, Guana Parker and others who

723
00:44:26,560 --> 00:44:31,480
Speaker 2: understood that deeper thing and were and who had interacted

724
00:44:31,520 --> 00:44:35,319
Speaker 2: with the animals as young as young. There were still

725
00:44:35,360 --> 00:44:38,480
Speaker 2: some people alive that remember them the time when they

726
00:44:38,520 --> 00:44:41,719
Speaker 2: covered the plains, and they were also their children who

727
00:44:41,760 --> 00:44:45,600
Speaker 2: hadn't seen a buffalo. I mean, that's how dramatic that.

728
00:44:45,719 --> 00:44:49,160
Speaker 3: And the irony is that the buffalo that are going

729
00:44:49,239 --> 00:44:54,520
Speaker 3: to seed the Wichita Mountains refuge from the Bronx, come

730
00:44:54,560 --> 00:44:57,759
Speaker 3: from the Bronx zoo and they're loaded on this you know,

731
00:44:57,880 --> 00:45:02,600
Speaker 3: in the busiest city, the biggest city in the Western Hemisphere.

732
00:45:02,640 --> 00:45:05,080
Speaker 3: They're going to be loaded on these box cards and

733
00:45:05,200 --> 00:45:09,560
Speaker 3: make the reverse trip out to their you know, as

734
00:45:09,680 --> 00:45:13,880
Speaker 3: we said, new old home. And that I think is

735
00:45:14,040 --> 00:45:17,960
Speaker 3: part of trying to understand the undertow of this story.

736
00:45:17,960 --> 00:45:21,680
Speaker 2: Look, we have a very good interview in that in

737
00:45:21,719 --> 00:45:27,080
Speaker 2: our film described Steve somebody.

738
00:45:28,360 --> 00:45:30,920
Speaker 4: Helps us, helps us get that from the beginning.

739
00:45:31,800 --> 00:45:33,359
Speaker 1: Rather promising middle aged man.

740
00:45:33,760 --> 00:45:38,200
Speaker 3: So so the thing to remember is that human nature

741
00:45:38,280 --> 00:45:41,920
Speaker 3: never changes. It's the same for all, right, villains and

742
00:45:42,040 --> 00:45:45,640
Speaker 3: heroes and all that stuff that we superficially apply. So

743
00:45:46,360 --> 00:45:49,000
Speaker 3: there are lots of ways of thinking and lots of

744
00:45:49,040 --> 00:45:52,440
Speaker 3: ways of behaving and whatever. But you know, native peoples

745
00:45:52,440 --> 00:45:56,080
Speaker 3: are warring with one another and committing atrocities. But I

746
00:45:56,120 --> 00:45:58,600
Speaker 3: think for us to be able to look and see

747
00:45:59,080 --> 00:46:03,480
Speaker 3: that many of our own ancestors participated in a kind

748
00:46:03,520 --> 00:46:06,480
Speaker 3: of thoughtless which is maybe the most charitable thing, you

749
00:46:06,520 --> 00:46:11,640
Speaker 3: could say, thoughtless slaughter that reached a kind of industrial

750
00:46:11,880 --> 00:46:16,160
Speaker 3: pitch in the last half of the nineteenth century. That

751
00:46:16,280 --> 00:46:20,480
Speaker 3: took an animal that numbered in perhaps thirty million at

752
00:46:20,480 --> 00:46:25,480
Speaker 3: the beginning of the eighteenth century down to basically nobody.

753
00:46:25,200 --> 00:46:28,640
Speaker 2: Could find the beginning of the eighteen hundreds, eighteenth century.

754
00:46:28,239 --> 00:46:30,520
Speaker 3: The beginning of the nineteenth century, there are at least

755
00:46:30,560 --> 00:46:34,320
Speaker 3: thirty million. There By the end of the eighteen eighties,

756
00:46:34,719 --> 00:46:38,279
Speaker 3: you can't find one outside of a zoo or private collections.

757
00:46:38,440 --> 00:46:42,040
Speaker 3: There's some in Yellowstone there under tremendous threats from poachers

758
00:46:42,040 --> 00:46:45,359
Speaker 3: and things like that. So how did this happen? And

759
00:46:45,400 --> 00:46:49,440
Speaker 3: then why are we sitting here today not so worried

760
00:46:49,440 --> 00:46:50,320
Speaker 3: about the buffalo?

761
00:46:50,680 --> 00:46:52,879
Speaker 1: Yeah? You know, well I want to touch on that,

762
00:46:53,040 --> 00:46:54,440
Speaker 1: and I want to touch on the slaughter, But I

763
00:46:54,480 --> 00:46:56,799
Speaker 1: want to back up a little bit to ask to

764
00:46:56,840 --> 00:47:04,360
Speaker 1: ask an earlier question. Guys, in your work, you touch on, uh,

765
00:47:04,400 --> 00:47:09,200
Speaker 1: you touch on the buffalo and the dust bowl early

766
00:47:09,280 --> 00:47:13,640
Speaker 1: on and establishing you know, the the come up and

767
00:47:14,320 --> 00:47:18,319
Speaker 1: for tilling the great planes, and and you have this

768
00:47:18,880 --> 00:47:24,120
Speaker 1: thin you know, layer of grass that has a root

769
00:47:24,160 --> 00:47:29,319
Speaker 1: structure that goes buffalo grass, yeah, five feet subsurface, right,

770
00:47:29,360 --> 00:47:33,560
Speaker 1: and has this tiny reflection on the surface and that ecosystem,

771
00:47:33,560 --> 00:47:35,000
Speaker 1: and you touch on the animal there, you touch on

772
00:47:35,040 --> 00:47:38,160
Speaker 1: the animal Lewis and Clark in the West of course,

773
00:47:38,360 --> 00:47:45,160
Speaker 1: the National Parks. But at what point, in the back

774
00:47:45,160 --> 00:47:46,680
Speaker 1: of your heads, in the front of your head or whatever,

775
00:47:46,760 --> 00:47:48,920
Speaker 1: at what point did you think we let's just go

776
00:47:49,200 --> 00:47:54,680
Speaker 1: at some point, let's just tackle the animal in its

777
00:47:54,680 --> 00:47:55,800
Speaker 1: own free standing project.

778
00:47:55,840 --> 00:47:58,160
Speaker 3: We've been talking about that for more than three decades.

779
00:47:58,640 --> 00:48:01,239
Speaker 3: We found a proposal from the nineties that was like

780
00:48:01,320 --> 00:48:04,160
Speaker 3: really fully developed and we really you know, we're about

781
00:48:04,200 --> 00:48:05,160
Speaker 3: to do it, and we.

782
00:48:05,120 --> 00:48:08,359
Speaker 1: Generated the proposal Dane probly were all.

783
00:48:08,360 --> 00:48:11,560
Speaker 3: But we talked about it from the early nineties, you know,

784
00:48:11,600 --> 00:48:14,120
Speaker 3: about this would be a great film in and of itself.

785
00:48:14,160 --> 00:48:16,480
Speaker 3: And what's so good is that this?

786
00:48:16,760 --> 00:48:17,319
Speaker 1: You know, and this.

787
00:48:17,239 --> 00:48:20,240
Speaker 3: Happened some projects. You know, you say this country music boom,

788
00:48:20,280 --> 00:48:24,319
Speaker 3: you're suddenly in it. Other stuff same same way, and

789
00:48:24,440 --> 00:48:25,640
Speaker 3: others you know, sit.

790
00:48:25,560 --> 00:48:27,600
Speaker 1: There, I mean, I mean the process from from from

791
00:48:27,760 --> 00:48:28,520
Speaker 1: from conception.

792
00:48:28,760 --> 00:48:32,080
Speaker 3: So the first articulation of it, you know, front of mine,

793
00:48:32,160 --> 00:48:34,200
Speaker 3: back of mine. So you say something and all of

794
00:48:34,239 --> 00:48:37,080
Speaker 3: a sudden you're racing towards it and you're working. Country

795
00:48:37,160 --> 00:48:40,080
Speaker 3: music was like yeah, Cut was like that, and national park,

796
00:48:40,239 --> 00:48:43,240
Speaker 3: national parks like that. Many of the projects of Vietnam

797
00:48:43,640 --> 00:48:45,520
Speaker 3: like that. You know, when you we're going to do it.

798
00:48:46,719 --> 00:48:48,200
Speaker 3: You know. It took us a long time to do

799
00:48:48,239 --> 00:48:50,360
Speaker 3: the war because after the Civil War we said no

800
00:48:50,440 --> 00:48:53,680
Speaker 3: more wars, and then we had to decide that we

801
00:48:53,719 --> 00:48:56,160
Speaker 3: are going to jump into that. But what was so

802
00:48:56,280 --> 00:48:59,200
Speaker 3: great is that a lot of things have over the

803
00:48:59,280 --> 00:49:02,480
Speaker 3: years kept kind of on the back burner or have

804
00:49:02,640 --> 00:49:05,799
Speaker 3: just been there. Of course, the buffalo, it falls off lists,

805
00:49:05,920 --> 00:49:08,520
Speaker 3: it comes back onto lists. You make a ten year

806
00:49:08,560 --> 00:49:11,520
Speaker 3: plan and it's not there, but then maybe there's a

807
00:49:11,600 --> 00:49:14,600
Speaker 3: hole and it comes. And I'm so happy that we

808
00:49:14,640 --> 00:49:17,280
Speaker 3: waited these decades to do this, because I don't think

809
00:49:17,840 --> 00:49:20,120
Speaker 3: we had that ability to do what I was trying

810
00:49:20,120 --> 00:49:27,080
Speaker 3: to describe earlier about respecting without patronizing, without some sort

811
00:49:27,080 --> 00:49:32,400
Speaker 3: of inherent paternalism other points of view, just to literally

812
00:49:32,840 --> 00:49:37,480
Speaker 3: permit them to obtain doesn't fit with your belief system, okay,

813
00:49:38,120 --> 00:49:41,040
Speaker 3: but that's the way the whole world works well, across

814
00:49:41,600 --> 00:49:46,200
Speaker 3: thousands of cultures and eons of time, and so to

815
00:49:46,320 --> 00:49:49,719
Speaker 3: be able to have this little moment of daylight that

816
00:49:49,800 --> 00:49:54,120
Speaker 3: we could say, okay, so after Franklin, we should be

817
00:49:54,160 --> 00:49:57,120
Speaker 3: doing this, and this particular team with Dayton and with

818
00:49:57,200 --> 00:50:01,120
Speaker 3: Julie and and and and said well, we'll fit the

819
00:50:01,160 --> 00:50:03,640
Speaker 3: Buffalo in here. It was just the right time. And

820
00:50:03,640 --> 00:50:06,440
Speaker 3: it feels so fortuitous in the same way that we

821
00:50:06,520 --> 00:50:10,600
Speaker 3: celebrate country music for the impulse of just saying I mean,

822
00:50:10,640 --> 00:50:13,000
Speaker 3: a friend suggested it to me in Dallas. I was

823
00:50:13,080 --> 00:50:14,919
Speaker 3: kind of nervous because Dayton and I were thinking about

824
00:50:14,960 --> 00:50:16,480
Speaker 3: something else. I went back to Dayton, we don't have

825
00:50:16,520 --> 00:50:18,719
Speaker 3: to forget that idea but country, and he's like, we

826
00:50:18,840 --> 00:50:21,719
Speaker 3: forgot that idea, Like we still we don't remember what

827
00:50:21,760 --> 00:50:22,560
Speaker 3: it is anymore.

828
00:50:22,880 --> 00:50:24,480
Speaker 4: And so and suddenly.

829
00:50:24,200 --> 00:50:27,280
Speaker 3: We were just pressing forward on that and that's okay.

830
00:50:27,560 --> 00:50:32,480
Speaker 3: You know, some things, some things are developed over time,

831
00:50:32,560 --> 00:50:35,720
Speaker 3: and this one, like a fine wine, just needed that age.

832
00:50:36,080 --> 00:50:38,880
Speaker 2: And I think by by dealing with it in bits

833
00:50:38,880 --> 00:50:43,960
Speaker 2: and pieces on those other films. You know, even before

834
00:50:43,960 --> 00:50:46,440
Speaker 2: we did some of those other films, we talked about

835
00:50:46,480 --> 00:50:50,000
Speaker 2: one just on on the Buffalo, but we just kept saying,

836
00:50:50,040 --> 00:50:56,320
Speaker 2: this is such a it's such a portal to telling

837
00:50:56,520 --> 00:50:59,400
Speaker 2: a story that's not this is a by It's like

838
00:50:59,520 --> 00:51:03,399
Speaker 2: in our biography series. Yeah, this is a biography of

839
00:51:03,560 --> 00:51:07,120
Speaker 2: the American buffalo in one respect, but it's not just

840
00:51:07,160 --> 00:51:10,600
Speaker 2: about the buffalo, because it never was just about the buffalo.

841
00:51:10,760 --> 00:51:15,440
Speaker 2: And what my friend Gerard and other people made clear

842
00:51:15,480 --> 00:51:19,160
Speaker 2: to us is that if you tell the story of

843
00:51:19,200 --> 00:51:23,080
Speaker 2: the American buffalo, you're also telling the story of Native people,

844
00:51:23,120 --> 00:51:26,520
Speaker 2: particularly on the planes. You're also telling the story that's

845
00:51:26,520 --> 00:51:29,520
Speaker 2: even larger than that, which is a collision of two

846
00:51:29,640 --> 00:51:34,600
Speaker 2: worldviews of how we interact with the the natural world,

847
00:51:34,600 --> 00:51:39,920
Speaker 2: which reached its most dramatic crescendo on the Great Plains

848
00:51:39,920 --> 00:51:43,719
Speaker 2: in the latter part of the nineteenth century. And you're

849
00:51:43,719 --> 00:51:46,480
Speaker 2: also just talking about lots of different things, you know,

850
00:51:46,520 --> 00:51:49,279
Speaker 2: the importance of you know, what does the railroad mean?

851
00:51:49,880 --> 00:51:54,520
Speaker 2: What is manifest doest destiny mean? You know, what does

852
00:51:54,640 --> 00:51:55,799
Speaker 2: conservation mean?

853
00:51:56,040 --> 00:51:57,319
Speaker 1: Who are the people that.

854
00:51:58,960 --> 00:52:03,760
Speaker 2: Step forward in there for their own individual private reasons,

855
00:52:03,760 --> 00:52:08,600
Speaker 2: sort of do it yourself? Buffalo salvation projects? You know,

856
00:52:09,080 --> 00:52:12,880
Speaker 2: you know twenty head here and twenty over here in

857
00:52:13,040 --> 00:52:18,319
Speaker 2: New England of all places, and and someone were doing

858
00:52:18,320 --> 00:52:24,400
Speaker 2: it because and on two reservations where they're being preserved

859
00:52:24,520 --> 00:52:30,480
Speaker 2: and ingrown for the more traditional reasons. But ranchers. Charlie Goodnight,

860
00:52:30,520 --> 00:52:34,600
Speaker 2: the legendary cattleman in the Pandema, Texas, you know, hated

861
00:52:34,640 --> 00:52:37,480
Speaker 2: buffalo and he really didn't like Indians much. And by

862
00:52:37,520 --> 00:52:41,600
Speaker 2: the end of the film you find out that he's

863
00:52:41,640 --> 00:52:45,120
Speaker 2: been raising he starts raising buffalo. He becomes very attached him,

864
00:52:45,160 --> 00:52:49,840
Speaker 2: and he becomes very attached to providing buffalo to Indian

865
00:52:49,880 --> 00:52:54,359
Speaker 2: tribes near him for their ceremonial reasons. And you know,

866
00:52:54,480 --> 00:52:58,360
Speaker 2: George bird Grenella, who was a character in our film

867
00:52:58,440 --> 00:53:03,719
Speaker 2: on the National Park, plays a critical role in their salvation.

868
00:53:03,920 --> 00:53:07,520
Speaker 2: And some very you know, a couple people who aren't

869
00:53:07,520 --> 00:53:15,040
Speaker 2: particularly likable in modern times. Rightfully, so William T. Hornaday,

870
00:53:15,120 --> 00:53:22,239
Speaker 2: who becomes just you know, a crusader for saving them

871
00:53:22,280 --> 00:53:28,000
Speaker 2: from the commercial destruction and who hates Indians and thinks

872
00:53:28,000 --> 00:53:32,000
Speaker 2: that they're and and a lot of other non white

873
00:53:32,400 --> 00:53:37,120
Speaker 2: people and believes in the pseudoscience of eugenics. But he

874
00:53:37,239 --> 00:53:40,560
Speaker 2: still is a person who played a crucial, crucial role.

875
00:53:41,080 --> 00:53:44,160
Speaker 2: You can't overlook it, Yeah, yeah, you can. You can't

876
00:53:44,200 --> 00:53:47,120
Speaker 2: overlook either of them. I mean, you know, if we're

877
00:53:47,320 --> 00:53:49,560
Speaker 2: talking about buffal We can't just sort of say, well,

878
00:53:49,560 --> 00:53:52,000
Speaker 2: but we're not going to talk about this other part.

879
00:53:52,080 --> 00:53:57,760
Speaker 2: You know, as Ken mentioned, our films deal with human

880
00:53:57,800 --> 00:54:03,799
Speaker 2: beings who are their own amalgam of different impulses.

881
00:54:04,719 --> 00:54:05,200
Speaker 1: Uh.

882
00:54:05,239 --> 00:54:08,960
Speaker 2: And you have to be honest, uh, with your portrayal

883
00:54:09,000 --> 00:54:11,520
Speaker 2: of it and with you know, without saying, well, we

884
00:54:11,560 --> 00:54:14,040
Speaker 2: can't talk about him.

885
00:54:13,280 --> 00:54:14,600
Speaker 1: Because he had this.

886
00:54:16,160 --> 00:54:23,680
Speaker 2: Deplorable belief that there was this hierarchy of genetically driven

887
00:54:24,400 --> 00:54:31,040
Speaker 2: purity of the human species. At the same time he was,

888
00:54:32,239 --> 00:54:34,799
Speaker 2: you know, doing everything he could to to keep this

889
00:54:35,000 --> 00:54:38,600
Speaker 2: magnificent beast from disappearing forever.

890
00:54:38,760 --> 00:54:45,160
Speaker 1: It's you know, there's a good the the complexities of

891
00:54:45,200 --> 00:54:48,920
Speaker 1: the people involved. Uh. You explore a handful of them.

892
00:54:48,960 --> 00:54:50,360
Speaker 1: There was a story in there that I hadn't that

893
00:54:50,480 --> 00:54:59,960
Speaker 1: wasn't familiar with. So Palo Duro Canyon. If if listener,

894
00:55:00,080 --> 00:55:04,200
Speaker 1: if you're imagining the Texas Panhandle, there's a thing called

895
00:55:04,200 --> 00:55:08,240
Speaker 1: the landscape feature called the yano estacado, the staked planes

896
00:55:09,200 --> 00:55:11,640
Speaker 1: and coming off of this bench or these like deeply

897
00:55:11,680 --> 00:55:18,880
Speaker 1: incised canyons, and the Commanchi and others had long hunted

898
00:55:18,960 --> 00:55:22,360
Speaker 1: these canyons. I had never heard this story that after

899
00:55:22,360 --> 00:55:31,040
Speaker 1: the animals were mostly disappeared that I can't remember. You'll

900
00:55:31,040 --> 00:55:34,560
Speaker 1: have to help me fill this in. Yeah, the Quanta

901
00:55:34,600 --> 00:55:37,279
Speaker 1: Parker and the Comanche went to Palo Duro Canyon from

902
00:55:37,320 --> 00:55:40,120
Speaker 1: They're like, if there's one place we'll find them, it's there.

903
00:55:40,680 --> 00:55:44,200
Speaker 2: And they get there and it's being ranched by Charlie Goodnight,

904
00:55:44,239 --> 00:55:45,760
Speaker 2: by Charlie Goodnight, and.

905
00:55:45,640 --> 00:55:49,520
Speaker 1: He says, you're not going to find any but I

906
00:55:49,560 --> 00:55:53,480
Speaker 1: know you're not going to believe me. Go take a

907
00:55:53,520 --> 00:55:56,200
Speaker 1: look and anywhere. Detell them. Every two days.

908
00:55:56,280 --> 00:55:57,720
Speaker 2: You're can have a couple of miccounts.

909
00:55:57,719 --> 00:56:01,080
Speaker 1: You can kill every whatever days and kills some number

910
00:56:01,080 --> 00:56:02,480
Speaker 1: of my cows to feed on.

911
00:56:02,719 --> 00:56:03,480
Speaker 3: This is the beginning.

912
00:56:03,520 --> 00:56:06,160
Speaker 1: It's please satisfy your curiosity that they're gone.

913
00:56:06,400 --> 00:56:10,600
Speaker 3: We really love the simplistic binary idea of villains, and

914
00:56:10,800 --> 00:56:13,879
Speaker 3: Horned Day fits a villain because he starts off doing

915
00:56:13,960 --> 00:56:15,680
Speaker 3: one thing and he and he and he does an

916
00:56:15,800 --> 00:56:18,240
Speaker 3: admirable thing, but he does it for all the wrong reasons.

917
00:56:20,160 --> 00:56:22,120
Speaker 4: But then you have these other things.

918
00:56:22,120 --> 00:56:24,480
Speaker 3: That are the Charlie Goodnight stories, in which you have

919
00:56:24,520 --> 00:56:27,200
Speaker 3: a human being who's an Indian hater and Indian fighter

920
00:56:27,280 --> 00:56:30,480
Speaker 3: and is a buffalo hater and a buffalo killer. He

921
00:56:30,560 --> 00:56:33,160
Speaker 3: wants to raise his cattle in Palladero Canyon. He's got

922
00:56:33,200 --> 00:56:39,080
Speaker 3: the first ranch there, and his evolution ends up embracing,

923
00:56:39,160 --> 00:56:42,720
Speaker 3: as Dayton said, not only the buffalo on an accident.

924
00:56:42,800 --> 00:56:44,719
Speaker 3: His wife's lonely and she wants to raise a few

925
00:56:44,760 --> 00:56:47,720
Speaker 3: buffalo calves, and so they end up with a herd

926
00:56:48,120 --> 00:56:52,000
Speaker 3: that's not insignificant in the story of all these isolated

927
00:56:52,040 --> 00:56:54,880
Speaker 3: herds that need to in some ways, if not coalesce,

928
00:56:55,320 --> 00:56:58,320
Speaker 3: contribute to a coalescing in various places that will protect

929
00:56:58,360 --> 00:57:03,680
Speaker 3: the buffalo from the measures of real extinction. But he

930
00:57:03,760 --> 00:57:10,759
Speaker 3: also then is shedding the animosity towards native people and

931
00:57:10,920 --> 00:57:16,000
Speaker 3: embracing them, and he and them he in a hugely

932
00:57:16,120 --> 00:57:19,800
Speaker 3: important way. And it's those stories that punctuate all of history,

933
00:57:19,840 --> 00:57:23,560
Speaker 3: regardless of subject matter, that you are drawn to as

934
00:57:23,720 --> 00:57:26,000
Speaker 3: easily as you do. We have in our editing room

935
00:57:26,400 --> 00:57:29,520
Speaker 3: neon signed that says it's complicated. There's not a filmmaker,

936
00:57:29,960 --> 00:57:33,040
Speaker 3: there's not a filmmaker on earth that when the scene

937
00:57:33,120 --> 00:57:35,040
Speaker 3: is working, you just want to just don't touch it,

938
00:57:35,120 --> 00:57:37,640
Speaker 3: don't touch it. But we always are finding out new

939
00:57:37,720 --> 00:57:42,400
Speaker 3: and contradictory information about something undertow that threatens to sort

940
00:57:42,440 --> 00:57:47,000
Speaker 3: of derail what was effective about that particular scene. But

941
00:57:47,080 --> 00:57:49,680
Speaker 3: we always will move towards that and lean into it,

942
00:57:50,120 --> 00:57:53,280
Speaker 3: because you end up realizing, as Dayton said, you know

943
00:57:53,400 --> 00:57:56,400
Speaker 3: that nobody I mean, we always lament they're no heroes now.

944
00:57:56,520 --> 00:57:59,920
Speaker 3: But heroism is not about the Greeks tell us about perfection.

945
00:58:00,400 --> 00:58:03,400
Speaker 3: It's about strength and weaknesses. And so you want to

946
00:58:03,800 --> 00:58:07,760
Speaker 3: calibrate and calculate what those strengths. Achilles Head is Hubris

947
00:58:07,800 --> 00:58:09,560
Speaker 3: and his heel to go along with all of his

948
00:58:09,680 --> 00:58:13,760
Speaker 3: great strengths. So it's really not perfection. It's the negotiation

949
00:58:13,960 --> 00:58:17,400
Speaker 3: between strengths and weaknesses and what happens in that. And

950
00:58:17,480 --> 00:58:22,160
Speaker 3: so Hornaday remains an important person to tell you don't

951
00:58:22,440 --> 00:58:23,960
Speaker 3: wash him out, you don't cut him out of this.

952
00:58:24,120 --> 00:58:28,960
Speaker 3: He's not disappeared or canceled. He's an important, really important person.

953
00:58:29,240 --> 00:58:32,360
Speaker 3: But he represents a kind of heroism that is not

954
00:58:33,440 --> 00:58:36,960
Speaker 3: you know, doesn't reach Charlie Goodnight. You know, you cancel

955
00:58:37,040 --> 00:58:38,320
Speaker 3: him for the early years and then all of a

956
00:58:38,320 --> 00:58:42,520
Speaker 3: sudden embrace. So the idea of even cancelation in good

957
00:58:42,680 --> 00:58:46,880
Speaker 3: history becomes kind of beside the point. You're going to

958
00:58:47,040 --> 00:58:50,440
Speaker 3: try to include as much as you can and treat

959
00:58:50,600 --> 00:58:55,320
Speaker 3: everybody with that kind of perspective that allows you to

960
00:58:55,440 --> 00:58:58,440
Speaker 3: understand even the motivation of the high hunters, even the

961
00:58:58,560 --> 00:59:01,800
Speaker 3: motivation of this. So you're you're you're not excusing. It

962
00:59:02,000 --> 00:59:06,160
Speaker 3: isn't some big, you know, Kumbaya moment. This this is tragedy.

963
00:59:06,320 --> 00:59:11,120
Speaker 3: This is violence, this is hatred, this is race animosity,

964
00:59:11,520 --> 00:59:16,680
Speaker 3: this is generosity and love and purpose. There are people

965
00:59:16,800 --> 00:59:19,160
Speaker 3: from all over the country who band together, and we

966
00:59:19,360 --> 00:59:24,880
Speaker 3: now have buffalo not skinned in some museum, as Hornaday

967
00:59:25,000 --> 00:59:29,600
Speaker 3: initially was doing, not on a damn nickel, But there's

968
00:59:29,880 --> 00:59:32,280
Speaker 3: hundreds of thousands of them that are alive, and we

969
00:59:32,400 --> 00:59:35,000
Speaker 3: can take our kids and our grandkids to see them.

970
00:59:35,240 --> 00:59:36,800
Speaker 3: And that's one hell of a great story.

971
00:59:37,360 --> 00:59:42,240
Speaker 1: I was heartened by the bold choice to use the

972
00:59:42,280 --> 00:59:43,320
Speaker 1: word buffalo.

973
00:59:45,040 --> 00:59:48,480
Speaker 4: And the title, and I'll let Dayton address.

974
00:59:49,480 --> 00:59:51,720
Speaker 1: I had dinner with Date and last night and we

975
00:59:51,760 --> 00:59:54,800
Speaker 1: were talking. I was talking about a question I had

976
00:59:54,840 --> 00:59:57,680
Speaker 1: asked of Well, I'll point this out. So there's a

977
00:59:57,760 --> 01:00:00,400
Speaker 1: number of people. There's a couple of people that are

978
01:00:01,760 --> 01:00:07,120
Speaker 1: in this new Kemberton's documentary, the American Buffalo, who have

979
01:00:07,200 --> 01:00:10,160
Speaker 1: appeared on this podcast before. So we've had Dan Floory's

980
01:00:10,200 --> 01:00:11,680
Speaker 1: on a couple of times. Michael Punk's been on a

981
01:00:11,720 --> 01:00:16,360
Speaker 1: couple times. I recently interviewed Dan Floy's about his new book,

982
01:00:16,400 --> 01:00:20,439
Speaker 1: While New World, and one of the questions I asked

983
01:00:20,520 --> 01:00:24,160
Speaker 1: him was there we were talking about there are certain

984
01:00:24,240 --> 01:00:27,240
Speaker 1: things that historians and writers when they talk about them,

985
01:00:27,440 --> 01:00:30,440
Speaker 1: they feel like they have to explain the evolution of

986
01:00:30,560 --> 01:00:35,960
Speaker 1: the thought, the peopling of the Americas. No one ever

987
01:00:36,440 --> 01:00:43,160
Speaker 1: is comfortable saying here's what happened. They'll say, well, for

988
01:00:43,240 --> 01:00:46,880
Speaker 1: a while, we thought this, then for a while we

989
01:00:47,000 --> 01:00:50,600
Speaker 1: thought that, and currently we think this. And there's certain

990
01:00:50,640 --> 01:00:53,440
Speaker 1: subjects that every people have like they feel like I

991
01:00:53,560 --> 01:00:57,360
Speaker 1: can't just say what the current thinking is. I have

992
01:00:57,640 --> 01:01:00,520
Speaker 1: to say how we got to the current thinking. And

993
01:01:00,560 --> 01:01:02,960
Speaker 1: we're talking about like when you when you use the

994
01:01:03,080 --> 01:01:08,120
Speaker 1: word if you describe the animal's buffalo, it usually comes

995
01:01:08,160 --> 01:01:13,280
Speaker 1: with you feel this need to go hear me out

996
01:01:14,040 --> 01:01:16,600
Speaker 1: right and explain the whole thing. And just to end

997
01:01:16,640 --> 01:01:23,680
Speaker 1: the film, they spare all that it's not there to

998
01:01:23,720 --> 01:01:25,080
Speaker 1: say scientists whatever.

999
01:01:25,040 --> 01:01:26,880
Speaker 4: And he said, scientists call it bison.

1000
01:01:27,000 --> 01:01:29,720
Speaker 1: Known to scientists to say bison bison, right.

1001
01:01:29,880 --> 01:01:32,720
Speaker 3: And that allows us to use it interchangeably and not

1002
01:01:34,560 --> 01:01:39,560
Speaker 3: entymology of our argument, because it is buffalo New York,

1003
01:01:39,720 --> 01:01:43,520
Speaker 3: not bison New York. It's the buffalo nickel, not the

1004
01:01:43,760 --> 01:01:46,280
Speaker 3: bison nickel. It's now been changed from.

1005
01:01:46,120 --> 01:01:49,200
Speaker 4: A bison reserves to go bufalo. It's buffalo bill.

1006
01:01:49,280 --> 01:01:52,840
Speaker 3: I mean, you've got all these examples, so what you're acknowledging,

1007
01:01:53,800 --> 01:01:55,840
Speaker 3: And though Dayton.

1008
01:01:55,600 --> 01:01:58,000
Speaker 4: Can I can press a button, I'm going to steal

1009
01:01:58,040 --> 01:01:58,440
Speaker 4: that from you.

1010
01:01:58,520 --> 01:01:59,640
Speaker 1: The bison nickel, I.

1011
01:01:59,680 --> 01:02:04,280
Speaker 3: Mean, will you can You can hear the whole dynamics

1012
01:02:04,360 --> 01:02:04,960
Speaker 3: of the argument.

1013
01:02:05,320 --> 01:02:06,440
Speaker 4: But it's quite simple.

1014
01:02:06,640 --> 01:02:09,840
Speaker 3: If that's what you're calling it, this is what we'll

1015
01:02:09,960 --> 01:02:14,600
Speaker 3: call it, and we will early on acknowledge that scientifically

1016
01:02:15,480 --> 01:02:18,160
Speaker 3: it is. It is bison bison. And if you want

1017
01:02:18,200 --> 01:02:20,840
Speaker 3: to get into the fact that they're buffalo in Africa

1018
01:02:21,120 --> 01:02:24,040
Speaker 3: and buffalo in Asia and nothing's really and this is

1019
01:02:24,120 --> 01:02:27,360
Speaker 3: not really a buffalo, it doesn't matter. We say, this

1020
01:02:27,560 --> 01:02:30,840
Speaker 3: is what the earliest settlers called it, or a variety

1021
01:02:30,880 --> 01:02:33,560
Speaker 3: of things. There's lots of Native American names for it,

1022
01:02:33,960 --> 01:02:37,160
Speaker 3: dozens and sometimes you know, one tribe will have dozens

1023
01:02:37,200 --> 01:02:39,360
Speaker 3: of names for it, depending on its age and its size,

1024
01:02:39,400 --> 01:02:41,160
Speaker 3: and its sex, and its health and where it is

1025
01:02:41,200 --> 01:02:42,600
Speaker 3: and how much skin and you know how much for

1026
01:02:42,760 --> 01:02:44,080
Speaker 3: it has and what firs lost.

1027
01:02:44,480 --> 01:02:47,360
Speaker 4: So you know, this is what we call it.

1028
01:02:47,560 --> 01:02:53,440
Speaker 3: And the rest becomes complicated semantics, which is designed to

1029
01:02:53,560 --> 01:02:55,880
Speaker 3: put people to sleep if you have to in that

1030
01:02:56,080 --> 01:03:00,240
Speaker 3: meta way sort of say, so, this is how we

1031
01:03:00,360 --> 01:03:02,480
Speaker 3: all have to think about it. And I'm trying to

1032
01:03:02,560 --> 01:03:06,640
Speaker 3: save Dayton from having to to do what he what

1033
01:03:06,800 --> 01:03:10,040
Speaker 3: he does, which is it's it's you know, it's.

1034
01:03:10,080 --> 01:03:12,800
Speaker 1: He said, someone took him to task at a recent UNA.

1035
01:03:13,040 --> 01:03:15,120
Speaker 3: And you had to do it, and we were to

1036
01:03:15,200 --> 01:03:17,360
Speaker 3: talk for ten We're going to talk for twenty minutes.

1037
01:03:17,440 --> 01:03:19,800
Speaker 4: And nineteen was his explanation of what it was.

1038
01:03:19,920 --> 01:03:21,960
Speaker 1: I just picture the guy raised his hand being like,

1039
01:03:22,040 --> 01:03:25,240
Speaker 1: but hold on a minute, yeah right, exactly right.

1040
01:03:25,480 --> 01:03:30,480
Speaker 2: So oh you're maybe you didn't know this, but they're

1041
01:03:30,520 --> 01:03:33,720
Speaker 2: actually bison. You see, there are these other and I

1042
01:03:33,800 --> 01:03:35,000
Speaker 2: want I.

1043
01:03:35,040 --> 01:03:37,560
Speaker 4: Want to do is to do that. You know, it's

1044
01:03:37,600 --> 01:03:38,919
Speaker 4: like it's like rabbit.

1045
01:03:39,320 --> 01:03:42,919
Speaker 3: Please don't give me a lengthy explamanation of of Please

1046
01:03:42,960 --> 01:03:46,640
Speaker 3: don't ask for a lengthy explanation of the bison buffalo conovers.

1047
01:03:46,760 --> 01:03:50,240
Speaker 1: And then he brought up another instant where or instance

1048
01:03:50,280 --> 01:03:54,240
Speaker 1: where he toyed with one of the one of the things,

1049
01:03:54,440 --> 01:04:00,240
Speaker 1: which is that Lewis right Lewis's death, that Lewis killed

1050
01:04:00,320 --> 01:04:04,080
Speaker 1: himself or was murdered. And he explained me the process

1051
01:04:04,200 --> 01:04:07,120
Speaker 1: of do we get into it, how do we get

1052
01:04:07,160 --> 01:04:09,200
Speaker 1: into it? And eventually it's just he killed himself.

1053
01:04:10,040 --> 01:04:11,120
Speaker 3: How much of dinner did that?

1054
01:04:13,560 --> 01:04:18,600
Speaker 1: It was post dinner. But I really need to do this.

1055
01:04:19,040 --> 01:04:20,000
Speaker 1: I suppose I should do it.

1056
01:04:20,080 --> 01:04:21,800
Speaker 2: And I said, well, actually, the way we solved it

1057
01:04:21,920 --> 01:04:24,680
Speaker 2: it was because I was one of the interviewees on

1058
01:04:25,600 --> 01:04:29,320
Speaker 2: the Lewis and Clark film is that I tell the story.

1059
01:04:29,400 --> 01:04:32,720
Speaker 2: And so I said, so we can have the narrator

1060
01:04:32,920 --> 01:04:35,360
Speaker 2: later say well, there are some people who claim he

1061
01:04:35,520 --> 01:04:38,439
Speaker 2: was murdered and all that, but I'm the one that's

1062
01:04:38,440 --> 01:04:41,280
Speaker 2: saying it. The narrator's not. And just give him my

1063
01:04:41,480 --> 01:04:44,360
Speaker 2: address and my phone number, and I'd be happy to

1064
01:04:44,440 --> 01:04:48,200
Speaker 2: talk to and I'll be happy to anybody wants to

1065
01:04:49,360 --> 01:04:52,600
Speaker 2: chide us for naming this the American buffalo and said

1066
01:04:52,600 --> 01:04:58,000
Speaker 2: the American Bison and using it interchangeably with bison to

1067
01:04:58,120 --> 01:05:01,760
Speaker 2: save time for the broad podcast and to avoid if

1068
01:05:01,800 --> 01:05:03,840
Speaker 2: they can contact me as long as in.

1069
01:05:06,400 --> 01:05:10,600
Speaker 3: Just think in sentences that comprise paragraphs that comprise blocks

1070
01:05:10,640 --> 01:05:14,120
Speaker 3: of narration that are pages of talk that you can't

1071
01:05:14,200 --> 01:05:17,920
Speaker 3: just see buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, or bison, bison, bison,

1072
01:05:18,000 --> 01:05:20,800
Speaker 3: So you're you're saying bison and then buffalo, and then

1073
01:05:20,880 --> 01:05:24,840
Speaker 3: the animal and then bison. So it just helps relieve

1074
01:05:24,960 --> 01:05:29,280
Speaker 3: the thing. But the point is they're buffalo, and that's

1075
01:05:29,360 --> 01:05:32,280
Speaker 3: the name of our film, and we're sticking with it, right,

1076
01:05:32,720 --> 01:05:32,920
Speaker 3: you know.

1077
01:05:42,680 --> 01:05:43,520
Speaker 1: How did you guys?

1078
01:05:44,520 --> 01:05:44,680
Speaker 3: Uh?

1079
01:05:47,000 --> 01:05:48,920
Speaker 1: This is this is a version of asking how do

1080
01:05:49,040 --> 01:05:52,440
Speaker 1: you find your subjects for your films? But I want

1081
01:05:52,480 --> 01:05:55,560
Speaker 1: to focus on one that I found just I could

1082
01:05:55,600 --> 01:05:58,840
Speaker 1: watch all day and listen to all day because of

1083
01:05:59,280 --> 01:06:04,680
Speaker 1: just the artic relation the passion is George Horse captured Junior.

1084
01:06:04,880 --> 01:06:08,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know, I'll a date and tell the story.

1085
01:06:08,360 --> 01:06:10,640
Speaker 3: But I think when I was trying to talk about

1086
01:06:10,800 --> 01:06:17,000
Speaker 3: what it might be like to seed the momentum, the

1087
01:06:17,200 --> 01:06:22,760
Speaker 3: impetus of your own world views to someone Else's not

1088
01:06:23,040 --> 01:06:27,840
Speaker 3: just in some kind of gracious after you elponse no

1089
01:06:27,960 --> 01:06:31,360
Speaker 3: after you guests now, but in a real way it

1090
01:06:31,520 --> 01:06:36,520
Speaker 3: occurs naturally because George does not see Junior, does not

1091
01:06:36,720 --> 01:06:41,800
Speaker 3: see things the way we expect people to see things, and.

1092
01:06:41,920 --> 01:06:45,280
Speaker 1: So what it's disconcerted. It's disorienting almost.

1093
01:06:45,440 --> 01:06:51,000
Speaker 3: It is disorienting in the most for me emotion away.

1094
01:06:51,080 --> 01:06:54,840
Speaker 3: I have watched this film dozens and dozens of times.

1095
01:06:54,960 --> 01:06:58,240
Speaker 3: I have wept every time I get to his last remark,

1096
01:06:58,280 --> 01:07:03,280
Speaker 3: which we will give away. And I have been watching

1097
01:07:03,400 --> 01:07:09,800
Speaker 3: myself agitated, disconcerted, having being kind of elated that there

1098
01:07:09,960 --> 01:07:14,480
Speaker 3: might be another way to see this grasshopper, you know,

1099
01:07:14,960 --> 01:07:21,320
Speaker 3: I mean, it's like suddenly there's another way to figure

1100
01:07:21,360 --> 01:07:26,320
Speaker 3: out how to square the circle, and that makes me

1101
01:07:26,680 --> 01:07:32,560
Speaker 3: curious about it. So you know, he is You could

1102
01:07:32,800 --> 01:07:37,120
Speaker 3: listen to him about anything, because he is going to

1103
01:07:37,200 --> 01:07:40,760
Speaker 3: come out out of it a way that just upends

1104
01:07:40,880 --> 01:07:44,160
Speaker 3: your own kind of whatever it might be. There's nothing

1105
01:07:44,200 --> 01:07:47,200
Speaker 3: wrong with wherever we come from is wherever we come from,

1106
01:07:47,240 --> 01:07:51,120
Speaker 3: and what we bring is okay. But it's going to

1107
01:07:51,200 --> 01:07:53,440
Speaker 3: be nice to have him there as like what do

1108
01:07:53,520 --> 01:07:56,720
Speaker 3: we call it a disruptor? Right? It just literally but

1109
01:07:57,200 --> 01:07:59,880
Speaker 3: in a real sense, in a spiritual way. It's like

1110
01:08:00,400 --> 01:08:03,600
Speaker 3: upending conception. Like Dayton used to have this wrap. We'd

1111
01:08:03,640 --> 01:08:06,720
Speaker 3: been on the road with the National Parks and he'd say,

1112
01:08:07,120 --> 01:08:12,760
Speaker 3: you know, people would look at a river and think, damn,

1113
01:08:14,080 --> 01:08:16,400
Speaker 3: they would look at a stand of timber and think

1114
01:08:16,560 --> 01:08:19,479
Speaker 3: board feet. They would look at a canyon and wonder

1115
01:08:19,520 --> 01:08:23,680
Speaker 3: what minerals could be extracted. But couldn't you with a

1116
01:08:23,800 --> 01:08:27,439
Speaker 3: national park idea let go of that and see things

1117
01:08:27,479 --> 01:08:30,879
Speaker 3: in a different way. So the seeds of that impulse

1118
01:08:31,640 --> 01:08:35,439
Speaker 3: are part of the six hundred generation's history of George

1119
01:08:35,800 --> 01:08:42,040
Speaker 3: horse Capture Junior of a small, tiny tribe in north

1120
01:08:42,760 --> 01:08:50,280
Speaker 3: central Montana, and out of his wisdom is not an argument,

1121
01:08:51,720 --> 01:08:55,519
Speaker 3: not a fight, not a war, but the possibility that

1122
01:08:55,640 --> 01:08:57,840
Speaker 3: if I sit where you're seeing, you know, is my

1123
01:08:58,000 --> 01:09:01,200
Speaker 3: ancestor Robert Burn said, Oh, some power, the gift to

1124
01:09:01,240 --> 01:09:05,080
Speaker 3: give us to see ourselves as others see us. George

1125
01:09:05,200 --> 01:09:09,080
Speaker 3: just suddenly goes and there's just some new light. That's

1126
01:09:09,360 --> 01:09:12,560
Speaker 3: that's that's possible. He's the beas needs to me.

1127
01:09:13,640 --> 01:09:17,200
Speaker 2: I met his father, George Horse Capture. He's George Horscaptor Junior,

1128
01:09:17,240 --> 01:09:23,000
Speaker 2: who was a very renowned anthropologist when we were working

1129
01:09:23,080 --> 01:09:26,040
Speaker 2: on the West and spent some time with him.

1130
01:09:27,080 --> 01:09:31,240
Speaker 1: Yeah. When I tried to find George Horse Captured Junior online,

1131
01:09:31,560 --> 01:09:33,120
Speaker 1: I read a lot about his father.

1132
01:09:33,280 --> 01:09:36,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so I knew about him. And then I

1133
01:09:36,520 --> 01:09:41,320
Speaker 2: learned from friends that we have at American Prairie, the

1134
01:09:42,120 --> 01:09:49,840
Speaker 2: nonprofit that's trying to reintroduce buffalo and restore part of

1135
01:09:49,920 --> 01:09:52,960
Speaker 2: the prairie in Montana, which is not too far from

1136
01:09:53,080 --> 01:09:59,840
Speaker 2: the Fort bell Knapp reservation that George horsecaptured. Junior was

1137
01:10:00,120 --> 01:10:06,840
Speaker 2: doing a program at the reservation dealing with buffalo and

1138
01:10:06,880 --> 01:10:11,439
Speaker 2: would sometimes come and talk to them at American Prairie

1139
01:10:11,680 --> 01:10:15,240
Speaker 2: to you know, their their neighbors and they work together

1140
01:10:15,400 --> 01:10:19,840
Speaker 2: now with you know, American Prairie giving some of their

1141
01:10:19,880 --> 01:10:24,000
Speaker 2: buffalo for the Fort Belknapp heard, but that you know

1142
01:10:24,160 --> 01:10:27,720
Speaker 2: that he would come and talk to people that were

1143
01:10:27,840 --> 01:10:30,960
Speaker 2: visiting there, you know, about what it meant, what the

1144
01:10:31,040 --> 01:10:33,200
Speaker 2: buffalo meant and still mean.

1145
01:10:34,800 --> 01:10:36,360
Speaker 1: To his his people.

1146
01:10:37,200 --> 01:10:41,080
Speaker 2: And so I said, well, I had never met him,

1147
01:10:41,680 --> 01:10:44,000
Speaker 2: but I you know, this is part of our process,

1148
01:10:44,920 --> 01:10:49,120
Speaker 2: you know, you want to give things a chance, right,

1149
01:10:49,240 --> 01:10:52,680
Speaker 2: And so we obviously went to people like yourself and

1150
01:10:53,360 --> 01:10:56,479
Speaker 2: others Dan Flores and other people who were who had

1151
01:10:56,520 --> 01:11:04,320
Speaker 2: written books about it, and also Dan O'Brien who is

1152
01:11:04,600 --> 01:11:10,080
Speaker 2: a writer but also has a buffalo ranch in South Dakota,

1153
01:11:10,360 --> 01:11:14,800
Speaker 2: and Rosslyn Lapierre who's a Blackfeet meti but who's an

1154
01:11:14,800 --> 01:11:21,360
Speaker 2: ethno botanist and historian. You know, Michelle knew how Nighthouse,

1155
01:11:21,439 --> 01:11:24,280
Speaker 2: who's a writer about extinctions and stuff. You know, you

1156
01:11:24,439 --> 01:11:26,800
Speaker 2: go through all the reading you do and you say, well,

1157
01:11:26,960 --> 01:11:30,519
Speaker 2: let's go talk to those people that might help us

1158
01:11:30,640 --> 01:11:33,680
Speaker 2: tell our story. And some of those that turned out

1159
01:11:33,720 --> 01:11:35,280
Speaker 2: to be really good and some of them don't. But

1160
01:11:35,600 --> 01:11:40,200
Speaker 2: he also we wanted to talk to descendants of Quana Parker.

1161
01:11:41,400 --> 01:11:44,360
Speaker 2: We wonted acousa character in our film we won. We

1162
01:11:44,560 --> 01:11:50,759
Speaker 2: learned about Marcia Pablo, whose great grandfather was Michelle Pablo,

1163
01:11:50,800 --> 01:11:55,400
Speaker 2: who had an important herd on the Flathead Reservation. And

1164
01:11:55,560 --> 01:12:01,639
Speaker 2: then so I just said, well, let's, you know, spend

1165
01:12:01,760 --> 01:12:04,120
Speaker 2: two hours with George and to see what he's got

1166
01:12:04,160 --> 01:12:07,960
Speaker 2: to say, and interviewed him in Fort Benton, Montana. And

1167
01:12:08,240 --> 01:12:10,400
Speaker 2: you know, right from the get go you knew this

1168
01:12:10,560 --> 01:12:16,120
Speaker 2: guy was bringing something that was not necessarily narrative storytelling

1169
01:12:16,200 --> 01:12:21,639
Speaker 2: of the historical story, but just a flat out point

1170
01:12:21,680 --> 01:12:21,960
Speaker 2: of view.

1171
01:12:22,520 --> 01:12:23,439
Speaker 1: You know, he's got some.

1172
01:12:25,040 --> 01:12:29,479
Speaker 2: Incredible moments in the film, including the final but even

1173
01:12:30,080 --> 01:12:32,360
Speaker 2: well before that, you know, when we're talking about the

1174
01:12:33,080 --> 01:12:35,839
Speaker 2: technique of the buffalo jump.

1175
01:12:35,760 --> 01:12:39,120
Speaker 3: Before the horse debut in the film, and we.

1176
01:12:39,240 --> 01:12:42,960
Speaker 2: Have other people Rosin Lapierre and Sarah Dant, who's an

1177
01:12:44,080 --> 01:12:48,040
Speaker 2: environmental history explaining how that worked, how a tribe you know,

1178
01:12:48,120 --> 01:12:51,920
Speaker 2: would work communally to try to maneuver a herd and

1179
01:12:52,040 --> 01:12:54,920
Speaker 2: then get it moving toward what you couldn't see from

1180
01:12:54,960 --> 01:12:57,240
Speaker 2: the ground is that there's a cliff on the other side,

1181
01:12:58,320 --> 01:13:01,720
Speaker 2: and the buffalo jumps, as the Blackfeet would call him,

1182
01:13:03,720 --> 01:13:06,160
Speaker 2: and they tell that story and it's just comes alive.

1183
01:13:06,840 --> 01:13:08,160
Speaker 2: And then George just comes.

1184
01:13:08,040 --> 01:13:12,439
Speaker 3: On in the in the in the moment is going

1185
01:13:13,000 --> 01:13:16,280
Speaker 3: uh is pretty uh. You know, it's a stampeding music,

1186
01:13:16,400 --> 01:13:19,880
Speaker 3: and it just sort of ends and resolves as they

1187
01:13:20,080 --> 01:13:23,240
Speaker 3: go over the cliff in your imagination and in a painting.

1188
01:13:23,560 --> 01:13:25,280
Speaker 3: And then you're looking up on a live shot, but

1189
01:13:25,400 --> 01:13:28,479
Speaker 3: we see a live shot with quiet, and then you

1190
01:13:28,600 --> 01:13:29,559
Speaker 3: hear this voice come on.

1191
01:13:29,640 --> 01:13:31,920
Speaker 2: And he says, you go to a buffalo jump, you

1192
01:13:32,000 --> 01:13:35,639
Speaker 2: know these days, and if it quiet, if people ain't

1193
01:13:35,880 --> 01:13:37,800
Speaker 2: you know, ain't talking like magpies.

1194
01:13:38,000 --> 01:13:40,200
Speaker 3: So you think you're going to hear about the sorrow

1195
01:13:40,320 --> 01:13:43,519
Speaker 3: of the buffalo that you can hear in a Native

1196
01:13:43,520 --> 01:13:49,559
Speaker 3: American way, the sadness, the sorrow, the screams of the buffalo.

1197
01:13:49,920 --> 01:13:52,000
Speaker 3: But he takes you in exactly the oppertuity.

1198
01:13:52,040 --> 01:13:54,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he says, but you you know, you get

1199
01:13:54,360 --> 01:13:57,640
Speaker 2: the quiet and you think about that, and they're going

1200
01:13:57,720 --> 01:14:01,000
Speaker 2: to eat now, they're going to be able to eat,

1201
01:14:01,360 --> 01:14:02,639
Speaker 2: and that makes people happy.

1202
01:14:02,960 --> 01:14:04,360
Speaker 1: You know that My.

1203
01:14:04,520 --> 01:14:07,680
Speaker 2: Family, my tribe, we're going to be we're going to

1204
01:14:07,760 --> 01:14:11,320
Speaker 2: have enough meat to last us, you know, weeks a

1205
01:14:11,400 --> 01:14:14,320
Speaker 2: month into the winter, and then it's a good thing.

1206
01:14:15,240 --> 01:14:19,760
Speaker 2: And you know, it's just it's like holy smokes, you know,

1207
01:14:19,920 --> 01:14:23,440
Speaker 2: it's just like of course, you know they would celebrate.

1208
01:14:23,760 --> 01:14:26,519
Speaker 2: You know, you just got you know, we don't get

1209
01:14:26,560 --> 01:14:30,000
Speaker 2: into it in the in the film, but in the

1210
01:14:31,560 --> 01:14:35,880
Speaker 2: book I mentioned that there were certain among certain native

1211
01:14:36,360 --> 01:14:40,040
Speaker 2: tribes if you didn't get all of them that went

1212
01:14:40,120 --> 01:14:42,840
Speaker 2: over the cliff, because they wouldn't all necessarily die going up,

1213
01:14:42,880 --> 01:14:45,519
Speaker 2: and they had people at the bottom to finish them off.

1214
01:14:45,600 --> 01:14:48,840
Speaker 2: We say that, but part of the thought was you

1215
01:14:48,960 --> 01:14:52,080
Speaker 2: needed to do that because otherwise the survivors would go

1216
01:14:52,600 --> 01:14:54,479
Speaker 2: and tell and Warren and Warren.

1217
01:14:54,400 --> 01:14:58,240
Speaker 1: We still use that term day. It's called when they're educated. Yeah, right,

1218
01:14:58,960 --> 01:15:05,479
Speaker 1: you don't want to educate the He has a line

1219
01:15:05,520 --> 01:15:09,040
Speaker 1: that really stuck on me, and he uses it so fluidly,

1220
01:15:09,160 --> 01:15:12,080
Speaker 1: and it's not rehearsed. But he's talking about his people,

1221
01:15:12,439 --> 01:15:17,160
Speaker 1: his tribe or his collective people Native Americans, and he

1222
01:15:17,240 --> 01:15:24,679
Speaker 1: says my people and their people. When he says their people,

1223
01:15:25,960 --> 01:15:30,720
Speaker 1: he's talking about the buffalo. And when I and the

1224
01:15:30,800 --> 01:15:35,040
Speaker 1: thing I wrote about your film and I touch on

1225
01:15:35,160 --> 01:15:37,000
Speaker 1: being in the film, and I quote him, and I

1226
01:15:37,080 --> 01:15:39,720
Speaker 1: wound up needing to when I quote him when I

1227
01:15:39,760 --> 01:15:42,840
Speaker 1: say their people, it's so disorienting. Like I said, I

1228
01:15:42,960 --> 01:15:45,960
Speaker 1: needed to put in parentheses so because the reader would

1229
01:15:45,960 --> 01:15:50,160
Speaker 1: never understand when he says they're people, he means the animals.

1230
01:15:50,240 --> 01:15:52,080
Speaker 4: But there's no parentheses in his mind.

1231
01:15:52,200 --> 01:15:55,679
Speaker 1: No, And that's the great thing about it, I wrote.

1232
01:15:55,720 --> 01:15:57,800
Speaker 1: And I'd look at it and be like, no, one's

1233
01:15:57,800 --> 01:16:00,559
Speaker 1: gonna understand what he's talking about. You know, they're being

1234
01:16:00,680 --> 01:16:02,960
Speaker 1: like but but George is.

1235
01:16:03,160 --> 01:16:07,080
Speaker 3: Asking you to take the parentheses off and see things

1236
01:16:07,120 --> 01:16:12,040
Speaker 3: in an entirely new way in which that that word

1237
01:16:12,400 --> 01:16:17,120
Speaker 3: then is part of a of a reciprocal relationship between

1238
01:16:17,360 --> 01:16:23,080
Speaker 3: all of creation and not just the dominant species and

1239
01:16:23,200 --> 01:16:24,000
Speaker 3: everybody else.

1240
01:16:24,120 --> 01:16:27,680
Speaker 1: I couldn't make it like you. You can't make it

1241
01:16:27,800 --> 01:16:31,400
Speaker 1: work in writing. No, you can't without a prent. You're

1242
01:16:31,560 --> 01:16:35,519
Speaker 1: clarifying what what he's talking about by saying there people. Yeah.

1243
01:16:36,000 --> 01:16:38,679
Speaker 2: That's the thing with on the film and film when

1244
01:16:38,880 --> 01:16:43,640
Speaker 2: he's talking and he'll say some things that you know, grammatically,

1245
01:16:44,200 --> 01:16:46,720
Speaker 2: you know, are confusing or something like that, but there

1246
01:16:46,800 --> 01:16:50,360
Speaker 2: is no confusion confusion watching him say it. It's it's

1247
01:16:50,600 --> 01:16:52,080
Speaker 2: it's totally communicated.

1248
01:16:54,040 --> 01:16:59,719
Speaker 3: My ownership, my cattle, my land, my this he's asking

1249
01:16:59,800 --> 01:17:02,400
Speaker 3: you to say, you know, there's a who's this.

1250
01:17:02,600 --> 01:17:04,200
Speaker 1: This is a response to good night, Noah?

1251
01:17:04,439 --> 01:17:07,240
Speaker 3: This is this is this is the you know, the

1252
01:17:07,400 --> 01:17:11,400
Speaker 3: early nineteenth century philosopher Prudom I think you said property

1253
01:17:11,520 --> 01:17:14,120
Speaker 3: is theft and that was part of the developing revolutionary

1254
01:17:14,200 --> 01:17:17,559
Speaker 3: and all the stuff that leads to. But he has

1255
01:17:17,760 --> 01:17:21,120
Speaker 3: that not as an intellectual idea in opposition to anything.

1256
01:17:21,200 --> 01:17:23,920
Speaker 2: It's just like, what kind of theory is this?

1257
01:17:24,240 --> 01:17:25,160
Speaker 1: What is my mean?

1258
01:17:25,720 --> 01:17:28,760
Speaker 3: What does what does that mean to be? My? I mean,

1259
01:17:29,640 --> 01:17:32,479
Speaker 3: where does this come from? This does not compute in

1260
01:17:32,560 --> 01:17:35,879
Speaker 3: a way, And so he's by virtue of his clarity

1261
01:17:36,240 --> 01:17:40,320
Speaker 3: and his certainty. You are then required to let go

1262
01:17:40,640 --> 01:17:44,120
Speaker 3: for a second of your own sort of momentum, which

1263
01:17:44,360 --> 01:17:48,040
Speaker 3: in this case is four or five generations, six generations old,

1264
01:17:48,400 --> 01:17:51,040
Speaker 3: as opposed to his, which is six hundred generations old

1265
01:17:51,360 --> 01:17:56,160
Speaker 3: on this continent and say, WHOA, Well, maybe he's got

1266
01:17:56,240 --> 01:18:01,960
Speaker 3: a point here, right, And so I I love being uh,

1267
01:18:03,320 --> 01:18:06,400
Speaker 3: you know, not calcifying. I love the fact that that

1268
01:18:06,720 --> 01:18:08,360
Speaker 3: that that he kind of wakes you up.

1269
01:18:08,720 --> 01:18:12,519
Speaker 2: He also has a great moment speaking of the bison nickel,

1270
01:18:12,600 --> 01:18:21,479
Speaker 2: the buffalo nickel, in interaction with your comments about that

1271
01:18:22,680 --> 01:18:27,360
Speaker 2: about there this animal that gets put on a on

1272
01:18:27,720 --> 01:18:29,960
Speaker 2: on a nickel on the other side of an Indian head.

1273
01:18:30,120 --> 01:18:33,720
Speaker 2: By the way, but that, uh, the model for that

1274
01:18:34,200 --> 01:18:38,320
Speaker 2: was from the black Black Diamond that you describe and that.

1275
01:18:38,479 --> 01:18:43,400
Speaker 1: But I went to the nast the last known location

1276
01:18:43,560 --> 01:18:48,280
Speaker 1: of Black Diamond's head, which had become an Italian clothing boutique.

1277
01:18:48,920 --> 01:18:49,479
Speaker 2: Oh my god.

1278
01:18:49,800 --> 01:18:51,479
Speaker 1: And I went in and told the woman working there,

1279
01:18:53,520 --> 01:18:54,559
Speaker 1: you know what used to be in here.

1280
01:18:56,120 --> 01:18:58,720
Speaker 2: But but but as you as you point out that,

1281
01:18:58,880 --> 01:19:03,160
Speaker 2: so here's this here in nineteen thirteen, here's this symbol

1282
01:19:04,479 --> 01:19:05,559
Speaker 2: on one side as a.

1283
01:19:07,880 --> 01:19:08,559
Speaker 1: Portrait of a.

1284
01:19:10,439 --> 01:19:15,000
Speaker 2: Of a Native American individual's portraits. I think so, and

1285
01:19:15,080 --> 01:19:17,240
Speaker 2: I can't I can't remember saying well, at least I

1286
01:19:17,320 --> 01:19:18,720
Speaker 2: know that there are theories of who it is. It

1287
01:19:18,800 --> 01:19:24,840
Speaker 2: may not be known, but definitely Fraser said this, this

1288
01:19:25,000 --> 01:19:28,120
Speaker 2: one was black black diamond is as you say. And

1289
01:19:28,280 --> 01:19:31,560
Speaker 2: so what we're left with this what is it a

1290
01:19:31,640 --> 01:19:34,360
Speaker 2: symbol of It's a you know, it's a wonderful thing.

1291
01:19:34,880 --> 01:19:37,240
Speaker 2: And that to us, it comes near the end of

1292
01:19:37,240 --> 01:19:40,200
Speaker 2: the film, is what is the buffalo a symbol of

1293
01:19:40,320 --> 01:19:43,640
Speaker 2: in American history? Is it a symbol of plenty? Is

1294
01:19:43,720 --> 01:19:45,560
Speaker 2: it a symbol of destruction?

1295
01:19:46,280 --> 01:19:46,479
Speaker 3: You know?

1296
01:19:47,720 --> 01:19:48,160
Speaker 1: What is it?

1297
01:19:48,280 --> 01:19:51,719
Speaker 2: And then George comes on, you know, and just gives

1298
01:19:51,760 --> 01:19:56,000
Speaker 2: it the final things in my confusion, he says, I

1299
01:19:56,160 --> 01:19:58,599
Speaker 2: was looking at thinking like he's looking at that nickel

1300
01:19:58,680 --> 01:20:02,160
Speaker 2: right at that moment. It just makes me why did

1301
01:20:02,240 --> 01:20:03,800
Speaker 2: they put that buffalo on there?

1302
01:20:04,000 --> 01:20:04,160
Speaker 3: You know?

1303
01:20:04,960 --> 01:20:05,519
Speaker 1: What is it?

1304
01:20:06,600 --> 01:20:10,200
Speaker 2: Why is it that for some people that you want

1305
01:20:10,280 --> 01:20:11,639
Speaker 2: to kill the thing you love?

1306
01:20:13,160 --> 01:20:16,200
Speaker 3: This is it? Because that's Look, look what we have done.

1307
01:20:16,320 --> 01:20:20,840
Speaker 3: We are beginning now this is nineteen thirteen, to fetishize

1308
01:20:20,960 --> 01:20:26,200
Speaker 3: and to romanticize the Native man and the buffalo, something

1309
01:20:26,320 --> 01:20:30,880
Speaker 3: we have just spent the last century trying to exterminate,

1310
01:20:31,520 --> 01:20:33,800
Speaker 3: and now all of a sudden it's the symbol of us.

1311
01:20:34,400 --> 01:20:39,920
Speaker 3: What two symbols represent the newness of America, particularly the

1312
01:20:40,000 --> 01:20:44,200
Speaker 3: West and the Native American and the buffalo, and so.

1313
01:20:46,080 --> 01:20:46,840
Speaker 4: We've done this to it.

1314
01:20:47,120 --> 01:20:49,200
Speaker 3: To me when he says that do you have to

1315
01:20:49,280 --> 01:20:51,280
Speaker 3: kill the things you love? You just go, my God,

1316
01:20:51,600 --> 01:20:54,080
Speaker 3: that may be the story of mankind. I mean, there's

1317
01:20:54,080 --> 01:20:58,599
Speaker 3: a moment one of the episodes in the Vietnam film,

1318
01:20:58,920 --> 01:21:01,439
Speaker 3: the eighth I think of out of ten is something

1319
01:21:01,479 --> 01:21:05,519
Speaker 3: in a marine said to us that we're just talking

1320
01:21:05,560 --> 01:21:07,960
Speaker 3: about warfare in general, and he goes, well, that's the

1321
01:21:08,080 --> 01:21:12,240
Speaker 3: history of the world, meaning warfare. So we just called

1322
01:21:12,280 --> 01:21:13,920
Speaker 3: it the history of the world because this is what

1323
01:21:14,080 --> 01:21:16,360
Speaker 3: human beings do. This is what we do.

1324
01:21:16,760 --> 01:21:19,240
Speaker 4: This is not the aspect that we like to say.

1325
01:21:19,320 --> 01:21:21,920
Speaker 3: We want to say, Oh no, we're the Mona Lisa

1326
01:21:22,000 --> 01:21:25,280
Speaker 3: and we're the Tower of Pisa, and we're the this,

1327
01:21:25,479 --> 01:21:27,439
Speaker 3: and then that we're also this.

1328
01:21:27,960 --> 01:21:31,560
Speaker 1: That's what I've tried that. No, I've tried to find parallels.

1329
01:21:31,720 --> 01:21:34,840
Speaker 1: I mean, there are many parallels for that in minor

1330
01:21:34,960 --> 01:21:37,200
Speaker 1: forms that you can look at our most populous state

1331
01:21:37,760 --> 01:21:40,840
Speaker 1: right their state symbols the Grizzly Bear, of which they

1332
01:21:40,880 --> 01:21:45,080
Speaker 1: don't have any right. So there are things like that.

1333
01:21:45,160 --> 01:21:48,680
Speaker 1: But it's so and one of the comments that one

1334
01:21:48,720 --> 01:21:51,360
Speaker 1: of the comments that I have in the film is

1335
01:21:52,439 --> 01:21:55,880
Speaker 1: how quickly. The nostalgia, yes, began because you guys do

1336
01:21:55,920 --> 01:21:59,479
Speaker 1: a great job of Buffalo Bill Cody. Yeah, in the

1337
01:21:59,520 --> 01:22:07,600
Speaker 1: Wild Wife show where they are it's it's like a

1338
01:22:09,720 --> 01:22:13,120
Speaker 1: it's like he got on a train. I mean, it's

1339
01:22:13,160 --> 01:22:15,800
Speaker 1: like he got on a train from participating in the

1340
01:22:15,880 --> 01:22:21,560
Speaker 1: Final Slaughter to arrive on the East Coast to mythologize

1341
01:22:22,080 --> 01:22:24,160
Speaker 1: the thing he'd tried to be passing. But this is

1342
01:22:24,200 --> 01:22:26,240
Speaker 1: what it was like. It was like he he didn't

1343
01:22:26,280 --> 01:22:27,040
Speaker 1: even look different.

1344
01:22:27,160 --> 01:22:32,000
Speaker 3: No, he's still advertising the same stick. He's just now

1345
01:22:32,240 --> 01:22:34,000
Speaker 3: flipped the coin right.

1346
01:22:34,000 --> 01:22:34,679
Speaker 1: And it's different.

1347
01:22:34,680 --> 01:22:37,960
Speaker 3: But look at that. We romanticize the revolution. We took

1348
01:22:38,000 --> 01:22:40,000
Speaker 3: the Civil War and made it not about race. It

1349
01:22:40,080 --> 01:22:43,200
Speaker 3: was brother coming together. You know, all of this sort

1350
01:22:43,240 --> 01:22:46,240
Speaker 3: of stuff. We call the Second World War the Good War.

1351
01:22:46,640 --> 01:22:50,760
Speaker 3: It's the worst war ever, sixty million human lives were extinguished,

1352
01:22:50,880 --> 01:22:54,280
Speaker 3: and it's the good war to us, right, So this

1353
01:22:54,479 --> 01:22:58,439
Speaker 3: is always happening in our in our purview, and I

1354
01:22:58,600 --> 01:23:01,639
Speaker 3: think what we've been dead cad to is to try

1355
01:23:01,760 --> 01:23:05,920
Speaker 3: to take this the onus of a superficial treatment off

1356
01:23:06,040 --> 01:23:10,160
Speaker 3: it and just say it is possible to tolerate complexity,

1357
01:23:10,280 --> 01:23:13,280
Speaker 3: It is possible to give and take away. At the

1358
01:23:13,360 --> 01:23:16,120
Speaker 3: same time, with an individual or a moment, it is

1359
01:23:16,280 --> 01:23:22,559
Speaker 3: possible to sit in contradiction. It's complicated. As the sign

1360
01:23:22,600 --> 01:23:22,920
Speaker 3: says in.

1361
01:23:22,920 --> 01:23:27,840
Speaker 1: The editing, you said to me one day on the phone. Uh,

1362
01:23:28,560 --> 01:23:29,919
Speaker 1: you just said, nothing is binary.

1363
01:23:30,200 --> 01:23:31,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, nothing's binary.

1364
01:23:31,240 --> 01:23:33,280
Speaker 4: If nothing is bindy. And that's all we want to do.

1365
01:23:33,479 --> 01:23:35,679
Speaker 3: We want to make something red state or blue state,

1366
01:23:35,760 --> 01:23:38,960
Speaker 3: black or white, young or old, Richard, poor, male or female,

1367
01:23:39,000 --> 01:23:41,439
Speaker 3: gay or straight, whatever it may be. We want to

1368
01:23:41,479 --> 01:23:44,160
Speaker 3: make sure that there's just an on off switch for it,

1369
01:23:44,479 --> 01:23:47,800
Speaker 3: so that we know where we stand with everything, and

1370
01:23:48,320 --> 01:23:54,000
Speaker 3: everything is will resist that kind of on off switch.

1371
01:23:54,160 --> 01:23:57,840
Speaker 3: Because in Charlie Goodnight, you have all of this complication,

1372
01:23:58,360 --> 01:24:02,799
Speaker 3: In William T. Hornday, all of this complication in Theodore Roosevelt,

1373
01:24:02,880 --> 01:24:09,720
Speaker 3: the great conservation President, who in fact subscribes to many

1374
01:24:09,800 --> 01:24:14,680
Speaker 3: of the abhorrent eugenics views of Hornaday, and those that

1375
01:24:14,800 --> 01:24:21,160
Speaker 3: are spouting them, like Madison Grant, are also doing magnificent things.

1376
01:24:21,240 --> 01:24:24,400
Speaker 3: And so you know, Lincoln as late as eighteen sixty

1377
01:24:24,479 --> 01:24:27,720
Speaker 3: one was thinking of colonizing black people to Mexico or

1378
01:24:27,760 --> 01:24:30,840
Speaker 3: South America or back to Africa. In sixty one, that's

1379
01:24:30,880 --> 01:24:33,880
Speaker 3: when the guns open up at Fort Sumter, right, I mean,

1380
01:24:34,720 --> 01:24:37,800
Speaker 3: and yet he's the great emanticipator, which he is. He's

1381
01:24:37,880 --> 01:24:41,120
Speaker 3: the visionary who saw who wrote the Gettysburg Address, which

1382
01:24:41,160 --> 01:24:45,000
Speaker 3: is our two point oh operating Manual Declaration one point

1383
01:24:45,040 --> 01:24:45,799
Speaker 3: oh oops.

1384
01:24:46,200 --> 01:24:47,080
Speaker 4: The guy who says all.

1385
01:24:47,000 --> 01:24:49,960
Speaker 3: Men are created equal owns hundreds of human beings. We

1386
01:24:50,040 --> 01:24:52,680
Speaker 3: will gloss that over. Don't pay no attention to that

1387
01:24:52,880 --> 01:24:57,120
Speaker 3: man behind the plantation. So he says, no, we really

1388
01:24:57,200 --> 01:25:01,840
Speaker 3: do mean it. But it's complicated. It's really really complicated.

1389
01:25:01,880 --> 01:25:05,439
Speaker 3: And I think we need to as Americans, particularly today,

1390
01:25:05,640 --> 01:25:08,800
Speaker 3: rejoice in complication. And I think what I was trying

1391
01:25:08,840 --> 01:25:11,960
Speaker 3: to say before is that maybe as we got older,

1392
01:25:12,040 --> 01:25:14,280
Speaker 3: our chops get a little bit better, and that we

1393
01:25:14,520 --> 01:25:17,320
Speaker 3: find a way to integrate it more to rejoice in

1394
01:25:17,360 --> 01:25:18,000
Speaker 3: that complication.

1395
01:25:18,360 --> 01:25:21,519
Speaker 2: Was can I say, in terms of these you know,

1396
01:25:21,640 --> 01:25:25,040
Speaker 2: complications and other things. You do a great job helping

1397
01:25:25,160 --> 01:25:33,439
Speaker 2: us in talking about how the people like Roosevelt avid hunters,

1398
01:25:34,320 --> 01:25:37,920
Speaker 2: George Bird Grenell an avid hunter, you know, informing the

1399
01:25:37,960 --> 01:25:42,000
Speaker 2: Boone and Crocket Club, you know, helped start a movement

1400
01:25:42,160 --> 01:25:46,519
Speaker 2: in which hunters were at the forefront of conservation. So

1401
01:25:46,600 --> 01:25:48,800
Speaker 2: you've got to you can't just have all this market hunting.

1402
01:25:49,320 --> 01:25:53,560
Speaker 2: You can still have hunting there, but it needs to

1403
01:25:53,640 --> 01:25:55,880
Speaker 2: be regulated and not just sort of wanting.

1404
01:25:56,800 --> 01:25:56,920
Speaker 3: Uh.

1405
01:25:57,600 --> 01:26:02,840
Speaker 2: And that's an important part of it. And Grennell is

1406
01:26:03,040 --> 01:26:07,120
Speaker 2: a personal hero of mine in that respect, who also

1407
01:26:07,680 --> 01:26:11,479
Speaker 2: saw conservation differently than some of the others of his age,

1408
01:26:11,479 --> 01:26:15,080
Speaker 2: because he also had a deep connection with native people,

1409
01:26:15,240 --> 01:26:18,080
Speaker 2: was actually interested in them as human beings and everything.

1410
01:26:18,720 --> 01:26:23,519
Speaker 2: But you take Roosevelt who rushed west in eighteen eighty

1411
01:26:24,320 --> 01:26:29,560
Speaker 2: three because he'd heard that the bison were about to

1412
01:26:29,640 --> 01:26:32,679
Speaker 2: be gone forever. And so he first thing, he gets

1413
01:26:32,720 --> 01:26:35,240
Speaker 2: on a train and rushes out to what's now North Dakota.

1414
01:26:36,280 --> 01:26:38,960
Speaker 2: He wants to shoot one while there's still a chance

1415
01:26:39,080 --> 01:26:42,120
Speaker 2: to do it, so he can hang a trophans. While

1416
01:26:42,479 --> 01:26:44,719
Speaker 2: in the book he writes after he buys a ranch

1417
01:26:45,000 --> 01:26:47,759
Speaker 2: also in that place and keeps coming back for several

1418
01:26:47,800 --> 01:26:53,479
Speaker 2: summers about hunting adventures of a rancher, a ranch man.

1419
01:26:54,040 --> 01:26:56,800
Speaker 2: He talks about the buffalo and said, this is their

1420
01:26:56,880 --> 01:26:59,920
Speaker 2: disappearance is a great tragedy. But on the other hand,

1421
01:27:01,360 --> 01:27:04,120
Speaker 2: not only not only was it probably not only was

1422
01:27:04,160 --> 01:27:09,280
Speaker 2: it necessary for the advance of what he called white civilization. Uh,

1423
01:27:09,680 --> 01:27:12,360
Speaker 2: it was probably a blessing that it needed to be

1424
01:27:12,439 --> 01:27:15,760
Speaker 2: done because of its impact on us, you know, controlling

1425
01:27:16,320 --> 01:27:20,040
Speaker 2: Native people. So he just just said in a book

1426
01:27:20,200 --> 01:27:26,439
Speaker 2: that he's written that the elimination of the bison was maybe.

1427
01:27:26,240 --> 01:27:28,640
Speaker 4: A little bit sets disappearance, but it was, but it was,

1428
01:27:28,880 --> 01:27:29,320
Speaker 4: but it was.

1429
01:27:29,360 --> 01:27:34,320
Speaker 2: A blessing and necessary. Who then at the then, with Grennell,

1430
01:27:34,800 --> 01:27:37,879
Speaker 2: forms the Boon and Cocker Club, Who then, with Grennell

1431
01:27:38,400 --> 01:27:43,320
Speaker 2: helps save and enact regulations in Yellowstone to save that

1432
01:27:43,680 --> 01:27:47,440
Speaker 2: last remnant wild herd from being poached out of existence.

1433
01:27:48,040 --> 01:27:52,960
Speaker 2: Who then signs the the bill that creates with a

1434
01:27:53,200 --> 01:27:58,759
Speaker 2: you know, executive order creating the first preserve for bison

1435
01:27:59,760 --> 01:28:04,320
Speaker 2: in on the plains and also the one on the

1436
01:28:04,400 --> 01:28:08,519
Speaker 2: Flathead Reservation in north west Montana. And as we say,

1437
01:28:08,840 --> 01:28:13,160
Speaker 2: the greatest conservation president in our history, without question. But

1438
01:28:13,320 --> 01:28:16,760
Speaker 2: he's all of those things. And there's nothing wrong with

1439
01:28:17,600 --> 01:28:20,200
Speaker 2: saying it's all those things. You can't just say if

1440
01:28:20,240 --> 01:28:23,600
Speaker 2: your tilt is, well, he said this about their extermination,

1441
01:28:24,160 --> 01:28:29,640
Speaker 2: he's done or opposite if theseus said, he's just you know,

1442
01:28:31,560 --> 01:28:34,960
Speaker 2: you know, there's only glory to be talked about with him.

1443
01:28:35,040 --> 01:28:36,240
Speaker 1: He was who he was.

1444
01:28:36,439 --> 01:28:40,200
Speaker 2: He was a complete thing. And we try to portray

1445
01:28:40,360 --> 01:28:44,080
Speaker 2: him in that way. He also spent can you imagine this?

1446
01:28:44,520 --> 01:28:48,960
Speaker 2: He went out to Oklahoma to the Comanche Reservation after

1447
01:28:49,040 --> 01:28:52,880
Speaker 2: he'd met after Kwanta Parker had appeared with some other

1448
01:28:53,120 --> 01:28:59,720
Speaker 2: Native leaders in his inaugural parade in nineteen o five,

1449
01:29:00,960 --> 01:29:04,679
Speaker 2: he then went out to hunt coyotes and and Kwana

1450
01:29:04,800 --> 01:29:09,160
Speaker 2: invited him to come to his fairly elaborate house called

1451
01:29:09,200 --> 01:29:13,559
Speaker 2: the Star House on the reservation. And can you imagine

1452
01:29:13,640 --> 01:29:18,160
Speaker 2: the President of the United States going to a Indian reservation,

1453
01:29:19,960 --> 01:29:25,920
Speaker 2: spending the night on the porch of one of the

1454
01:29:26,200 --> 01:29:30,840
Speaker 2: Indian leaders, but then told him, you know, from what

1455
01:29:30,960 --> 01:29:32,840
Speaker 2: you've told me and everything, I think this is a

1456
01:29:32,920 --> 01:29:37,200
Speaker 2: good place for us to have the first Buffalo preserve.

1457
01:29:38,160 --> 01:29:40,760
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a journey. I mean, I don't think,

1458
01:29:41,200 --> 01:29:44,559
Speaker 2: I don't want overstated. I don't think Theodore Roosevelt's views

1459
01:29:44,600 --> 01:29:47,960
Speaker 2: of you know, the pecking order of the races as

1460
01:29:48,040 --> 01:29:51,000
Speaker 2: he would call them, changed that much in terms of

1461
01:29:51,080 --> 01:29:54,240
Speaker 2: his opinion of Native people. But you know, he loved

1462
01:29:54,240 --> 01:29:57,960
Speaker 2: to hunt, and he loved you know, Uh, they're too old.

1463
01:29:58,080 --> 01:30:01,599
Speaker 2: There were two warriors who were you know, Quanta Parker

1464
01:30:01,640 --> 01:30:02,519
Speaker 2: had his own journey.

1465
01:30:03,200 --> 01:30:03,640
Speaker 1: Oh No.

1466
01:30:03,720 --> 01:30:07,200
Speaker 2: One hated Texans more than he did. They they abducted

1467
01:30:07,280 --> 01:30:12,280
Speaker 2: his mother and his little baby sister, uh and and

1468
01:30:12,439 --> 01:30:15,200
Speaker 2: took them away from the command. She's back to the

1469
01:30:15,240 --> 01:30:17,760
Speaker 2: White civilization because that's where they had been.

1470
01:30:18,840 --> 01:30:21,320
Speaker 1: Listeners want to get a listeners get a good sense

1471
01:30:21,360 --> 01:30:24,400
Speaker 1: of this from from the film. But also I would

1472
01:30:24,439 --> 01:30:27,519
Speaker 1: recommend as well empire the summer move absolutely.

1473
01:30:28,520 --> 01:30:32,280
Speaker 2: But anyway, Charlie Goodnight was one of the Texas Rangers

1474
01:30:33,000 --> 01:30:36,519
Speaker 2: who abducted cynthiy Anne Parker from the commands she used

1475
01:30:36,520 --> 01:30:40,799
Speaker 2: to bring her back to the Texas settlements. So Quanta

1476
01:30:42,120 --> 01:30:48,040
Speaker 2: was uh a renowned warrior, you know, uh in fighting

1477
01:30:48,920 --> 01:30:52,680
Speaker 2: particularly Texans but also the US military. But then when

1478
01:30:52,760 --> 01:30:57,280
Speaker 2: he finally decided the buffalo are gone, there's we have

1479
01:30:57,439 --> 01:31:03,600
Speaker 2: to you know, forge a new path, became, you know,

1480
01:31:04,320 --> 01:31:07,720
Speaker 2: a leader of trying to help his people make that

1481
01:31:07,760 --> 01:31:12,439
Speaker 2: adjustment without giving up his many of his traditional beliefs,

1482
01:31:12,479 --> 01:31:15,920
Speaker 2: including multiple wives and long hair and in the use

1483
01:31:15,960 --> 01:31:19,120
Speaker 2: of of peyote. But he became a good friend with

1484
01:31:19,920 --> 01:31:24,240
Speaker 2: with Charlie Goodnight and gave him and good Night helped

1485
01:31:24,400 --> 01:31:29,000
Speaker 2: Kuana get the remains of his mother and baby's sister

1486
01:31:29,360 --> 01:31:33,200
Speaker 2: brought back from Texas and buried near the Wichita Mountains

1487
01:31:33,200 --> 01:31:35,800
Speaker 2: where they, you know, which they had considered their home.

1488
01:31:36,320 --> 01:31:42,639
Speaker 2: And in thanks for that, Quana gave good night the lance,

1489
01:31:42,760 --> 01:31:46,679
Speaker 2: the commandchee lance that he used to kill hide hunters

1490
01:31:46,800 --> 01:31:49,680
Speaker 2: at the Battle of Adobe Walls. Okay, so I mean,

1491
01:31:51,040 --> 01:31:55,479
Speaker 2: so that lance is now in my mind, that not

1492
01:31:55,720 --> 01:31:58,160
Speaker 2: just a you know, it's what is it a symbol

1493
01:31:58,240 --> 01:32:03,519
Speaker 2: of well, it's a symbol of existence, right, It's a

1494
01:32:04,760 --> 01:32:11,599
Speaker 2: symbol of friendship and and possibly some you know, some redemption,

1495
01:32:11,840 --> 01:32:16,080
Speaker 2: some yes, some measure of redemption and reconciliation. It's it

1496
01:32:16,280 --> 01:32:22,360
Speaker 2: is something, you know, it has its own blood memory.

1497
01:32:22,880 --> 01:32:23,040
Speaker 3: You know.

1498
01:32:23,439 --> 01:32:27,640
Speaker 1: One thing you guys did and dating I recognize that

1499
01:32:27,800 --> 01:32:30,360
Speaker 1: this isn't one of the ones you wrote or produced,

1500
01:32:30,439 --> 01:32:35,000
Speaker 1: but one of the you mentioned celebrating these personal evolutions

1501
01:32:35,080 --> 01:32:38,200
Speaker 1: and the complexities. I thought one of the most beautiful

1502
01:32:38,240 --> 01:32:42,080
Speaker 1: things and and any of your films was at the

1503
01:32:42,240 --> 01:32:47,120
Speaker 1: End of the Vietnam War Ah, which is a very

1504
01:32:47,520 --> 01:32:50,600
Speaker 1: very good telling of just the deep complexity of the

1505
01:32:50,680 --> 01:32:53,559
Speaker 1: war and what it did to America, what it did

1506
01:32:53,600 --> 01:33:00,400
Speaker 1: to Vietnam. But it ends on among end on the

1507
01:33:00,439 --> 01:33:04,720
Speaker 1: wall the memorial and narrows in on an individual who

1508
01:33:06,720 --> 01:33:11,600
Speaker 1: speaking of personal change, and an individual who initially refused.

1509
01:33:12,000 --> 01:33:13,519
Speaker 1: He was like, I was not going to go. Look.

1510
01:33:14,240 --> 01:33:16,120
Speaker 3: He hated the idea of the wall, and it was

1511
01:33:16,240 --> 01:33:18,439
Speaker 3: in that school, and it was very contentious that it

1512
01:33:18,560 --> 01:33:21,560
Speaker 3: was this black gash, that it was celebrating defeat, that

1513
01:33:21,680 --> 01:33:23,800
Speaker 3: it was the list of the dead, it was in

1514
01:33:23,960 --> 01:33:29,240
Speaker 3: no way responsible for honoring what had particularly gone on

1515
01:33:30,040 --> 01:33:33,879
Speaker 3: and had resisted, and was adamant about not going amongst

1516
01:33:33,960 --> 01:33:36,400
Speaker 3: a group of people that have already gone and had

1517
01:33:37,080 --> 01:33:40,840
Speaker 3: everything happened. And when he began to answer the question

1518
01:33:41,000 --> 01:33:44,960
Speaker 3: about this, he started off with the defiance. By the

1519
01:33:45,200 --> 01:33:49,320
Speaker 3: end of his sentence of story, he has gone to

1520
01:33:49,439 --> 01:33:53,240
Speaker 3: see a friend and he breaks down on camera because

1521
01:33:54,479 --> 01:33:56,840
Speaker 3: he the power of it and the memory. And he

1522
01:33:56,920 --> 01:34:02,479
Speaker 3: would probably still say to you mentally, intellectually, I don't

1523
01:34:02,479 --> 01:34:06,120
Speaker 3: agree that it's this. But he was himself, more than

1524
01:34:06,240 --> 01:34:09,360
Speaker 3: any of the other people, proof of the power of

1525
01:34:09,439 --> 01:34:12,280
Speaker 3: that great work off to transcend. I mean, Tolstoy said,

1526
01:34:12,400 --> 01:34:14,960
Speaker 3: art is the transfer of emotion from one person to

1527
01:34:15,040 --> 01:34:17,640
Speaker 3: the other. We hope that our films do that. That

1528
01:34:17,760 --> 01:34:21,719
Speaker 3: were emotional archaeologists, not just excavating dry dates and facts

1529
01:34:21,760 --> 01:34:25,640
Speaker 3: and events, but something other what George Horse capture can

1530
01:34:25,680 --> 01:34:28,240
Speaker 3: do it. But at that moment, you take someone who's

1531
01:34:28,280 --> 01:34:31,560
Speaker 3: opposed and lead him in his own mind. He's just

1532
01:34:31,680 --> 01:34:34,479
Speaker 3: narrating what he did in some living room, safely out

1533
01:34:34,520 --> 01:34:38,080
Speaker 3: of the thing to the monument, and he loses it,

1534
01:34:38,200 --> 01:34:40,640
Speaker 3: and it just tells you what the force of that

1535
01:34:40,760 --> 01:34:45,000
Speaker 3: thing is and how spectacular, I mean, second only to

1536
01:34:45,080 --> 01:34:48,439
Speaker 3: the Lincoln Memorial, which is the greatest thing ever in

1537
01:34:48,760 --> 01:34:49,479
Speaker 3: our republic.

1538
01:34:49,920 --> 01:34:53,120
Speaker 1: I was, my family was gone. I was between houses.

1539
01:34:53,360 --> 01:34:55,280
Speaker 1: I was on the second floor of the Lewis and

1540
01:34:55,320 --> 01:34:57,640
Speaker 1: Clark Hotel and the Bows in Montanne, looking over the

1541
01:34:57,720 --> 01:35:00,519
Speaker 1: parking lot, watching the end of that movie. And I said,

1542
01:35:00,600 --> 01:35:02,840
Speaker 1: my I thought something was wrong with me. I sat

1543
01:35:02,840 --> 01:35:05,840
Speaker 1: in that room and wet wept, well, we wept, we all,

1544
01:35:06,040 --> 01:35:08,439
Speaker 1: like to the point where I was beginning to be

1545
01:35:08,560 --> 01:35:11,240
Speaker 1: concerned about myself. At the end of the Vietnam War.

1546
01:35:11,280 --> 01:35:13,120
Speaker 2: We had, you know, we.

1547
01:35:14,760 --> 01:35:18,599
Speaker 3: Because we are addicted to this notion of binary everything's

1548
01:35:18,640 --> 01:35:24,640
Speaker 3: good or bad. We we build up within us reservoirs

1549
01:35:24,960 --> 01:35:29,320
Speaker 3: of attention based on that false premise that it's all

1550
01:35:29,520 --> 01:35:34,679
Speaker 3: just black and white. So catharsis is the ability, wherever

1551
01:35:34,720 --> 01:35:38,200
Speaker 3: it occurs, to let that release go I know what

1552
01:35:38,400 --> 01:35:42,360
Speaker 3: it means. There's not a listener listening right now that

1553
01:35:42,479 --> 01:35:45,400
Speaker 3: doesn't know what it's like to just break down and cry.

1554
01:35:45,600 --> 01:35:47,559
Speaker 3: And there's really not an answer, and there is really

1555
01:35:47,680 --> 01:35:51,800
Speaker 3: what's why is it this little thing? I mean, I

1556
01:35:51,920 --> 01:35:55,240
Speaker 3: wasn't in Vietnam, you know, I didn't do that. I'm

1557
01:35:55,320 --> 01:35:57,960
Speaker 3: here in the Lewis and claud you know, but something

1558
01:35:58,439 --> 01:36:01,439
Speaker 3: opens up and it just you just it spills out.

1559
01:36:01,479 --> 01:36:04,880
Speaker 3: It's so healthy in the best sense of the word

1560
01:36:05,360 --> 01:36:08,880
Speaker 3: to permit that, And you know we're the rap in

1561
01:36:08,960 --> 01:36:11,840
Speaker 3: Florentine films is that we kill people really well. You know,

1562
01:36:12,200 --> 01:36:14,040
Speaker 3: I was so happy at the end of this film.

1563
01:36:14,040 --> 01:36:17,759
Speaker 3: In the Bubbalo, we didn't kill anybody. We save somebody,

1564
01:36:18,240 --> 01:36:21,520
Speaker 3: a person. I mean, we think The Buffalo is a biography,

1565
01:36:22,080 --> 01:36:25,920
Speaker 3: but we also permitted somebody like George horse Capture to

1566
01:36:26,240 --> 01:36:30,120
Speaker 3: do something that for many of us, exactly the same

1567
01:36:30,160 --> 01:36:34,080
Speaker 3: thing happens. All of the tensions of trying to maintain

1568
01:36:34,520 --> 01:36:38,240
Speaker 3: the fraudulence of this binary, yes known thing which does

1569
01:36:38,320 --> 01:36:43,280
Speaker 3: not exist in the universe. You get full expression there

1570
01:36:43,479 --> 01:36:46,479
Speaker 3: and George just lets me just let go of a

1571
01:36:46,600 --> 01:36:50,479
Speaker 3: whole bunch of baggage that I just perpetually carry put down.

1572
01:36:50,640 --> 01:36:52,200
Speaker 3: Think I want not going to pick up again and

1573
01:36:52,320 --> 01:36:54,320
Speaker 3: find out I'm still carrying the same stuff.

1574
01:36:55,040 --> 01:36:58,200
Speaker 1: Do you feel that you have to do something on

1575
01:36:59,360 --> 01:37:01,200
Speaker 1: the war in Afghanistan?

1576
01:37:02,680 --> 01:37:06,519
Speaker 3: I need twenty five years after an event to do it,

1577
01:37:06,600 --> 01:37:07,040
Speaker 3: I mean.

1578
01:37:06,960 --> 01:37:09,439
Speaker 1: But I don't I think that I'd like to challenge that. Yeah,

1579
01:37:09,439 --> 01:37:10,120
Speaker 1: I don't think you do.

1580
01:37:10,520 --> 01:37:13,200
Speaker 3: Well, we'll see what happens. We've got stuff through the

1581
01:37:13,360 --> 01:37:16,000
Speaker 3: end of this decade, and after that. It may it

1582
01:37:16,160 --> 01:37:18,920
Speaker 3: may in fact be and it would not. It might

1583
01:37:19,000 --> 01:37:22,120
Speaker 3: be all the petroleum wars, you know, it might be Iraq,

1584
01:37:22,280 --> 01:37:25,920
Speaker 3: first Iraq and second Iraq, as well as Afghanistan, and

1585
01:37:26,439 --> 01:37:32,800
Speaker 3: try to understand them in that sort of postcolonial way

1586
01:37:33,560 --> 01:37:37,200
Speaker 3: and in a global sense and also in the deeply

1587
01:37:37,320 --> 01:37:43,320
Speaker 3: personal thing, particularly with Afghanistan relating to nine to eleven.

1588
01:37:43,439 --> 01:37:47,519
Speaker 3: So it's a wonderful story and it's very very complicated.

1589
01:37:47,680 --> 01:37:50,760
Speaker 1: And deserve even the people that it's like, you know,

1590
01:37:50,840 --> 01:37:52,960
Speaker 1: for me to look at. You know, I was born

1591
01:37:54,080 --> 01:37:57,760
Speaker 1: the last year of active engagement in Vietnam, but I

1592
01:37:57,880 --> 01:38:01,920
Speaker 1: was raised around my buddy's dad's Are Vietnam bats, Yes,

1593
01:38:02,439 --> 01:38:05,559
Speaker 1: But I think that there are plenty of people who

1594
01:38:05,640 --> 01:38:08,880
Speaker 1: have lived through that twenty year war, who have really

1595
01:38:09,000 --> 01:38:13,120
Speaker 1: lost sight of the evolution of mission, the evolution of

1596
01:38:13,200 --> 01:38:16,280
Speaker 1: the thinking there, what it was in the first place,

1597
01:38:16,520 --> 01:38:23,000
Speaker 1: what it became the withdrawal. I mean, you, guys, it

1598
01:38:23,120 --> 01:38:25,920
Speaker 1: needs to be someone, It needs to be someone like

1599
01:38:26,040 --> 01:38:29,040
Speaker 1: your team to do it. And I just don't know

1600
01:38:29,120 --> 01:38:30,360
Speaker 1: that you need to wait a ton of time.

1601
01:38:30,479 --> 01:38:34,719
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, we always like to, you know. Philip Graham,

1602
01:38:34,760 --> 01:38:38,280
Speaker 3: who owned The Washington Post, said that journalism was the

1603
01:38:38,320 --> 01:38:40,880
Speaker 3: first rough draft of history, which is a wonderful thing.

1604
01:38:42,120 --> 01:38:45,800
Speaker 3: But you also realize that nobody turns in a rough draft, right,

1605
01:38:46,640 --> 01:38:50,519
Speaker 3: So what we like is the passage of time and

1606
01:38:50,600 --> 01:38:53,240
Speaker 3: the perspective that will I'll give you a good but

1607
01:38:53,439 --> 01:38:56,360
Speaker 3: not so quick, but pretty quick thing. If we'd done

1608
01:38:56,400 --> 01:38:59,160
Speaker 3: the Vietnam film ten years after the false I Gone

1609
01:38:59,479 --> 01:39:02,759
Speaker 3: right nineteen eighty five, America's in a bit of a recession.

1610
01:39:03,040 --> 01:39:05,360
Speaker 3: We're talking about the Pacific rim, but we don't mean us.

1611
01:39:05,479 --> 01:39:09,479
Speaker 3: We meet Japan, which is ascended. Vietnam would represent the

1612
01:39:09,600 --> 01:39:11,680
Speaker 3: symbol of our decline, the ball and chain that we

1613
01:39:11,760 --> 01:39:15,599
Speaker 3: would forever carry around with us. If I'd waited twenty

1614
01:39:15,680 --> 01:39:18,800
Speaker 3: years till nineteen ninety five, we are the sole superpower

1615
01:39:18,960 --> 01:39:22,600
Speaker 3: in the middle of what was then the greatest peacetime

1616
01:39:22,800 --> 01:39:25,920
Speaker 3: economic expansion in the history of our country. We had

1617
01:39:25,960 --> 01:39:28,639
Speaker 3: won the First Gulf War with one arm tied behind

1618
01:39:28,680 --> 01:39:31,840
Speaker 3: our back, with a coalition of dozens and dozens of

1619
01:39:32,040 --> 01:39:35,679
Speaker 3: countries supporting us. The Beacon, the city on the Hill

1620
01:39:36,120 --> 01:39:38,680
Speaker 3: Vietnam would have would be an important story to tell,

1621
01:39:38,760 --> 01:39:41,519
Speaker 3: but it wouldn't be representative of any decline. You go

1622
01:39:41,760 --> 01:39:45,400
Speaker 3: thirty years to twenty five and we're in both Iraq

1623
01:39:45,479 --> 01:39:48,360
Speaker 3: and Afghanistan and were bogged down, and now people are

1624
01:39:48,400 --> 01:39:51,280
Speaker 3: making Vietnam references. So once again you're going, well, maybe

1625
01:39:51,360 --> 01:39:54,680
Speaker 3: Vietnam is more symbolic of that. So we know it

1626
01:39:54,800 --> 01:39:57,799
Speaker 3: comes out in twenty seventeen, and so we are able

1627
01:39:57,920 --> 01:40:01,639
Speaker 3: to look from you know, it's like the Bitterroot Mountains,

1628
01:40:01,680 --> 01:40:03,800
Speaker 3: from a lot of different peaks and a lot of

1629
01:40:03,840 --> 01:40:05,719
Speaker 3: different valleys to see.

1630
01:40:07,000 --> 01:40:07,880
Speaker 4: A better, to.

1631
01:40:08,000 --> 01:40:13,639
Speaker 3: Triangulate better what actually took place. And so I after Vietnam,

1632
01:40:13,920 --> 01:40:16,960
Speaker 3: I was thrilled to realize when we were working, not

1633
01:40:17,120 --> 01:40:20,599
Speaker 3: after it. I'm looking at a map of the Drang

1634
01:40:20,840 --> 01:40:24,360
Speaker 3: Valley and play may this important? How more story? And

1635
01:40:24,439 --> 01:40:26,720
Speaker 3: we're just doing this and We've got this kind of

1636
01:40:26,800 --> 01:40:29,120
Speaker 3: three D map that we're threading through the Ya Drag

1637
01:40:29,280 --> 01:40:33,000
Speaker 3: Valley on a graphic right, and I go, I can

1638
01:40:33,120 --> 01:40:38,040
Speaker 3: do the Battle of Long Island right right. We're going

1639
01:40:38,080 --> 01:40:41,000
Speaker 3: back to the revolution and people are like what what?

1640
01:40:41,600 --> 01:40:45,200
Speaker 3: But now we're like years deep into it, so to me,

1641
01:40:45,720 --> 01:40:49,000
Speaker 3: and we're still it's still contentious. The stuff we're arguing

1642
01:40:49,040 --> 01:40:52,920
Speaker 3: about in the editing room among scholars about this thing

1643
01:40:53,040 --> 01:40:55,800
Speaker 3: that happened it will be when this comes out. It

1644
01:40:56,120 --> 01:40:59,360
Speaker 3: two hundred and fifty years ago is just magnificent.

1645
01:40:59,479 --> 01:41:01,759
Speaker 1: So I'm I'm not saying no Toice that like somewhere

1646
01:41:01,760 --> 01:41:03,120
Speaker 1: between thirty and two fifty.

1647
01:41:03,320 --> 01:41:07,080
Speaker 3: Yes, well, yeah, as an American filmmaker, I mean we are,

1648
01:41:07,520 --> 01:41:12,000
Speaker 3: you know, working on Leonardo, so we're two centuries before that.

1649
01:41:12,120 --> 01:41:14,760
Speaker 3: I mean he's we say in two different places it

1650
01:41:14,760 --> 01:41:17,320
Speaker 3: will have to be down to one in the Leonardo film.

1651
01:41:17,560 --> 01:41:20,400
Speaker 3: It would be another four hundred and fifty years before

1652
01:41:20,439 --> 01:41:23,360
Speaker 3: anybody would be able to duplicate what you've done, right,

1653
01:41:23,560 --> 01:41:27,519
Speaker 3: or his theories of this had benefited from. I mean,

1654
01:41:27,960 --> 01:41:31,120
Speaker 3: he he had some theories of gravity that Isaac Newton

1655
01:41:31,200 --> 01:41:34,400
Speaker 3: is still a century away, and Einstein is you know,

1656
01:41:34,600 --> 01:41:39,200
Speaker 3: four centuries away, and Newton and Einstein have calculus. He

1657
01:41:39,360 --> 01:41:42,639
Speaker 3: does not, and he's got some stuff on gravity. He's

1658
01:41:42,680 --> 01:41:47,360
Speaker 3: a painter, right, he's a painter. And it's at that

1659
01:41:47,479 --> 01:41:50,920
Speaker 3: point you're going, you know, oh my god, So we're

1660
01:41:51,520 --> 01:41:55,040
Speaker 3: the perspective is is pretty important to us just because

1661
01:41:55,680 --> 01:41:57,960
Speaker 3: and I think it's one of the arguments and maybe

1662
01:41:58,040 --> 01:42:01,160
Speaker 3: we've said it, of the Buffalo wait is to be

1663
01:42:01,280 --> 01:42:04,200
Speaker 3: able to be in the age we're in now with

1664
01:42:04,320 --> 01:42:08,840
Speaker 3: the kind of scholarship, including yours, that that helps us

1665
01:42:09,680 --> 01:42:12,840
Speaker 3: understand and evolve the story that we were drawn to

1666
01:42:12,960 --> 01:42:14,880
Speaker 3: and said, boy, we need to do a film on

1667
01:42:15,120 --> 01:42:18,080
Speaker 3: just the Buffalo because it cut touches all the corners,

1668
01:42:18,120 --> 01:42:20,960
Speaker 3: as Dayton says in the film, back in the early

1669
01:42:21,080 --> 01:42:23,680
Speaker 3: nineties or even late eighties, Right, We've got to do that.

1670
01:42:24,479 --> 01:42:26,920
Speaker 3: But the fact that we've waited as long as we

1671
01:42:27,040 --> 01:42:31,320
Speaker 3: have nothing changed except the Inter Buffalo Tribal Council and

1672
01:42:31,680 --> 01:42:35,240
Speaker 3: stuff like that, and you know, wolves released in Yellowstone,

1673
01:42:35,280 --> 01:42:38,760
Speaker 3: and you know, whatever is back has happened in the

1674
01:42:38,880 --> 01:42:43,040
Speaker 3: last But to be able to enjoy your and Dan

1675
01:42:43,200 --> 01:42:46,840
Speaker 3: Floores and you know, so many other scholars that appear

1676
01:42:46,880 --> 01:42:50,600
Speaker 3: in the film, Michael punk Michael punk For sure, you

1677
01:42:50,720 --> 01:42:54,240
Speaker 3: begin to realize that we've got a richer, more dynamic,

1678
01:42:54,720 --> 01:42:57,679
Speaker 3: less binary story to handle.

1679
01:42:58,040 --> 01:43:02,200
Speaker 1: Well. Whatever whatever you guys make now and in the future, Uh,

1680
01:43:02,840 --> 01:43:06,640
Speaker 1: I will watch it and I will be moved by it.

1681
01:43:06,840 --> 01:43:08,920
Speaker 1: I will think how I would have done parts different.

1682
01:43:09,560 --> 01:43:11,599
Speaker 1: And I think our audience is really going to get

1683
01:43:11,600 --> 01:43:14,720
Speaker 1: a lot out of out of the American Buffalo. I

1684
01:43:14,800 --> 01:43:19,120
Speaker 1: think that you listeners when you watch it, parts are

1685
01:43:19,160 --> 01:43:21,960
Speaker 1: gonna speak to you, parts are gonna challenge you. It's healthy,

1686
01:43:22,360 --> 01:43:25,360
Speaker 1: it's good. You're gonna probably if you know the story, well,

1687
01:43:25,439 --> 01:43:28,439
Speaker 1: you're gonna have parts you're like, well, yeah, what about right?

1688
01:43:28,720 --> 01:43:30,800
Speaker 1: But that stuff's great, man, It's good for your brain,

1689
01:43:31,000 --> 01:43:34,479
Speaker 1: so exactly. Yeah. I hope everyone watches it and really

1690
01:43:34,520 --> 01:43:36,040
Speaker 1: want to thank you guys for coming on and giving

1691
01:43:36,120 --> 01:43:51,280
Speaker 1: us the time you. Thank you, thank you, appreciate it all.

1692
01:43:52,240 --> 01:44:02,600
Speaker 4: Seeal Grey shine like silver in the sun. M h ride.

1693
01:44:04,560 --> 01:44:09,280
Speaker 1: Ride, ride on alone, sweetheart.

1694
01:44:10,160 --> 01:44:15,040
Speaker 3: We're done beat this damp horse to death, taking a

1695
01:44:15,200 --> 01:44:22,559
Speaker 3: new one and ride away. We're done beat this damn

1696
01:44:22,920 --> 01:44:28,200
Speaker 3: horse today, So take a new one and ride on.