- When you look at a buffalo you just don't see a big shaggy beast.

You see life, you see existence, you see hope.

Those are our relatives.

They are part of us.

(bright music) - This is the most magnificent mammal on our continent, the largest mammal.

Its story is so complicated and so interesting and moves into every aspect and almost every era of our lives, and touches on so many subjects you wouldn't think necessarily it would touch on.

- I wanted to do the American buffalo because I understood immediately that's the biography of an animal, but it's also a window into a broader American history.

Whether you're talking about the history of indigenous people, whether you're talking about capitalism, whether you're talking about westward expansion, it covers all that territory and history.

But I think embedded in the story is also a message for today.

How do we live with the natural world?

- When the Europeans come in, everything that's natural has to get out of the way.

(gun firing) - They saw this animal in incredible profusion and they thought, God, you know what's in it for us?

How can we profit from this?

- I've been fascinated with the story of the American buffalo for 30, 40 years.

It resonates on so many different levels.

It's a incredibly dramatic story.

Just the notion that a magnificent animal that once was uncountable, at least 30, maybe 40, 50, 60 million at one time, could be, in a century, taken down to fewer than 1,000.

How does that happen?

- To think that our greed and our industrialization would just blink this thing out and we would just say, "Well, that was then, and this is now," that seems like a repudiation somehow of the very idea of America.

- Native peoples coexist with the buffalo for 10,000, 12,000 years.

Their lives, their creation myths often involve the buffalo.

Their most sacred ceremonies involve the buffalo.

They use every part of the buffalo, everything from the tail to the snort we like to say, because the noises of the buffalo are worked into their rituals and and sacred ceremonies.

- Tribes have been connected to bison since time immemorial.

Our creation stories talk about the reciprocity of people and bison as food, as caretakers, as things that we needed for all aspects of life.

And we just really have been linked to them for so long.

- When the Blackfeet think about bison as both an animal that you eat and an animal that you use for material goods, we also think of them as kin, as kinship.

And it's not metaphoric and it's really not symbolic, it's real literal kinship that we have with bison.

So when people say, "That is my brother," or, "That is my relative," people really believe that.

- If you see one out grazing, it looks so slow.

It's like a parked car sitting there.

But they can clear six foot fences.

They can jump a horizontal jump of seven feet.

They can hit a speed, hit the speed of 35 miles an hour.

And you're talking about something that can get going at speed that's 1,800 pounds.

It's like a souped up hot rod of an animal hiding in a minivan shell.

- We shot the American buffalo all over the northern and southern plains.

My cameraman, Buddy, was setting up the camera so he was very intent on what he was doing, and the bison were off a distance.

But all of a sudden, the assistant cameraman, Jared, picked him up and and bodily pulled him away and Buddy said, "What are you doing?"

And the bison, they seem like they're slow moving but all of a sudden they can be right in front of you.

And that's exactly what had happened.

And the camera was right next to the bison and stayed there for 45 minutes.

Ha!

- I was working with some of our Native American advisors and on-camera commentators through the National Bison Reserve, and they're pointing out each plant that's there and how this one flourishes along a path because a path is a disturbed area, and this is what we use this part of the plant for.

And so I think that all of us, we see things kind of like at a long view, and we forget that if you've lived here for 600 generations you've got a microscopic understanding of what's going on here.

- I know there's such strength and resilience to where this is not just a story of tragedy.

This is a story of persevering and continuing on, helping to bring these buffalo back.

- I think that this nation is now ready to hear a more honest and balanced telling of this tragic story of American bison and the history of indigenous people.

It's a couple hundred years of history and it's a lot to overcome.

We just need to tell the truth and move forward in a way that allows indigenous people and bison and the entire environment of this nation to heal and restore itself.

- I don't know any story that exemplifies that clash of views of the natural world better than the story of the American buffalo.

- We need the buffalo on this earth to survive as people, not just Indians.

We need that spirit.

- I think the film is really a kind of mirror to us about who we are.

Who do we wish to be?

Do we wish to be the savers or do we wish to be the destroyers?

I'm really thrilled to be able tell as complex and as tragic, and I have to say, as inspirational as this story is.

(soaring music)