Ken Burns, Rosalyn LaPier and The American Buffalo
The cautionary tale of the American buffalo has many parallels to the climate crisis – including being driven by acting as if the planet has infinite resources. But in less than a century we nearly drove 30 million bison extinct. What can we learn from that history?
Climate One · Climate One from The Commonwealth Club
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Show Notes
For thousands of years, the American buffalo evolved alongside Indigenous people who relied on them for food and shelter, and, in exchange for killing them, revered the animal. For millennia, this totemic animal lived in symbiotic relationship with grasslands throughout North America, then – in less than 100 years – new settlers and hunters brought their numbers from 30 million to the mere hundreds, while in the same era glorifying them as our iconic national animal. It’s a classic and cautionary tale of our ability to destroy the natural world – and potentially, to bring it back.
Guests:
Ken Burns, Director, The American Buffalo
Rosalyn LaPier, Indigenous environmental historian and ethnobotanist
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