thank you.

dayton duncan, an award winning writer and filmmaker. he's an author of 14 books and for more than years has collaborated ken burns as a writer producer of historical documentaries, including the west, lewis and clark, the journey of the core discovery, the dust bowl, country music and the national parks, america's best idea for which he won two emmy awards. personally, i wanted to thank him because we took my husband. i took a spirited the desert tour fall and here that's on the whole trip they showed us that he and ken burns had produced and it was absolutely

spectacular. his most regret excuse me his most recent collaboration with burns is a documentary, the american buffalo. duncan has also been involved in many conservation organizations. president bill clinton, him chair of the american heritage rivers advisory committee and secretary of the interior bruce babbitt, appointed him to the board of the national park foundation. and in the spring of 2009, the director of the national park service named duncan as an honorary park ranger, an honor bestowed on fewer 50 people. his on the boards of the student conservation association and the national conservation lands foundation, and is a member of the advisory committee. the 2016 centennial of the national park service. please give a warm savannah. welcome to dayton duncan.

thanks very much. can everybody hear in the back? good. i was given a speech one time and i could tell that i'd kind of lost the audience. and so i said, is there a problem? someone in the back said the speakers got a screw loose. anyway anyway, thank you very much for the introduction. thank to the sponsors of my appearance here and thank you all for coming is the savannah book festival is a great festival. i've diane and i live the year here not in this but here in savannah and we love it and we love this festival very much. i'm not accustomed to standing

at a pulpit, i have a tendency to be a little preachy. so, you know, buckle up. i guess i'd. i do want to mention three people before i start. the first is scott and scott mamadi, the pulitzer prize poet novelist, appears in our film, became a friend of ken's and mine. 30 years ago when we were doing a film on the west who had just died about three weeks ago. we miss him and if you haven't read any, scott mamet, i encourage you to. i really love his last. he wrote a very short meditation, almost called earth keeper. so if you have copies that i'll sign it on his behalf, my son will is here. he is served as my research

assistant for this film. the film and book, as he did for the film that ken and i did on benjamin franklin a couple of years ago. i'm very proud to say that some of his music is in the soundtracks of both of those films and i need to mention wife diane, who's first reader of everything i write write, puts up with a lot lot for any spouse of a writer, and as right at alice mcdermott's. presentation presentation, she's heard everything going to say. and she also wants the writers workshop with allison in italy. 15 years ago. so she's i'm happy that she's over hearing something she might not have heard before my book

blood memory our book blood memory was done in connection with the pbs film called the american buffalo that appeared on pbs last fall. duncan and i, along with julie dunphy, a long time florentine films producer. the film the book have an incredibly long gestation period. in the early 1980s. i was out retracing the lewis and clark route writing my first book out west chronic. my experiences compared to their experiences, the history of the west in between and noting the changes. and then needing to explain what those were or how they occurred. and one of the most glaring changes was they were running into buffalo. so every day through the great

plains, i was in a wildlife desert in the 1980s and i had to go search long and hard to find a couple of buffalo herds just to just to see them when and i wrote about that in my in that book, but it's just one little piece of one chapter when. ken and i, who were friends, he was making his early films. i was writing my early books. he'd read my books before they're published i would come in and sit on his and give my comments to him about. the films he was working on, which then developed the friendship developed into collaborations of a list of film ideas that i gave him. and he said, if doing this, i'd like you to be involved. and. 32 years later, it we have had a great collaboration that i feel very grateful and lucky to to

have had with him in those collaborations. we touched on buffalo in our film series on the west we focused on the dramatic and traumatic destruction of them in the 1870s in the west, we covered them a little bit, lewis and clark encountering them in our film. lewis and clark in the national parks film, we have a short scene or more than a short scene about how the buffalo in yellowstone national park, despite the theoretical protections that had were being poached and and the people who came to the rescue of that to the laws changed and to get proper enforcement in place to save them from extinction. and in the dust bowl film while buffalo don't make a specific appearance, the buffalo plains

does and which we covered what happened when in the 1920s in a flurry of power the great plow that was called during unusually wet times on the great plains, that buffalo grass, the short grass with the routes that it evolved over thousands and thousands, thousands of years and had it in a relationship with with the animal itself when that got plowed up, how that set the for the greatest environmental catastrophe manmade environmental catastrophe of our history so we covered that but we always wanted to do a little bit fuller story least i did and i think i infected ken with that desire as well with the buffalo at the center of the story and he bought that real early but other projects that we did just kept interfering with it. and finally the space opened and and did it. so in some ways, this book and

film a culmination of well, whatever the that is 40 some years from the first encounter or to print it's a biography, if you will. we've done biographies of twain, mark twain and ben franklin that i wrote and produced. ken stand one's on thomas jefferson, jack johnson, ali, others. this one's of a shaggy big animal. but like the others, quintessentially american, i should say at the start, i am aware that the scientific name is bison. bison, and we use it we use bison and buffalo interchangeably in our film and in the book because they are actually if you're going to have a dispute with me on this fight it out on telfair. they don't allow duels there

anymore, but they both correct the buffalo describes a specific animal that also has a scientific latin of bison. bison. they weigh a ton or can weigh up to a ton to six feet at the shoulder. huge, the largest land mammal on the continent, but incredibly agile and fast they can get range of speed of 35 miles per hour, almost that of a racehorse. but they can hold it for a longer period of time than a horse. they can jump six feet vertically. they can jump seven feet horizontal. willie, steve steve rinella, who is in our film and i quote in the book, says, they're like a souped up hot in a minivan shell. but they're also the keystone species of the great plains. they're grazing habits of moving

constantly nibbling and moving nibbling and moving. and with their feet churning up things a little helped make great plains what it was they the fur on their feet can pick up seeds of, certain plants and they transport it and it gets dropped someplace else and it helps the propagation of that their poop fertilizes the the soil and. they have a habit of wanting to scratch their on anything that's handy. and there are trees or other things handy on the great plains. so they do this thing called wallowing. they roll around on their sides and back and they create this big circular depression which, then becomes a basin. when it does rain of more moisture, which encourages birds, which then encourages other types of plant life. so that's why they're called the keystone species. and so we deal with that in the

film in the book, but basically it's also for us, it's a human story because if you follow the tale of the american buffalo. you find yourself intersecting with many of stories, an important moment in our history. so there are a keystone of respect and that way of themes and issues from our nations complicate good past, our failings well as our triumphs. it's a human story about. the collision of two opposing views about, the proper human to natural world that occurred on this continent, when the first europeans arrived and, met the people who had already been here for tens of thousands of years. and it's also a human story about our nations relations ship with those people who have inhabited this land the longest.

at the center of that is. well, a profound tragedy. how a magnificent species that once numbered in uncountable numbers, perhaps 50 to 60 million, was systematically relentlessly taken to the brink of extinction from uncountable to actually easily countable by the end of the 1800s, there were. perhaps 500 left scattered, different places. and each of them endangered in their own right. and about the terrible consequences that followed that, it's actually a triple it's obviously a tragedy for the buffalo it was tragedy for the

great plains ecosystem and. it was a most profoundly a tragedy for the native people who had coexisted with them for so long and relied on them so long. it's a tough, tough and heartbreaking story, but it's a story that needs be told and told must be remembered. fortunately, my kids call me the waterworks. so. sorry, will. fortunately but equally important, the story doesn't end there because it introduces this motley crew. the collection of of americans who in very different places and for very different reasons, set out to point things in a different direction in new

direction, and work to bring the species back from brink. so in my mind, it's always been this is a parable or a morality tale with two parts paused before i tell you what those are. i think it shows us dramatically, powerfully as a story. i know our capacity, our nation's capacity to heedlessly destroy the natural. it's not the only, believe me, but i think it's sort of exhibit a in that long list from going from those numbers to near extinction in the space of 100 years. it raised me so it's it's it's there that's that's that's one part of that moral detail. are we capable of being heedlessly destructive of the earth itself? you bet are and we have lots of

different examples of of that tendency. but it also shows, i think, that we're capable of changing directions before it's too late. some of that is in our national parks film and book that at least some places as the nation moved west and steadily turned into trying to, do it could to the natural environment. there are places that they said. no, not here and those became our national parks and. that's why we call it america's best idea. so it's those two parts of the parable in starting on this week, particularly on this project of ken and i learned very on that this this was a much deeper story than we've

been able to tell previously about the buffalo as long as we allowed native people a bigger presence and voice in the story we were telling and for that we were guided the late scott mohammadi and many other native people. we consulted interviewed, had them look at early versions of our script and our film and listen to their their comment. and we learn from them to finally get to set how deep and how intertwined story of the american buffalo is with the story of indigenous people. those stories are inseparable literally inseparable. a woman named germaine white

from northwest montana pointed out that people have been there for 12,000 years, 12,000 years, and she said, if you take that 12,000 years and you wrap it around 24 hour clock, but means is that christopher columbus shows up. at 11:28 p.m. and louis and clark show up at 1145 p all that other time is just them and the continent and, its natural world and its animal life and plant life. so for ten more than 10,000 years, we to make sure we we told that story but also that you can feel it in. the luckily the people that we interviewed think get that across the with the buffalo relied on them for everything.

used every part of the buffalo so obviously important for their food important for their clothing their hides could be used to teepees. there if you left the fur on, they could keep you warm in the winter, then every other single part. it's a long, long list. ribs could be made into sleds for little kids. dried tongues could be used for hairbrushes the tail be used to swat flies or to dip into water. if you're in a sweat lodge to, make the steam rise. my friend gerard baker, a man and a dancer, said even the waste wasn't wasted out on the great plains. there's nothing better where there aren't many trees, buffalo chips, the dried makes for good

fires. so we get to understand how they relied on them, their physical existence. but in turn revered them or many tribes. the bison and the people you know were equal. they could talk. in the old days to one another. one could change form to another to help the other understand. in some instances they had, you know, contests to see which species would eat the other. and with the help of a magpie, the humans won on a race around the black hills and the buffalo said, okay, you've won. you can eat us and we will you the sun dance. and part of that was the other part of this is this spiritual relationship that involved and

the buffalo were the represents of the sun. they ate the grass that grew from the sun and the sun was the represent you know was connected to walk on tonka in the lakota mythology or cosmology gee, the great unknown, the great you know, the great connectedness of things. they were the most visible and important but not the only representation of that important connection. they gave themselves to the people as part of this understanding, that if they were respect, not, you know, not wasted. and certain ceremonies were done to renew that relationship, then they would show up again and and give themselves for the food and all the other things that they wanted. they had special ceremonies were songs that they native people

would sing that would call the buffalo wild. and sometimes they did something wrong. and in those those periods, the buffalo would be hard to find. it was believed that they probably went back to where they came from in the first place, where they had emerged to earth like human beings in certain set. what places for the lakota cheyenne? it was when the cave in the black hills for the comanches and the kiowa and some others. it was from the inside of what is now known as mount scott in the wichita mountains of oklahoma. but these ceremonies were important and if they didn't show up, then it took extra to show them the buffalo that we've learned our lesson. we violated something of this covenant. and we're going to set it right now. and then they would come back. and so we had to spend time telling about that and trying to

help us feel that then strangers arrived from europe and, they brought with them a very different of the relationship of human with the natural world, one that and its bounties, one that the humans are. two are in charge are two different level and the natural world there as a resource to be used and in later times history then also than used to as commodities for the market and that was the start of a new viewed the but these newcomers all were fascinated by this huge animal spanish were in the saw in the southwest spanish explorers french explorers saw them in the midwest and the colonies saw them here in the in

atlantic colonies, which was one of the more surprising things for me in the research. i never really thought about it in 16, 13 jamestown colonies sailing up the potomac came to what is now washington, d.c., and got off his boat and encountered a herd of buffalo. and i want to read a little just a brief portion from the book, because being here in my alternate hometown of savannah, savannah plays a part in it through the though the greatest of bison were found on the grasslands of the great plains their range extended northern mexico into canada from west of the rocky mountains into parts of what are now idaho? oregon and washington and all the way to the atlantic seaboard from florida to lake erie. the cheyenne had had lived with

them so long each tribe obviously had their own name for in their own language, for the buffalo or bison. the cheyenne had been with them so many for long. they had 27 individual names for buffalo depending on its age size sex, physical condition and, everything but the newcomers then gave the strange animals names. some spanish explorers called bacchus horror bodies for humpback cow. the french referred to them as the savage lay bison and sometimes buffalo. to some, the animals looked like the curly haired and humpback version of the cape buffalo at tip of africa. english adopted the name buffalo and it stuck regardless of their name numbers. the buffalo east of the mississippi, perhaps 3 million or more steadily dwindled almost from the moment british colonies

established along the atlantic. georgia is a case in point in 1733, shortly after landing at what is now savannah, the colonies founder james ogle. held his first treaty meeting with chief toma of the accra, who gave him a buffalo skin decorate it with the painting of an eagle two years later a different chief presented oglethorpe with another buffalo hide on which the creek migration legend had been depicted and oglethorpe sent that to london to be exact exhibited at westminster in 1759. georgia's commons house of assembly found it necessary to make hunting buffalo illegal in some parts of the colony. no one apparently enforce the law and by 1763 the native tribes were complaining that the bison and other game were being driven off their land by

settlers and their livestock. multiple places named buffalo creek. buffalo dotted maps of georgia and the treaty of augusta. in 1773, designated great buffalo lick as a key boundary point between the colony and native nations. yet by the time william bartram returned from his extensive tour of the south in the mid 1770s, he reported he hadn't seen any living buffalo despite having been told how plentiful they once were daniel boone he crossed over the cumberland gap from virginia into what's now kentucky was actually what was called and the now nice whiskey is named for it a buffalo trace of the animals had been crossing that and that became the well-worn path that native people did george washington hunted them on the ohio river in

1775. he asked for some to be captured and brought to his virginia plantation. but by the early 1800s, nearly all the bison east of the mississippi were gone. but in the great plains, an estimated 30 million buffalo still roamed. i don't know how many of you seen the film? we we made. i hope if you haven't that you that do. i'm not going to give you the whole story. we the 1800s in the shorthand is when the united states moved west buffalo became a commodity very precious for use to be able to be used to the machinery make the belts that the machinery on the east coast an insatiable demand was created for them. thousands of buffalo hunters out and started killing

indiscriminate taking only their hides and the carcasses to rot on the prairies. it was as one of environmental historian that we know dan flora said that there is no story anywhere in world history that involves as large a destruction of wild animals as happened in north america in the western united states in particular. between 1818 90. it is the largest destruction of animal life discoverable in modern world history. he said it was a catastrophe obviously for the tribes who have this 10,000 year connection been severed. but then there was this you know quirky things change there enough left in enough few that people from people some former buffalo hunters guy named

buffalo bill cody you know needed live ones too for his extravaganza so he had a little had a little herd an old indian fighter and cattleman named george goodnight. his wife persuaded him to save a few calves. they started to herd and he changed his mind about buffalo and actually changed his mind native people and provided some of his buffalo for them for their sacred ceremony journeys. he was part of the salvation. the dupri a couple of indian families on two different reservations were important. and i did i do want to mention one of who we've all heard of as an impulsive young man who rushed west from new york city in the 1880s after he read these alarming reports. the buffalo about to disappear. so he got on a train and her

distress occurred to get the dakota territory got off his mission. he wanted to make sure he could kill one and have a head mounted on his wall before they're all gone. his was theodore roosevelt and he wrote a book about his adventures in which he said that while the extermination of the buffalo was, quote, needless and brutal, it was also, in his words, a necessary it was necessary in relation to helping solve the, quote, indian question. and he said it was a quote for the advance what he called white civilization. he became a friend of another conservationist by the name of george bird grinnell. his view of the natural world. and this broadened. and he became the greatest of conservation. president in our history, including writing the making it

possible for there to be buffalo preserves in. montana, but also in wait for it the right now outside of the holy of mount scott, the comanches and kiowa where they believed. the buffalo had gone when they disappeared and were for human beings to wise the hell up admit they'd made a mistake and promise to do better. and the first federal preserve for bison was their around that mountain when 55 buffalo were taken put on a train at fordham station from, the bronx to.

and trained back to home to the plains. scott mama day talks about that return and he gets teared and but he says it makes the story whole. i want to one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite writers was from wallace stegner, a great historian and a great novelist. and if you're looking for more recommendations of things to read, read anything that he wrote, he we are the most dangerous species piece of life on the planet and every other species, even the earth itself, has cause to fear our power to exterminate. we are the most dangerous species life on the planet. that's a true story that's a true fact and hard fact.

but it is a true fact. but he added, we are also the only species which, when it chooses to do so, will go to great effort to save what it might destroy. i talked wallace stegner wrote that in the 1960s, but he might as well just given us the template for the story we were telling about our to destroy at sometimes our habit to destroy. but if we choose, if we choose to, we will go to great effort to save what it might destroy. so the title the subtitle of my book is the tragic decline improbable resurrection of the american buffalo. and it is of those things. it's tragic. and their rescue was improbable. it's a totally despairing story,

but for much of it, it also offers hope and even some inspiration that we choose to save what we might destroy. we're still capable of that, which is a message for today about a lot of other things going on. it's not just the buffalo that we need to choose to do right to save things. thank you. so we had time for a couple of questions. i think there's a microphone set up here. so if anyone has a question, please come up to the mic. we have no yes, we have questions these come up either come up the phone or just it out and i'll repeat it.

good. okay. so given your exhaustive, expansive knowledge them, if you had all power and know beyond anything, we probably have in law what steps or actions would you take to try and further restore the buffalo and many other megafauna in the united states? what would your solution or proposal look like and what would that produce as result? well, unlike some people talking to microphones, not looking to be dictator. but we are we this is a democ and but there are exciting things happening right now. there. a lot of different tribes working with the federal government are now have programs of they're trying to restore by some to their large you know to

to larger land areas that allows them to have herds of their own allows them to have some food sovereignty for some of the from some of the buffalo meat allows them to restore their spiritual connect to them. it's tremendously exciting. there's about 350,000 buffalo now. most of them are in ranches, but of the and you know it raised more or less like cattle but there's things going on on reservations, some nonprofit groups are trying to give more space to do to bring back native grasses, to try to make least some portions of the great plains. what they once were. and i think that's very exciting, very hopeful. but also, obviously, it's not certain. you know, there there's opposing actions to it. if you want to know. however, what the trajectory

what i consider the most hopeful factoid of it is in 150 years ago, the secretary interior during a debate over they'd pass a law to protect the buffalo. they were all exterminated said that he would not so i would not be disappointed at the total elimination at the total disappearance he called of the buffalo because would help make native tribes, particularly on the plains, more dependent on the federal government and more less like a more willing to stay on the reservations that they're being can confine to and the bill passed actually giving protection but president grant listing i think to his secretary of the interior paco vetoed pocket veto that he just refused to sign it. congress adjourned until never became law. that was hundred and 50 years ago. 150. so now the buffalo is on the

official of the interior department, the buffalo president obama signed the bill that it the official mammal of the united states and the secretary of interior is a native american herself, deb haaland, who is instituting a lot of a lot different programs to try to get more buffalo in more places in a larger area. so i you know like i say that's hopeful and it's all it's also if we choose to continue i think that's you know headed in the right that that all right of declining i declined the wreath of the of the monarch thank you the retired several years ago i was were reintroduced into i it was yellowstone and what was was that ecology that was dying was brought back to life.

what do you anticipate would happen if buffalo bison was to allow to go back to normal with the ecology of those lands change? yeah. the you know of course the longest you know, in yellowstone is the the one place in the united states that has the longest history of, a free roaming herd there, particularly once they stop the poaching that almost brought them down to two dozen. so the wolves are added to that, you know, added to that making ecosystem more like it. that once was in places where there are few places in montana that i know of. and in it's either kansas or oklahoma right on the border. there were non profit groups have large areas. they are similar tenuously. you know restoring buffalo, their bison there but also

native plants are also in montana the kit fox is coming back they had a i think they had a bear there, a grizzly there, which grizzly on the plains is a big thing. so those things, you know obviously they took millennia for it to become what it became it didn't take that long to undo it it'll take some time and a lot of effort but the the way that they graze and everything on the places doing it they see remarkable rejuvenation of the prairie system. and just picking up on your final comments, what parallels do you see between the story of the buffalo and debates we're having today or energy policy? you know, was a need we learn

from that history? well, you know, in the i guess i'm trying to think about in terms of the debate there really wasn't that of a debate. you know, while this was going on, the slaughter, the united states government didn't necessarily did the government and the army did didn't destroy the buffalo because it was already happening. i mean they were happy, they were they approved of it, but they didn't order it themselves. so it was a private enterprise. i guess it would be what you're suggesting is the it was the driving market and demand for those belts sometimes buffalo tongues and things like that is what set it loose. only stopped shooting them because there any they couldn't

find anymore. i think it was more and i think the other thing that was about it is that for most of the people the public, there was something way out there on the great plains. i mean, it's even today people don't you know to flyover country and the great bulk of population doesn't really consider what's going on much out there that was particularly true then in the mid 1800s and and so a sort of facto well maybe that's a shame but you know it doesn't affect me right and so it was hard get them galvanized until it was almost too late and i think in terms of us and global warming, which i think is probably what you're meant mainly it yeah you know

people say well it's tired you know standard worrisome maybe or or or whatever but it doesn't really affect me, you know, until the forests are burning and water is coming up, you know, flooding miami, you know we have hurricanes, you know that are worse and the droughts that are worse, stuff like that. we're at point that were when the buffalo when they holy smokes these things are almost aren't they at with with proper and others set about trying to trying to correct it. i, i think we ought to be at the point now where we say is it too late. i mean, holy smokes, you know,

this is something's going on here. and i guess the question is the political will to create it. and i can you know, i can go back and forth part norwegian. so i've always i always anticipate the worst that way i'm never disappointed disappointed. and but part of me also is scotch-irish. and so i, i want to fight to make it better. but we'll see. but we're right at that point. we're you know, the buffalo reached a tipping point and they're brought back from and i think we're at a tipping point and we'll see. we'll see that. thankamy kurzweil is us today

courtesy of rachel young fields