
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


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
For show notes and related links, visit our website.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
By Climate One from The Commonwealth Club4.7
561561 ratings
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
For show notes and related links, visit our website.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

38,520 Listeners

6,924 Listeners

9,231 Listeners

4,003 Listeners

10,712 Listeners

1,250 Listeners

400 Listeners

113,078 Listeners

463 Listeners

177 Listeners

16,487 Listeners

646 Listeners

281 Listeners

231 Listeners

140 Listeners