Weber State professor lends expertise to PBS documentary

Sara Dant, Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor, H. Aldous Dixon Award winner and recent history department chair, offers her expertise in a new film by Academy Award and Emmy Award-winning documentarian Ken Burns.

Dant, who specializes in the American West and environment, served as a historical advisor and interviewee for The American Buffalo, a two-part PBS documentary that focuses on the iconic national mammal and its history with peoples in America.

“History is ultimately a great story,” Dant said, “and Ken Burns is a master storyteller. This film is an astonishing biography of an animal that provides a unique window into the past 10,000 years of our continent’s history — the good, bad and ugly — to reveal how the bison story was simultaneously unique and tragically typical.”

Dant is the author of Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West, which traces the interaction of people and nature across time, a theme woven throughout the Burns documentary. A screenwriter for several of Burns’ projects, Dayton Duncan, was familiar with Dant’s work and called upon her expertise for the film.

“It’s hard not to be flattered and honored when someone of this caliber reaches out for your perspective,” Dant said. “When you get the opportunity to help make history relevant and accessible to the general public, you jump at the chance, and that’s what Ken Burns does very well.”

Dant and three other historical advisors met several times with writers, producers and sometimes Burns himself to review drafts of the script and film, offering their insights. She also appears in both episodes to offer commentary. She said the final product is “beautiful and powerful.”

“Watching it, it’s nice to see how they stitched together all these diverse pieces into something coherent and compelling,” Dant said. “I’m particularly impressed with how Indigenous voices and experiences were seamlessly integrated into the narrative.”

Dant said the film’s ultimate message is one of hope, focusing on a species that humans nearly drove to extinction but saved in the nick of time. Dant said that “save,” the subsequent Endangered Species Act, and current efforts at buffalo rewilding have helped establish the United States as a global leader in environmental stewardship.

“That’s the whole point of history: understanding the consequences of the choices we’ve made in the past so that we can make better and more informed choices moving forward,” she said.

Now that the film is wrapped, Dant said she looks forward to engaging in more public-facing writing and podcasts on topics including environmental politics, sustainability and the importance of public lands. Spring 2024 was her final semester at Weber State, where she served 23 years before retiring.