Piece Comment

Review of RN Documentary: Buffalo Nation


This is a half hour documentary about the effort to "re-introduce" buffalo back to South Dakota, particularly to the Native American reservations there. It's a good and well produced piece, with a lot of information and some memorable stories and anecdotes about the meaning of buffalo to the culture, and the health, of Native Americans in particular. I love the story near the beginning about the "pact" between the buffalo and the Sioux. I listened to the piece twice, and understood much more on the second listen. I think I missed some of the information on my first listen through, because of the way the piece was structured and cut. I found it hard to pay attention to the details, and on the second listen I realized that this piece needs more character development. I think I would have cared more, immediately, about the issues in this piece if I had been able to understand the issues more deeply, intimately through a couple of the people who give us the information. At points, the voices seem sort of "disembodied" and I wanted more context, more narrative, more of a "story" about these issues and less "pieces" of information about the topic. Again, a good piece, but I think it could be better, more engaging if developed through characters rather than structured around information.