Former Rushmore Superintendent Baker (also known as Yellow Wolf) is part of Ken Burns’ ‘American Buffalo’
Editor’s note: Former Mount Rushmore Superintendent Gerard Baker was interviewed for Ken Burns’ “The American Buffalo.” Baker said this is the final film he will participate in with Burns. Photo courtesy of Gerard Baker
Native Americans have a deep and abiding connection with the subject of the PBS program “The American Buffalo.” Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns made sure their voices were heard in his new project.
Gerard Baker, the former superintendent of Mount Rushmore as well as the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail and the Chickasaw National Recreation Area, is one of the experts, historians and authors from the Kiowa, Comanche, and Cheyenne of the Southern Plains; the Lakota, Salish, Kootenai, Mandan-Hidatsa and Blackfeet from the Northern Plains and other tribes who provided their insights.
Other Native voices include George Horse Capture, Jr. (Aaniiih), Rosalyn LaPier (Blackfeet of Montana and Métis), N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa), Marcia Pablo (Pend d’Oreille and Kootenai), Ron Parker (Comanche), Dustin Tahmahkera (Comanche) and Germaine White (Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes).
Julianna Brannum, a member of the Quahada band of the Comanche Nation of Oklahoma, served as consulting producer. W. Richard West, Jr., a Cheyenne and founding director and director emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, was the senior advisor.
Baker draws a clear connection in how white settlers, hunters and the armies reduced the buffalo population from the millions to the dozens in less than a century while also seizing control of land long roamed by Native Americans.
“We always say, ‘We’re just like the buffalo, they almost exterminated us, too,’” he said in part two of “The American Buffalo.” “When the zoos first started, what’d they do? They put buffalo in zoos. And the old people say, ‘What’d they do to us? They put us on reservations, and we couldn’t get out of those reservations without a permit. The zoos kept the buffalo and the white people kept us on reservations. Same thing.”
Baker said old Native men would visit zoos to see buffalo and they were so overtaken with emotion, they would pray and cry. The huge animals, sensing a centuries-old connection, walked over to the fence to be close to them.
“There are numerous stories like that, where the buffalo stands in front of him and looks at him as he’s praying and crying,” he said. “And then he has to go and the animal stay in that zoo.”
In “The American Buffalo,” and in an interview with The Black Hills Pioneer, Burns noted that it’s symbolic and noteworthy that the buffalo and the profile of an American Indian man were placed on the buffalo head nickel in 1913. It equated the people with an animal, both of which whites were in the process of destroying.
“It’s like we’re beginning to romanticize and fetishize these two things that we have spent the last century trying to kill,” he said.
But it also hinted at the dawning of conservation efforts and an understanding of the need to correct grave mistakes made in the last century.
Baker also was interviewed for Burns’ 1996 film “The West,” his 1997 film, “Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery,” and the 2009 documentary series, “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.”
He has a connection with buffalo through his work with the National Park Service. It has a power to bring all people together, as he saw once in the 1990s.
“And I knew that I had accomplished something when I stood in my window, we had a buffalo feed, and here were people sitting on the ground around the Little Bighorn — battlefield over here, national cemetery over there — side-by-side; white, red, white, red, Indians, whites — all sitting side-by-side, laughing and eating their buffalo,” he told Burns in an interview about the National Park Service.
Baker said he and Burns have been friends for several years. They met through Dayton Duncan, who wrote the script for “The American Buffalo” and conducted many of the interviews.
Burns said he cherishes his friendship with Baker, and said the three men call each other brothers.
“He’s an amazing human being,” he said.
Duncan said without Baker’s insights, the buffalo film would not have been made. He said when they met, Baker explained the deep connections between Native Americans and the buffalo, and their central role in many Native cultures.
“That’s when it began,” Duncan said. “Any understanding of the history of the buffalo is intimately intertwined with the Native people. And any history of the Native people of the United States needs to take the buffalo and what happened to them into account.”
Duncan, an Indianola, Iowa, native, is the author of 14 books, including “Out West: A Journey Through Lewis & Clark’s America,” and “Miles From Nowhere: In Search of the American Frontier,” as well as a companion book for this series.
Baker has a great deal of confidence in Burns and Duncan. He has been interviewed many times in his career, and said it’s important now more than ever to know who you are talking with and if they have a hidden agenda.
“I’m very positive on what he does,” he said of Burns. “He does a very extreme thorough job.”
There are many people involved in producing these films, Baker said, but Burns is “the mastermind of it all.”
The interview for the documentary was done over two days in New York City. Both Burns and Duncan were present. Baker said the process went smoothly, with the process a typical “talking head” interview with a camera and lights.
“I’ve done a lot of interviews,” he said. “Speak the truth is I guess the bottom line. Don’t exaggerate and don’t BS. That’ll get you in the end.”
Baker said he doubts he will be part of any more of Burns’ films.
“This was my last one as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “I’m completely retired now.”
Baker is a North Dakota native and a registered member of Three Affiliated Tribes. His Hidasta name is Zaa-sha-shee-dish (Yellow Wolf).
His brother Paige Baker also rose to prominence in the National Park Service, serving as the superintendent at Badlands National Park and Casa Grande Ruins in Arizona.
Gerard Baker was the subject of some criticism for his efforts to include Native American stories and history at both the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument and Mount Rushmore.
“I got a lot of heck when I was there. So that was just normal. That just meant I was doing something, that’s all, got people excited,” Baker said of his time at Mount Rushmore. “We did make it more inclusive and that was really good to have, even though there were still a lot of hard feelings over what happened there to the tribes.”
In his interview with Burns for the film on the National Park Service, he explained what went through his mind when he was offered the job as Mount Rushmore’s superintendent.
“It was very challenging to accept the job here, because growing up I understood what Mount Rushmore meant,” he said. “And for us, for Indian people, it doesn’t mean ‘Success of America.’ It means the desecration of the sacred Black Hills; it means the losing of the Black Hills to the United States government, to white people that came in and shoved everybody out of here and put us on a reservation. So it meant a lot of negative things.”
During a June 26, 2008, interview with this reporter, he offered an interesting take on his favorite view of the massive Black Hills carving, which he admired for the artistic achievement on such a grand scale.
“These guys are amazing,” Baker said, gesturing at the four massive sculptures above him. “But what’s more interesting to me is the Hills. What I want to talk about was the man’s story, the human story.”
He said when he viewed Mount Rushmore, he was drawn to a particular vista.
“The back,” Baker said. “That’s the way it was.”
On Oct. 5, he said that remains his view.
“Oh, you betcha,” Baker said. “I like the Hills the way the Hills should be.”
He is proud of his time at Mount Rushmore, and said his goal was to educate visitors about the national memorial, as well as the people who have lived in the region for centuries.
“I’m proud of every place I went to, very proud, very proud of what we did there,” Baker said. “It wasn’t a singular operation at Rushmore, it never is. It’s a unified team that does it. I had a very, very good team.”
In 2008, he said he viewed Mount Rushmore as a great place to bring people together and form bonds between them.
“What a place to heal,” he said. “What better place to heal? We can bring people together.”
He has done some healing himself in recent years. Baker suffered a stroke in November 2009 near the end of his tenure at Mount Rushmore, but he said he has regained his health.
He left the Black Hills in April 2010 and moved to Washington, D.C., to accept the position as the National Park System’s assistant director for American Indian relations.
But in July 2010, he retired from the NPS and started the next chapter of his life and career. Baker, who turns 70 in December, and his wife, Mary Kay, who have four children, live on a small ranch about 30 miles southwest of Miles City, Mont.
“I’m running a handful of cows and having a good time,” he said.
Baker has not returned to Mount Rushmore to see the changes he made, including the Lakota, Nakota, and Dakota Heritage Village. He departed more than 13 years ago and has no plans to retrace his steps.
“I don’t typically go back to places I worked,” he said. “Once I did my thing, I did my thing.”
Baker saw an early version of the program but not the final one.
“It looks really good,” he said. “I’m anxious to see it put all together.”
Tom Lawrence has written for several newspapers and websites in South Dakota and other states and contributed to The New York Times, NPR, The Telegraph, The Daily Beast and other media outlets.
