- What's your favorite part of the set building process?

- You know, I love the smell of sawdust.

- Sawdust is happiness.

It means progress and building anew.

- Americans may seem divided, but we're united in the pursuit of at least one thing, happiness.

My name is Amanda Brinkman.

I've spent years traveling across the country, uncovering some of the mystery and meaning behind this elusive thing we all want.

- Hey, guys.

- Join me as I meet Americans on their own incredible pursuits, discovering happiness in some seriously unexpected places.

(cheering) - Behold these truths to be self-evident.

- That all men are created equal.

- That everyone is created equal.

- That they're endowed by their creator.

- With certain unalienable rights.

- Certain alien bites.

- Certain unalienable rights.

[producer laughs] - Que todo esto son - That among these are-- - Life.

- Liberty.

- And the pursuit of happiness.

Here it is.

[laughs] [fireworks] [David] I just love turning off all the noise, the motors, and just listening to the bison.

[Amanda] What did we listening for?

[Bison Snort] Oh, that.

That right there.

[Amanda] Native farmer David Wise is on a mission to reintroduce buffalos to the land they grazed 200 years ago.

At their peak, a staggering 50 to 60 million American bison roamed across the continent before Western migration and mass slaughter drove the species to near extinction.

Today, David's growing herd not only feeds the community, but it also honors his ancestors' wishes by bringing fresh life back to the ecosystem.

[Amanda] Hi!

[David] Hi, welcome to the farm.

- Thank you for having me.

This is beautiful.

It's been in our family for many generations.

My relatives actually lived here even before the state of Minnesota was formed.

You know, they gathered the wild rice, they hunted the ducks and the deer and the moose.

is kind of like the perfect spot for them to be able to live off the land.

And that's kind of what we're doing today still, you know but we're doing a little bit differently.

I'll show you around a little bit.

- I love it.

(chickens clucking) - Today we're gonna smoke some bison, like strip jerky.

And I like the thick pieces.

So they're more like steak bite size.

- This is gonna be good.

How can I be helpful?

Do you need more wood?

- Yeah, some smaller pieces would be great.

One thing that the Ojibwe people always say is that the fire is sacred to us.

And so whenever we burn things, we don't wanna burn any garbage or anything like that.

Just because we wanna show respect to those spirits that are in that fire.

We can just start laying them on, kinda like a puzzle or something.

- I love puzzles.

- Oh my God, you're natural.

Well, it's a pretty nice batch there.

- Yeah.

(soft music) - So I'll probably put the jerky in for like four hours.

I don't like to oversmoke 'cause the buffalo is such a good flavor in itself that we're not trying to hide anything.

You wanna go see the buffaloes?

- Yes, please.

- All right, let's do it.

- All right.

(soft music) This is so exciting.

To the buffalo.

- So the buffalo are kind of trained, They love to follow the tractor, so they should come up pretty close.

- So you weren't always a buffalo farmer.

Can you walk us through kind of what led you to this?

- Well, I guess it was the dream I had, you know?

I started having kind of like dreams, I guess, about Chief Buffalo.

He was a signatory of the 1854 treaty, which is why there's a reservation at Fond du Lac.

I knew he was my relative from my family tree.

Eventually he came to me in a dream where it was a pretty clear message.

He said, "Bring back the buffalo.

"It'll be good for the people.

"It'll be healing."

I mean, I thought maybe I was a little crazy when I first started thinking these thoughts, but anything's possible.

[ Amanda shouts ] [ Laughs ] This is wild!

-That one over there is Boss, babe.

And there's Brownie, the little Brownie.

-Oh!

-Hi!

-Here!

-Literally bumped heads for a while.

-There's a connectiveness you can feel in the herd.

It's really beautiful.

-Yeah.

We think of them as, like, a family member, you know, coming back.

They're part of the ecosystem.

a part of being here.

- My grandma always said, "Good food is good medicine."

And the native word for that, she would say, "Mino Mashkiki."

And when those animals eat their native vegetation, they're not on a food lot, and they're eating all those different medicine plants, that gives that back to us.

You know, they're like part of us, and we're part of them.

- I got feed in my boot.

(laughing) - A lot of these fields, Amanda, we're turning back into brush.

Just a few years ago we introduced the bison back in.

You can see how the birches are all trimmed off underneath from the bison.

That's part of their management.

You know, they're clearing it open and making it back into a fertile grassland again.

They actually kind of like mimic a fire in a way.

So they bring back a lot of the native vegetation and keep it from brushing in.

(gentle music) One of my favorite things was once the community knew that this was gonna happen, they all came here and they were like wanting to be part of it.

So we did a pipe ceremony and we did a drum ceremony and welcomed the bison back.

And when they got off that trailer and I heard their hooves running, man, it was cool.

Yeah, sorry, I don't usually get too emotional, but sometimes it gets kind of heavy 'cause I wanna make sure I'm doing everything right.

I like their hairdos, they all have a little bit different hairdos, you know?

There's one that's like super, kind of almost aggressive, there he is right there.

He gets, I don't know if he's friendly or feisty, but here he comes.

(horns honking) (laughing) But he's got a nice set of horns, but I don't wanna know what they feel like.

Okay, here we go.

I'd really love to see this go on for many generations to come.

It's one of my passions is to teach about that and get the young generations excited so that they can utilize their lands and they can have a voice at the table for resource management and for a lot of different things.

Because I think the native perspective sometimes gets swept under the carpet.

[Amanda] Long before the US Constitution was written, tribes across North America established their own constitutions centered around collective well-being and focused on the health of future generations.

At The Treaty of Lancaster, Chief Canassatego demonstrated the potential power of a union between the colonists and the native nations.

First, he took a single arrow and easily broke it across his knee.

But when he tied many arrows together, they could not be broken.

The notion intrigued Benjamin Franklin.

He was so impressed that he printed over a thousand copies of Canassatego's speech to as far away as London [David] So I think it's time we should check Old Smoky.

- Let's check it, okay.

- Let's see what we got.

Oh my God, look at that.

- It looks so good.

- Let's try it.

- You won't have to ask me twice.

- I'm gonna select this piece right here.

Grandma's old recipe.

Never lets me down, man.

- This is so good.

I'm so glad I got to try this.

- When you got buffalo and you got a smoker, you're always gonna be able to survive, man.

- So when we think about the Declaration of Independence, you know, when the founding fathers wrote that it really wasn't inclusive of everyone and certainly not our indigenous populations, when you hear the pursuit of happiness, like what does that mean to you?

- Well, I think it means having freedom to do what you want, to be able to live a good, clean life and have access to those food sources.

I think that's the pursuit of happiness for me, to see those things still here in this century be flourishing and be, there's wild rice, there's blueberries, all those sacred plants are still out there and they're still available for us to eat.

(baby cooing) Like I think of my happiest days and maybe they're not like going to an amusement park, but maybe they're like just harvesting food for my family or wild rice.

[Oh, you want Shai to come over?]

[Here's Shai.]

Like what would have made my ancestors happy might be a little different, but not that much different than what makes me happy really.

And so to be able to be here and still have that connection, even though I never met Chief Buffalo, I feel like I know them.

[Producer] Do you have a favorite food that makes you happy?

- Ummm, sticky rice.

- Happiness is... popsicles.

- A food from my country called bandejas.

- Taco meat.

[Producer] Taco meat?

- Yeah.

(laughs) - I want to go back to my country, pick up some leaf or fruits from near the river, Maybe one day.

- For me, it's like eat dinner together and like talk to each other.

- Happiness is family.

Happiness is culture.

Happiness is staying true to who you are.

[chuckles] [Sarah] There's something about growing up in theater where you just feel like things are possible.

We can make the world be what we want it to be.

[Amanda] Sarah Bellamy is a president of Penumbra, a legendary institution and one of the nation's premier black theaters.

Founded by her father Lou, Penumbra launched the career of Pulitzer Prize winning playwright August Wilson and continues its tradition of African-Americans embracing the arts to critique unjust political systems and reflect the universality of the human experience.

Today, Sarah expands upon her father's legacy, emphasizing racial healing through the power of play.

♪♪ - They're building a set right now, if you want to come in and see.

-I would love to see that.

-We just are right here.

This is backstage, so this is the part that nobody gets to see.

- I know.

I've never been in this direction.

- Yep.

Yep.

- What's your favorite part of the set-building process?

- You know, I love the smell of sawdust.

Sawdust is happiness.

It means progress and building anew.

- It's amazing how quickly it happens.

Soon, this will feel like we're in somebody's living room.

- So this is the model of what they are starting to build here.

I want to go in here.

- You have to be very tiny.

- She even put the little wicker detail on the chairs.

- My favorite thing is, as a director, when you can just trust that everybody's going to show up and bring their expertise and their best.

and you're just like, we got this.

You know, there's this idea that like, we can be a self-made human and all that.

And I, no, we all come into the world with people and we find people and then we make things together.

[smooth jazz music] At Penumbra, because of the nature of the work that we do, we often have to reveal the world as it is.

This is a lens through which you can understand America differently, but I hope that within that endeavor we always point to the world as it could be too.

[Amanda] The colonists also embraced theater and the arts as a powerful means to imagine our new republic.

Washington read plays about the fall of Rome to soldiers at Valley Forge and John Adams understood that the theatrics on display during the Boston Tea Party boosted its impact.

Adams also credited playwright Mercy Otis Warren as having served the cause of liberty with her pen more than any other writer in America.

And Phyllis Wheatley, a young enslaved African woman, published a collection of poetry so stunning that she received a personal invitation from George Washington himself to come and visit.

[background chatter] [Sarah] We're actually starting rehearsal today.

My father, Lou Bellamy, is here to direct a show for us.

[Lou] I'm thrilled to be doing it, and especially this one.

- Hi everyone, welcome to Joe Turner's 'Come and Gone' My name is Asha Williams, I'll be your stage manager.

[Lou] This, I think, is one of August's best plays, if not the best.

So if it don't work, it ain't August's fault.

(audience laughing) - Why are you looking at me?

- What has your father taught you about happiness?

- Oh, so much.

He's a prankster and a jokester.

He finds delight in discovery, which is probably why you like this detective play.

And you have such a long history with this work.

You know, you have been in this show, you've directed this show, you've produced this show.

I was in this show.

We've got actors who have come back who played multiple roles.

This work has allowed people to grow up in it.

- I started off as Maddie, then I went to Martha.

And I don't know why, as young as I am... [laughing] [laughter] That's a really intentional process, I think, that August Wilson created with these multigenerational casts so that you could build a company, you know?

- You sure could.

[Sarah] I'm so happy to have y'all back, and I was Zonia.

Ages ago, and I had to do the little kiss, and it was terrible awful.

- We had to kick him out of the room so I could do it.

[Lou] 50 years of doing theater is tough.

- Mm-hmm.

[laughs] - But we've had a lot of joy.

- Yeah, yeah, we have.

[upbeat music] - This is one of the dressing rooms we have here.

- Look at all the history on these walls.

- Some of these people have passed on, but it feels like they're present in this work.

And the fact that the art is still alive and that I get to like help take care of it feels really special.

- How do you balance that between honoring the legacy, but also you need to feel and see yourself in that work?

- First I had to realize I'm not my dad.

I don't have the same skills.

I don't have the same deficits.

We're different people.

But because I grew up here, I've been able to listen to the elders and understand what feels like it's really, really important to keep and preserve.

And also understanding we have to innovate.

We want to be relevant to our community.

We want to reflect back the times that we're in and create meaningful art.

[laughter] We're also like a space where you can stretch and grow and play with other actors.

And that's really affirming and fun.

You know, we call it plays for reasons.

Like we take the art very seriously, but we want to have a good time.

And we want to build good, kind rooms and find joy in the creation and silliness in the creation.

[upbeat jazz music] [Amanda] When you think about what you've built here within this community, How does it make you think about happiness?

- You know, August Wilson's plays are a really great example because each one of those plays that chronicle the African American experience throughout the 20th century returned to the site of our becoming here in the United States, the creation of African American people, which was, you know, a forced enslavement.

But people found joy to survive and they found resilience and they found community and they kept creating it in spite of the pressure not to.

And these gathering spaces, whether they're in a field, under a tree, in a church basement, in a theater, we connect with each other and that is life-giving.

[upbeat music] - Being on the stage makes me happy.

[Producer] How does performing make you feel?

- Sometimes I'm like nervous, but sometimes I'm like excited at the same time.

- I really like being in a giant theater, feeling like I'm in the world.

- I always wanted to be the narrator, the stage manager in "Our Town."

It was a dream for like 30 years.

We had an audience of like five people, but we loved doing it, and it was just the most wonderful thing.

And I was the stage manager.

[Kalia] I'm Hmong American, And I belong to poor men and women.

Most of this country is built by the hands of poor men and women like my mom and my dad.

So many of the dreams that we aspire toward were first lived by new Americans like me.

[Amanda] Hmong American writer Kao Kalia Yeng's experience as a refugee inspired her award-winning memoirs, children's books, and even an opera.

Immigration has always been a part of America's story.

Benjamin Franklin once wrote that strangers from distant places bring new ideas, new arts, and are an acquisition to society.

Kalia's lyrical prose and gentle meditations transform trauma into triumph, grounding her narratives in love and gratitude.

[Amanda] Hi, hello!

[Kalia] Hi, Kalia.

Lovely to meet you.

-Thank you so much for having me to your home.

-We're going to play a word game with the kids.

It's a great way to meet each other.

So we each get to write a sentence and we create a story in the process, but you only get one sentence.

It could be super long or super short.

Go ahead.

- This is intimidating.

I'm going to have to write a story in front of an award-winning writer like your mom.

- Oh, Amanda, if only.

Next year, I'm going to be looking up at everybody, so nobody's intimidating anybody in this house.

I think to be a good storyteller, you have to be a good team player.

Because even when you're telling the story, you have to believe in the magic of an audience.

You have to believe in their commitment and their willingness to travel and adventure with you.

So I was born in the refugee camps of Thailand.

Because I couldn't go to school, I spent a lot of my time at the feet of my elders, and they would tell stories.

So writing, I think, was a surprise to me when I decided that I would become a professional writer, But it has always been a part of me.

Oh, you're making a long sentence Yuepheng.

Sometimes we have to time each other.

Okay, but we're being nice today.

- What with the cameras and all - You know, cuz we have a guest [Amanda laughs] So we're being nice Every time I go on the page, I'm playing I'm never not playing I think that's what allows me the energy and the passion to do the work again and again -The... - toilet -The toilet is dead now.

Okay?

- Oh no.

- What percentage of the stories end up being about poop?

- And all death.

- Like 50%?

That's a pretty good likelihood.

- I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for play.

Everybody always said first generation refugee girls, they don't graduate from high school very often.

Statistically, they don't make it to good colleges and then they don't graduate from colleges even if they do.

In many ways I am proving to myself that what the world says is impossible, ... That is my existence but that isn't just my own existence that's yours, Amanda, that's every single human being.

[background audio] Okay the odds were never in our favor.

We weren't supposed to have emerged from that Big Bang but here we are still loving each other, still playing with the next generation, still giving birth to their stories.

[soft guitar music] [Amanda] Early Americans knew education, happiness, and freedom were inextricably linked.

Benjamin Franklin was a son of a poor candle maker and only received two years of formal schooling, but credited his love of books to his future wealth and success.

Noah Webster's dictionary was widely used in classrooms and he understood that public schools would be essential to this nation-building project.

As John Adams wrote, "The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people."

- So this is my office.

- Oh, it smells so good in here.

- My jasmine.

It's blooming for you today.

I just finished a young adult memoir, so I had to look at young me as I'm writing this book.

- When you were younger, you were selective mute?

- Yep - Were you at this stage?

- Yep.

I didn't talk all the way until the publication of my first book.

But I went to school, I took care of the younger kids every day, and I waited for a future to begin.

- Why did you make the decision to stop speaking?

- We were newcomers in America.

Mom and dad were struggling to learn every bit of English that they could.

My dad was a machinist, and every time he'd have a question, he would try to ask the supervisor, and he'd say, "Bee, you're here to talk to the machines, "not to us."

And I decided that if we lived in a world that did not need to hear my mom and dad, and they didn't need to hear me.

[gentle piano music] - So you had a professor who encouraged you.

He almost talked about education as a responsibility as much as a privilege.

- I think that was a moment where I thought, my God, people could read my silence as selfish.

And of all the things that I wanted to be, of all the things that I was, selfish wasn't one of them.

I didn't understand education until my sister explained it to me.

So we're both young and we're here, we're new refugee kids.

Our mom and dad have dreams of us becoming educated people.

We're not quite sure what that means, but somewhere along the way she tells me, "Life is like a ladder.

I'm going to be the first step so that you can be the second."

And I think if I had to define education, that is what it is.

Your willingness to take the responsibility to be that necessary step so that the education of the world can rise.

[gentle piano music] (children playing) - So where are we?

- You are in the backyard of Mississippi Creative Arts, St.

Paul Public Schools.

This was my dream school when I was a kid.

We lived in the housing projects and I wanted to come here, but I couldn't because they didn't have ESL services and I needed them.

And now it's home to the Kao Kalia Yang Library and I get to visit whenever I want.

- What kind of role do you feel education plays in our overall pursuit of happiness.

- For my own story, it's been so much of everything.

Because I love school, I learned how to read, and because I learned how to read, I learned about worlds that did and did not include people like me, spaces and places where I needed to be, whether the world believed it or not.

(audience applauding) Tonight, we're doing a book launch event.

[Kalia on stage] Thank you so much for being here tonight.

And I'm so excited to see these young artists at work who go to my dream school.

- Your stories are sharing these types of incredible trials and challenges.

How do you balance between that and the joy and the hope, even in the face of great struggle?

- My life is so beautiful.

I was born to people, maybe without things, but people with endless amounts of love.

I had the meaningful stuff.

[young reader] There was once a blue house that I loved.

In the last room of the house at the back was a small kitchen.

- When I was in writing school, there were all these young people and they were talking about how they were gonna find the next great story or create it.

And in my heart, I knew I'd been born in one.

Would you like to show us your library?

You lead the way.

[Student] Why did you become a writer?

- You know, I think I'm a writer because so many books are not about places like Mississippi Creative Arts.

And I think our stories are important.

You have everything you need inside of you.

You have all the intelligence, all the ideas, all the creativity, all that love.

It's gonna build an amazing life if you keep on listening to yourself.

Can I get a hug?

- Yes.

Of course [Kalia Interview] We talk about the founding fathers, but we are still new Americans.

We all came from somewhere to call this place home.

and what we're dreaming about.

That is the dream of a nation's journey into being still.

[joyful music] - Happiness feels like when I had my children and watching them grow up.

I'm glad they have education and they learn their traditional ways and they learn their traditional language.

- I remember in my grandparents' house having just a wall of books.

-I like to go to school.

-Because we can read books!

- Oh, I think good stories are so important.

Well, they allow you to think about what it's like to be in somebody else's shoes.

- I really love seeing the author's imagination, seeing their world.

- I grew up reading this book and it was about this girl who was very shy and I'm shy too.

It made me feel like I could do a lot of things.

- I think happiness is first of all feeling comfortable with yourself.

- Happiness is cats - Making new friends.

- Happiness is something that keeps you calm.

- It's not something you go looking for.

It's something you find when you're doing something else.

- Happiness is you being yourself.

- I've learned that there is not just one way to pursue happiness.

There are so many ways to honor the intentions of the founding fathers, and we have a collective responsibility to show future generations how wide open the pursuit really is.

Because the story of happiness in America is still being written.

[upbeat music] [synth sound]