A National Film Board of Canada and Door Number 3 Productions Inc. co-production

Moving between earth and stars, past and present, this rollicking hybrid documentary follows the extraordinary life of Wilfred Buck, who overcame a harrowing history by reclaiming ancestral star knowledge.

He’s from the “fresh-out-of-the-bush, partly civilized, colonized, displaced people,” and he’s here to take us to the stars. Lisa Jackson’s portrait of Cree Elder Wilfred Buck moves between earth and sky, past and present, bringing to life ancient teachings of Indigenous astronomy and cosmology to tell a story that spans generations. Adapted from Buck’s rollicking memoir I Have Lived Four Lives, the film weaves together stories from his life, including his harrowing young years of displacement and addiction. Seamlessly fusing present-day scenes with cinematic re-enactments and archival footage, this intimate yet expansive documentary takes us on an inspiring journey to the space beyond, and to the spaces between us all.

His name is He Has Dreamt a Dream and Keeps It, but most know him as Wilfred Buck, the Star Man. In his own words, he is “of the fresh-out-of-the-bush, partly civilized, colonized, displaced people.” A charismatic Cree Elder with a sly wit, Wilfred is known for collecting the knowledge of Cree astronomy and sharing it across generations. His teachings have taken him from lecture halls to sweat lodges, transcending the boundaries of Western science. Intimate yet expansive, Wilfred Buck is a time-travelling road trip through a harrowing history of displacement and racism, from growing up in 1960s Northern Manitoba to Wilfred’s reconnection with the cosmological wisdom of his people. Combining cinematic re-enactments, archival footage and beautiful celestial imagery with Buck’s unmistakable laugh, director Lisa Jackson takes us on a journey to the space beyond, and to the spaces between us all. (147 words)

Moving between earth and stars, past and present, this hybrid feature documentary follows the extraordinary life of Wilfred Buck, a charismatic and irreverent Cree Elder who overcame a harrowing yet familiar history of displacement, racism and addiction by reclaiming ancestral star knowledge and ceremony.

Buck is humble, profound, funny, always real and a master storyteller. Narration taken from his autobiography condenses the loss and pain of his youth into powerful, Beat-like poetry. After his community in Northern Manitoba is forcibly relocated to make way for a hydroelectric dam, Buck’s family loses everything. He descends into the darkness of the city streets, surviving any way he can, until he reconnects with Elders who start him on a path that transforms his world.  Driven by insatiable curiosity and instructed by dreams, Buck becomes a science educator and internationally respected star lore expert. His mission is sharing these life-changing teachings—as relevant and urgent today as ever—always guided by ceremony and anchored in the land.

Director Lisa Jackson deftly interweaves verité footage of Buck’s present with archival footage and cinematic, dramatized scenes from his past, painting a portrait of a beloved leader who now stands at the forefront of the resurgence of Indigenous ways of knowing.

Wilfred Buck is an Ininiw (Cree) astronomer, author, educator, addictions consultant, Knowledge Keeper and lecturer originally from Opaskwayak Cree Nation (OCN). He graduated from the University of Manitoba with two degrees in Education and has 25 years of experience as an educator, working with students from kindergarten to university. He also worked as a science facilitator for 15 years at the Manitoba First Nations Education Resource Centre, where he did extensive research on Ininiw Acakosuk (Cree stars/constellations).

Currently, Wilfred gives planetarium presentations using his mobile planetarium, in addition to lectures and keynote presentations on Indigenous astronomy and Indigenous worldviews. He is considered the foremost authority on Indigenous astronomy in the world.

Wilfred has written three books: Tipiskawi Kisik: Night Sky Star Stories (2018), the semi-autobiographical I Have Lived Four Lives (2021), on which Lisa Jackson’s documentary Wilfred Buck is based, and Kitcikisik (Great Sky): Tellings That Fill the Night Sky (2021).

I guess you could say it started with sturgeon.

It was the summer of 2017. I was reading an article when I saw the word “sturgeon” and experienced what I’ve come to call a zap. (These happen rarely, every few years, like a bolt of fascination and urgency. I’ve learned to listen to them, as my most successful projects have started this way.) I’d heard of this ancient fish before, but it had never had this effect on me. A seed was planted…

Later that year, when a friend asked me to attend a panel on Indigenous star knowledge at the University of Toronto, I went. When a man from the Canada Science and Technology Museum mentioned the name “Wilfred Buck,” again, zap. I raced up to the presenter during the break: “Someone has to make a film on Wilfred Buck!”

When Wilfred and I spoke on the phone some weeks later, he told me he’d just finished writing his life story and that no one knew he’d written it except his wife and daughter. He said he’d email it to me. Later that day, I read the first page of his memoir, I Have Lived Four Lives:

I am Pawami niki titi cikiw, “He has Dreamed a Dream and Keeps it,” shortened to “Dream Keeper.”

I am of the fresh-out-out-of-the-bush, partly civilized, colonized, displaced people. Trained and shamed by teachers, preachers, doctors, nurses, law enforcement, movie, radio and television to be a pill-popping, hard drinking, self-loathing, easily impressed, angry, non-conformist, maladjusted, disaffected youth of the “dirty-indian,” baby boomer generation.

By all rights, I am told, I should be dead six times over.

I was riveted. Seamlessly moving from past to present, heartbreaking to hilarious, it was searingly honest, playful and wise. Here was a beat poet, born on the land, torn from it and thrown into a society that said his people were backwards, knew nothing, and that his ancestors were in Hell. Like many others, he fell into a deep hole of addictions, street life and pain, hurting others as he had been hurt.

It was the story of colonialism, told from the inside. And not just the colonization of people and territory, but of the mind and spirit. Reading Wilfred’s words, I saw someone who’d been through the fire of what has broken countless Indigenous people, and survived. And who was now, with the help of his family and community, forging a path for others to heal and reconnect to the profound teachings of their ancestors through ceremony and star knowledge.

On the last page of Wilfred’s memoir is the story of Namew, the sturgeon. This Cree star constellation reminds us of the responsibilities of seven generations and beyond; that we are part of the continuity of knowledge through time, ensuring that the next generations have what they need to live a good life. The sturgeon is a long-lived fish that swam with the dinosaurs, a fish that has endured extinction events. It swims low in the rivers and lakes and carries lessons. Some say it can move between the worlds, above and below. Reading that, I knew I would be the filmmaker to make this film.

Colonization has taken a hatchet to the chain of knowledge our ancestors carried forward, but it didn’t sever it. And through the work of Wilfred and countless other Elders, knowledge keepers, teachers and oskapiwis (helpers), the knowledge is being transmitted again—no longer outlawed, ridiculed and diminished.

And while the film conveys Ininew (Cree) teachings, Indigenous teachings, there is much for anyone to learn about how to heal and how to come to new knowledge. What does it mean to open your mind, to not hive off “knowledge” as purely rational, separate from our lived experience, from the heart and spirit? Indigenous knowledge is based on millennia-long observations of the Earth and skies that provided guidance on how to navigate and live in balance. In a world drowning in data and information, we are starved for wisdom and perspective. The film asks us to ponder the question: What is missing when there is no ceremony?

When I set out to make this film, I thought I’d encounter a dialogue between Western and Indigenous perspectives on the stars and science. But what I found was that Western knowledge and Indigenous knowledge have only just introduced themselves. And though there is a growing recognition of TEK (or Traditional Ecological Knowledge), the mainstream categorization of rational thought and quantifiable data as completely separate from other ways of knowing is a barrier. There may be a willingness to listen, but there remains a gulf in language and worldviews. I hope this film can be an invitation for that dialogue to begin.

My background

My Anishinaabe mother passed away at age 53 when I was just 19 years old, after a difficult life marked by many of the traumas that Wilfred also experienced. She was torn from her community and family at age 5, taken to residential school, and never had a chance to reconnect with her community or culture. She was deeply humane and artistic, with a sharp wit and intelligence. My life in many ways is dedicated to expressing and accomplishing what she never could.

My father was born in 1917 of mixed settler European heritage, a mechanical engineer by trade and a MENSA member whose hero was Einstein. A voracious reader, his curiosity about the world was his defining quality. He always carried a mechanical pencil and index cards in his shirt pocket, ready to record data, do some calculations, jot down a theory.

From the beginning, my work has been recognized for its innovation, tackling unusual, challenging or complex subjects through creative use of form to reach broad audiences. I’ve worked in documentary, fiction, animation, IMAX, virtual reality and installation. Another way of putting it is that I’m not one for staying in a lane. I follow my curiosity and artistic muse, as well as my sense of what will resonate at this time, choosing the best approach for each project.

It may sound grandiose, but I feel this is a life work. This story called me to weave together dramatic re-enactments and verité documentary with archival footage and poetic abstract scenes. I believe the way they sit together allows for something special: a film that can touch our hearts, our heads and our spirits.

Our Indigenous cultures value humility, community, Elders, listening and relationship to each other and the animate world around us, all the way to the stars. These quiet yet powerful teachings have a lot to offer a mainstream culture that values youth, confidence, volume, the individual, the self-made. Science is fueled by our curiosity to understand the world around us, to unpack the unknown a bit more. Wilfred also has this curiosity and fascination—he is a geek, an Elder, a teacher and sometimes a trickster. He is deeply committed to knowledge, the next generation and honouring his ancestors. And I committed to translating this to film.

Filming took place on the traditional territories of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation, Brokenhead Ojibway Nation, Onigaming First Nation, and Asubpeeschoseewagong First Nation; on Treaty One Territory which includes the Anishinaabeg, Anishiniewuk, Dakoka Oyate, Denesuline, Nehethowk Nations and is the homeland of the Red River Métis; on the territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, Anishnabeg, Chippewa, Haudenosaunee and Wendat peoples; and on the territories of the Massachusetts and Pawtucket.