Screening – Documentary film: Wilfred Buck

As part of Earth Day and the year-round programming of the exhibition Indigenous Voices of Today: Knowledge, Trauma, Resilience, the McCord Stewart Museum, in collaboration with the National Film Board, presents the documentary film Wilfred Buck, by Lisa Jackson.

Wilfred Buck

Moving between earth and sky, past and present, this hybrid feature documentary follows the extraordinary life of Wilfred Buck. Charismatic and irreverent, this Cree elder has managed to overcome a harrowing history of forced displacement, racism, and addiction by reclaiming ancestral star knowledge and ceremony.

Humble, profound, funny, always authentic, Wilfred Buck is also a master storyteller. The narration taken from his autobiography transforms the loss and pain of his youth into a powerful poetry reminiscent of the Beat Generation. When his Northern Manitoba community is forcibly relocated to make room for a hydroelectric dam, Wilfred Buck’s family loses everything. He descends into the darkness of the city streets, trying to survive any way he can, until he reconnects with Elders who start him on a path that transforms his world. Driven by his insatiable curiosity and instructed by his dreams, he becomes a science educator and internationally respected expert in ancestral traditions. His mission, more relevant and urgent today than ever, is to spread these life-changing teachings, always guided by ceremony and anchored in the land.

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

About Wilfred Buck

From the Opaskwayak Cree Nation, Ininiw (Cree) astronomer Wilfred Buck is also an author, educator, knowledge keeper, and speaker. With two education degrees from the University of Manitoba and 25 years of experience as an educator, he has worked with kindergarten-age children as well as with university students. For 15 years, he was also a science facilitator with the Manitoba First Nations Education Resource Centre, where he conducted extensive research on the Ininiw Acakosuk (Cree stars and constellations).

Today, this expert in astronomy hosts presentations with the help of his mobile planetarium. He also gives themed talks and keynote speeches on Indigenous worldviews and astronomy. He is considered to be the world’s foremost authority on Indigenous astronomy.

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

Information

• Activité gratuite, projection en anglais et en cri, avec sous-titres en français, présenté le mercredi 23 avril 2025, à 18 h.
  Places limitées, réservation obligatoire.
• Durée : 96 minutes
• Lieu : Théâtre J. Armand Bombardier du Musée McCord Stewart

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