The mâmawêyatitân centre invites everyone in the Regina area to a free community screening of:

WILFRED BUCK

Directed by Lisa Jackson (2024, 96 mins)

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. 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. As a young man, 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.

Adapted from Buck’s rollicking memoir I Have Lived Four Lives, 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.

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Watch the trailer at https://vimeo.com/942488273

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About Wilfred Buck:

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 is based, and Kitcikisik (Great Sky): Tellings That Fill the Night Sky (2021).

About Lisa Jackson:

Lisa Jackson is an Anishinaabe filmmaker whose work has garnered two Canadian Screen Awards, been nominated for a Webby and screened at top festivals including Sundance, Tribeca, SXSW, Berlinale and Hot Docs. Her VR experience Biidaaban was viewed by more than 25,000 people, while her film Indictment won Best Doc at imagineNATIVE and is one of CBC’s top watched documentaries. She won the 2022 Chicken & Egg Award and the 2021 DOC Vanguard Award, and has an MFA from York University.

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Co-presented with the Regina Public Library. The screening will take place in the Multipurpose Room at the mâmawêyatitân centre. All are welcome. No pre-registration is required. For more info contact mamaweyatitan@reginalibrary.ca