Sky walker

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This article was published 09/04/2024 (905 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In taking on the project of introducing Winnipeg-based Cree teacher Wilfred Buck to the world, documentary filmmaker Lisa Jackson found herself, artistically and literally, all over the map.

Making Wilfred Buck took Jackson from the halls of academia to remote Manitoba sweat lodges to … well, the cosmos itself.

Buck is an expert in Indigenous lore about astronomy, which he teaches to communities using his own portable planetarium. He struck Jackson as an ideal subject for a film, considering her multi-faceted approach to filmmaking.

“A lot of my previous work can be characterized as documentary, but generally it’s been hybrid or with very strong visual approaches to things,” says Jackson in a phone interview from her home in Toronto. “Wilfred Buck is a combination of more conventional verité documentary as well as period dramatic re-enactments of his earlier life. And there’s visuals to evoke outer space.”

Jackson, whose mother is Anishinaabe, says she first heard about Buck at a 2017 conference, where she learned he had curated an astronomy exhibit at the Canada Science and Technology Museum based on the First Nations stories about the stars.

A couple of years later, she got to read an advance copy of Buck’s 2021 autobiography, I Have Lived Four Lives, and she knew she had to tell his story, which took him, as she says, “from the gutter to the stars.”

“When I read Wilfred’s personal story, I felt, this is the story of Indigenous Canada,” Jackson says. “It’s really entertaining and it’s very heartbreaking.

“He’s been through a lot of difficult things that will be familiar to many Indigenous people.”

Buck, for example, was relocated at an early age from his community in northern Manitoba for the building of a dam. He was forcibly separated from his siblings during the ‘60s Scoop. When he was still a child, he succumbed to alcoholism.

Buck turned his life around in 1983 after a fateful consultation with a Cree elder. That led to a different life, teaching Indigenous star knowledge, a lively process Jackson captures on camera.

Jackson pitched the documentary at the 2021 edition of the Canadian Forum Pitch Prize at the Hot Docs festival in Toronto, and won. The completed film will have its North American debut at Hot Docs next month.

As far as getting the film planned and made, you might say the stars aligned for Jackson.

“I was lucky the pandemic coincided with the research and development stage of the film,” she says. “So it was really kind of nice to have the time to write the script and do a lot of development. Because it had a fairly involved creative approach.”

The bulk of the verité footage was shot two years ago in and around Winnipeg. At that time, COVID-19 concerns mixed with more conventional Manitoba issues to make the shoot tricky.

“There was some radically challenging weather at times that was very unpredictable: Lightning, storms, rain.”

But any challenges were worth it, she says.

“Making this film for me feels like an apprenticeship, to the perspectives Wilfred has and the star knowledge that he has,” Jackson says.

“There is a sense that science is now looking to more holistic perspectives of understanding of the world around us, even extending out into the cosmos,” Jackson says. “It is heartening to see that there is growing interest to look at Indigenous knowledge about the environment and space, based on thousands of years of observation.”

“Wilfred’s stories came over years of spending time travelling around and connecting with elders all over,” Jackson says. “So it’s really precious knowledge, brought together and translated to make available to us.”

Wilfred Buck, a production of the NFB and Jackson’s company Door Number 3 Productions, will screen theatrically in Winnipeg at the Dave Barber Cinematheque in June before becoming available on APTN and Crave later this year.

randall.king.arts@gmail.com