Episode 44: Acakosuk - A First Nations Reading of the Night Sky with Wilfred Buck

Ahkameyimok Podcast with Perry Bellegarde

"When I went to school and started hearing stories about Roman and Greek mythology and the stars of Orion and Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, I assumed that it was only the Romans and Greeks that looked up at the sky. But that didn't sit right in my head, because I looked at the sky."

As a young man Wilfred Buck was curious about the stars, and began to ask elders in his First Nations community in Northern Manitoba about them. "I was told that our people understood about those stars and that every star you could see in the sky with the naked eye had a story, had a constellation, had a teaching behind it and had instructions on how we should live and I was intrigued by that."

Now, Wilfred Buck is known as the "Star Guy." He has dedicated his life to that childhood intrigue with the stars, becoming one of the leading Indigenous star story experts and astronomers in the world. He lectures on this First Nations star knowledge internationally and travels to First Nations communities with portable Planetariums, teaching Indigenous stories about the stories of the stars in our night sky.

Listen in to hear those stories, and about Wilfred's own incredible journey, in this celestial episode of the Ahkameyimok Podcast.

Wilfred Buck is a science facilitator at the Manitoba First Nations Education Resource Centre and a proud member of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation, Treaty 5 territory in Manitoba.

For more on the "Indigenous Star Knowledge Symposia" organized by Wilfred Buck and the Canadian Museum of Science and Technology click on this link:

https://ingeniumcanada.org/indigenous-star-knowledge-symposium

The next online event is April 28th: Spring Equinox Celebration with the Heiltsuk Nation

https://ingeniumcanada.org/indigenous-star-knowledge-symposia-spring-equinox-celebration

A big thanks goes out to the Red Dog Singers of Treaty 4 Territory in Saskatchewan for our theme song, Intertribal.

The Ahkameyimok Podcast is produced by David McGuffin of Explore Podcast Productions in Ottawa.

For more on the work of the Assembly of First Nations visit www.afn.ca