Uploaded June 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
"Wilfred Buck" is a powerful hybrid documentary from award-winning Anishinaabe filmmaker Lisa Jackson, known for her bold, genre-crossing work. The film tells the extraordinary true story of Cree Elder Wilfred Buck—charismatic, irreverent and deeply wise—who overcame racism, displacement and addiction by reclaiming Indigenous star knowledge and ceremony.
Moving between past and present, earth and sky, this visually striking film blends memoir, verité, archival footage and re-enactments to explore Buck's life journey and the survival of Indigenous knowledge systems in face of colonization. Based on his memoir "I Have Lived Four Lives", the film asks: What is lost when ceremony disappears—and what can be healed when it returns?
"Wilfred Buck" is both intimate and cosmic—a call to remember the sacred, to reconnect with ancestral teachings and to embrace Indigenous science and cosmology as a way of understanding our place in the universe.
English, English subtitles
Dubbed in Cree
Dubbed in French
Director: Lisa Jackson
Producers: Lisa Jackson, Lauren Grant, Alicia Smith (NFB)
Executive Producers: Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier, David Christensen (NFB)
Associate Producer: Brittany Ryan
Canadian Distributor: National Film Board of Canada
United States Distributor: Moving Images Distribution
International Distributor: Filmotor
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Related to this documentary is a sister project, "Wilfred Buck's Star Stories" a 21 minute immersive dome experience that brings to life four star stories through spectacular night sky cinematography and cosmic visualizations. Presented in planetariums and XR environments, the piece expands on Buck's teachings by offering a rarely heard Indigenous knowledge on astronomy and our enduring connections to the cosmos.
"Wilfred Buck" is a powerful hybrid documentary from award-winning Anishinaabe filmmaker Lisa Jackson, known for her bold, genre-crossing work. The film tells the extraordinary true story of Cree Elder Wilfred Buck—charismatic, irreverent and deeply wise—who overcame racism, displacement and addiction by reclaiming Indigenous star knowledge and ceremony.
Moving between past and present, earth and sky, this visually striking film blends memoir, verité, archival footage and re-enactments to explore Buck's life journey and the survival of Indigenous knowledge systems in face of colonization. Based on his memoir "I Have Lived Four Lives", the film asks: What is lost when ceremony disappears—and what can be healed when it returns?
"Wilfred Buck" is both intimate and cosmic—a call to remember the sacred, to reconnect with ancestral teachings and to embrace Indigenous science and cosmology as a way of understanding our place in the universe.
English, English subtitles
Dubbed in Cree
Dubbed in French
Director: Lisa Jackson
Producers: Lisa Jackson, Lauren Grant, Alicia Smith (NFB)
Executive Producers: Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier, David Christensen (NFB)
Associate Producer: Brittany Ryan
Canadian Distributor: National Film Board of Canada
United States Distributor: Moving Images Distribution
International Distributor: Filmotor
=====
Related to this documentary is a sister project, "Wilfred Buck's Star Stories" a 21 minute immersive dome experience that brings to life four star stories through spectacular night sky cinematography and cosmic visualizations. Presented in planetariums and XR environments, the piece expands on Buck's teachings by offering a rarely heard Indigenous knowledge on astronomy and our enduring connections to the cosmos.
