Wilfred Buck

Wilfred Buck (born September 27, 1954) is a science facilitator at the Manitoba First Nations Education Resource Centre and an Indigenous star lore expert. A member of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation, Buck is known as "the star guy" due to his knowledge of First Nations astronomy. He has researched and consulted with elders to learn more about the astronomical knowledge of Cree, Ojibway, and Lakota peoples.

Early life and education

Buck grew up in northern Manitoba on the Opaskwayak Cree Nation, near Saskatchewan. He developed his love of astronomy at a young age and has described being "totally blown away by the immensity" of the night sky as a child.

Career

Buck began working at the Manitoba First Nations Education Resource Centre as a science facilitator around 2008. His mandate in the role was to "put the First Nations perspective into science"; consulting with elders, he realized he instead needed to put science into a First Nations perspective. He tours the planetariums to the 55 band-operated schools in Manitoba, projecting constellations onto the dome and sharing stories about each.

Along with indigenous astronomer Annette S. Lee, Buck was a co-curator of the "One Sky, Many Astronomies" exhibit at Ottawa's Canada Science and Technology Museum, featuring constellations of Canada's indigenous cultures. He served as a storyteller and content expert in the 22-minute film Legends of the Night Sky, shown on the planetarium of Telus World of Science in Edmonton.

Buck has gathered more than two dozen star stories from indigenous elders around Manitoba. In 2016, in collaboration with members of the Native Skywatchers initiative, Buck and partners Annette Lee and William Wilson created a native sky map, Ininew Achakos Masinkan, an artistic rendition of Cree constellations in planisphere format. He is one of the co-organizers of the first Indigenous Star Knowledge Symposium, scheduled to be held in 2021 in Ottawa and featuring indigenous knowledge keepers from around the world.

NameExoWorlds contest

In 2019, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) celebrated its 100 year anniversary. As part of the centenary celebrations, the IAU ran the NameExoWorlds contest. As part of this contest, the IAU assigned a star with an exoplanet to each participating country. Astronomers in each country ran a contest where members of the public were invited to propose a set of names for the star and exoplanet. Canada's contest was run by the Canadian Astronomical Society (CASCA). The IAU assigned Canada the star HD 136418 and its exoplanet HD 136418b, and over 500 pairs of names were submitted in the contest. Wilfred Buck made some changes to her original proposal, and the final names chosen for the star and exoplanet were Nikawiy for the star and Awasis for the exoplanet.

In 2021, he published I Have Lived Four Lives, a memoir of his own journey from a troubled and impoverished childhood to becoming a respected scientist.