Teaching Indigenous Star Stories
Educators like Wilfred Buck know that astronomy did not, in fact, start with Aristotle and end with Neil deGrasse Tyson.
When some Cree people look at the sky during summer months, they see Ochekatchakosuk, a group of stars in the shape of a fisher, a weasel-like animal related to the wolverine. According to Cree teaching, a long time ago (likely during the Ice Age), there was no summer in the northern hemisphere. The animals of the region wanted to find summer and bring it back, and the fisher, Ochek, was selected for the task. After he succeeded, he escaped into the sky, and the Creator stamped his shape into the stars. In spring and summer evenings, Ochek is located high in the sky, inviting celebrations of warmer weather; in autumn and winter, he appears closer to the horizon—a reminder to be grateful for the passing seasons.
Few astronomers know of Ochek, though the constellation’s tail is likely familiar: it also represents the handle of the Big Dipper, the tail of Ursa Major, and has been used as a navigation tool for hundreds of years.
Wilfred Buck grew up in the Opaskwayak Cree Nation, in northern Manitoba, and Ochek’s story is the first star story he learned, when he was a teenager. “An Elder told me that every star you can see with the naked eye had a story, had a constellation, had a name and a teaching attached to it,” he says. “Due to the historical trauma that happened to our people, anywhere from 75 to 85 percent of that knowledge base was wiped out.”
