Nordic and North American Indigenous Star Lore: The Big and Little Dipper
On Canada Day, the city of Winnipeg put on a drone show instead of fireworks this year. This was a great idea for many reasons. First of all, it is less loud for pets and people with sensory issues. Secondly, Canada is having a particularly bad wildfire year and it is not a good idea to poke the bear. The last reason is that the drone show allowed a unique opportunity to tell a story, and the story chosen was a retelling of Indigenous star lore. Everyone was captivated as the stories of the stars came to life in 3D in the sky above them. There were people exclaiming and tearing up. When the show was done people lay, stunned, on the grass, not willing to shake off the spell of the remarkable storytelling. Whoever wrote the story for the drone show, pieced together lots of different stories from Indigenous Star Lore expert, Wilfred Buck, and paired it with the broader Western understanding of the constellations of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. The result was a multi-layered story that broug