Joe Buffalo Child’s earliest boyhood memories are of cold, barren landscapes, wolves howling outside a warm tent, and emerald green northern lights—miraculous coloured curtains dancing between Earth and the stars. For Buffalo Child, raised in the traditional Dene lifestyle by his grandparents in the Northwest Territories, it was like a dream.
In N.W.T., where he once snapped a shot of a “dragon aurora,” the spectral lights are omnipresent, he tells The Epoch Times.
When clients ask what it’s like living with the lights always on, he answers: “It is as common as you breathing air. What’s it like for you to breathe air?”
“As a young boy, it was always with us,” he said. “The aurora was always here with our people since time immemorial. So it’s nothing really new for us.”
Speaking of his Dene heritage, Buffalo Child’s voice has an element of awe. He’s all too eager to share his cherished culture with the visitors who arrive at his tour office seven days a week.
He tells them the Dene are indigenous Native Americans who share the same ancestry as the Navaho in the southern United States and speak the same language. The Navaho migrated south after crossing the land bridge some 30,000 years ago. The Dene stayed up north.
Dene spirituality is tightly wed to auroras; they believe their ancestors reside there.
As CEO of North Star Adventures, Buffalo Child, 60, hosts global travellers from as far away as South Korea and Taiwan (he hires Korean and Chinese interpreters to assist). Guests arrive like pilgrims eager to check off lifelong bucket lists.
The business is booming, but has seen better days. Rising from the ashes of near-ruin after the COVID lockdowns, they’re rebuilding. Now, Buffalo Child is always checking the weather and greeting new groups to take along on Arctic adventures. Drives through winter wonderlands are topped off climactically with northern lights that rarely disappoint.
Buffalo Child says he always wants to make his guests’ sojourn soulful and build a real connection.
He tells stories of the grandparents who raised him who’ve now passed on and whom he sees in the afterlife dancing in the auroras. They say they are happy and will meet again, he tells his guests.
“You can hear [our guests] weeping,” he said, adding that their trip is often “a lifelong dream.” “Our tour’s not just something like an attraction—it’s something more profound and more special.”
Auroras come from the east—or rather, seem to. Actually, the Earth’s rotation carries us through them as they stand impervious to geographic location, dancing hundreds of kilometres over the Earth’s magnetic polar regions.
Buffalo Child’s team, nevertheless, heads east to intercept them.
A former civil engineering student, Buffalo Child knows every last dirt road and turnoff in the area like the back of his hand. His savvy for scouting the most sublime spots is his edge over the competition.
The drive eastward often leads to Pontoon Lake where dark skies free of light pollution and shorelines clear of obstructions are ideal for viewing. It was here several months ago that Buffalo Child captured one of his most impressive shots as tour participants gazed skyward in perfect stillness, entranced by a ribbon of red and yellow lights across the shore.
“Watching the aurora and the stars—and the Aurora reflect off the water—it was an incredible experience,” he said.
Since Buffalo Child started North Star Adventures in 2007, the territory’s auroras have attracted stars like Carrie Fisher and placed Yellowknife under the spotlight. “Good Morning America” featured him last January and marvelled at the uncanny ability of digital censors in smartphones that can drink in and display colours the human eye is incapable of seeing.
Even in the pitch of night, Buffalo Child, together with host Ginger Zee, captured a silhouette all ablaze in gorgeous greens.
The auroras being lifelong fellow travellers, Buffalo Child says it’s impossible for him to choose a “favourite” sighting. But of the tens of thousands he’s captured on camera, he says the “dragon aurora” that appeared over a spiny ridge in 2019 was unforgettable.
“I was able to capture the body and the head, and you can see the eyes and the teeth of the dragon’s head. It’s incredible,” he said. “It’s kind of the whole body of the dragon coming down to Earth.”
Buffalo Child’s close proximity to auroras naturally led him to grasp the science behind the lights: Charged particles ejected from the sun are captured by the Earth’s magnetosphere, and those particles then gather to form “aurora ovals” over both the Arctic and Antarctic polar regions. These particles display various colours, their specific hue depending on their altitude.
When Buffalo Child hears people say auroras are best viewed when it’s cold outside, he disagrees.
“Our weather systems on Earth are zero to five kilometres above the surface of the earth,” he says. “[With auroras], you’re talking about 600 to 1,000 [kilometres], it’s got nothing to do with the weather.”
But scientific theories take a backseat to belief when he’s sharing memories with his clients en route to witness auroras. He returns to his childhood: “Life was beautiful with my grandparents,” he says. “Our world was the land and the Great Slave Lake.”
Looking up, he sees the grace of the lights that connect him with his grandparents and ancestors. “That’s what I look at when I see the aurora.”
