Loretta Todd

Loretta Todd is a Métis Cree Canadian director, producer, activist, storyteller, and writer. She belongs to what has been classified as the second wave of aboriginal Canadian film directors, and has been internationally recognized for her non-fiction work, which strives to express the lived experienced of aboriginal peoples and communities through their own voices.

Loretta was born to George and Judy Todd, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in the 1960s. Todd's father, a member of both the Métis and Cree nations of Northern Alberta, held various jobs in order to support their eight children. Loretta recalls a childhood filled with many family gatherings and various forms of artistic expression (dancing, storytelling, artistry, singing, and craft work). Her experiences have also been shaped by her father's alcoholism and the poverty that their family experienced. Todd lived in the residential school system for a year, a program sponsored by the Canadian federal government and ran by various churches, aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families and culture for the purpose of assimilation with Euro-centric values, language, and ways of living.

Loretta left home at the age of twelve to set out on her own. She took on various jobs to support herself and became pregnant as a young teenager. She got in touch with her passions for writing and film-making while attending community college. In the 1980s Todd's enrollment at Simon Fraser University's film school made her the first aboriginal woman to attend. For the first year she held a full-time job with the Canadian federal government while attending university, both her professional and student work centered around her passion for raising awareness about social inequalities that aboriginal communities face and social justice initiative that are aimed at improving the lived experiences for generations of aboriginal peoples to come.

Todd's film style actively challenges traditional documentary film form, since she recognizes how films she consumed while growing up, which were produced by the National Film Board of Canada, reproduced harmful racist stereotypes about aboriginal peoples.

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