Reneltta Arluk

Reneltta Arluk is currently Director of Indigenous Arts at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. She is responsible for the vision to design Indigenous Arts led programming across all artistic disciplines and offer support for inclusionary programming for Indigenous artists campus-wide. She is also responsible for developing and strengthening partnerships with Indigenous and non-Indigenous artistic institutions regionally, nationally and globally creating spaces for Indigenous creative voices. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Acting degree from the University of Alberta; becoming the first Indigenous woman and first Inuk to graduate from the reputable program. Most recently, Reneltta is the first Inuk and Indigenous woman to direct at The Stratford Festival. There, Reneltta was recipient of The Festival’s 2017 Tyrone Guthrie - Derek F. Mitchell Artistic Director's Award as Director of The Breathing Hole by Governor General Award winning playwright, Colleen Murphy.

Reneltta Arluk is an Inuvialuit, Cree, Dene from the Northwest Territories, raised by her grandparents on the trap-line until school age. It is through this life experience and training that gives Reneltta the unique cultural and artistic Indigenous lens from which she works from.

For over twenty years, Reneltta Arluk has been part of or initiated the creation of Indigenous Theatre across Canada and overseas. In 2008, Reneltta founded Akpik Theatre, the only professional Indigenous Theatre company in the Northwest Territories. Adhering to its namesake, the cloudberry, Akpik Theatre strives to flourish in the northern climate it reflects by developing, mentoring and producing performance-based work that is northern Indigenous inspired and created. Reneltta is also published poet. She is also a mom to her son, Carver.

Reneltta Arluk is committed to creating space for young Indigenous voices. She has done this locally with Akpik Theatre’s youth outreach program, What’s Your Story? and nationally through developing Protocol & Play for Pawâkan Macbeth working with Chief Napeweaw Comprehensive School in Frog Lake, Alberta from where the play was inspired. Reneltta continues her advocacy work as a board member of FOXY, Fostering Open eXpression for Youth. She is a mentor with Inuit Futures in Arts Leadership: Pilimmaksarniq/Pijariuqsarniq, an Inuit led collective aimed to bring together partners from the academic, public, and not-for-profit sectors to train and empower Inuit emerging academics and arts professionals to become leaders in Canada within academia and across the Arts. Reneltta is a recent board member of the Inuit Art Foundation.

Reneltta Arluk began her artistic career as a student at Centre for Indigenous Theatre in Toronto, Ontario. While there, Reneltta explored techniques of incorporating personal story into an ensemble. While living in Whitehorse, Yukon she was an integral part of the Raven’s Tale Theatre ensemble. Raven’s Tale Theatre showcased the diversity of Yukon First Nations by telling traditional stories of the land and culture.

Her training and life experience has brought her many places. From being part of Copper Thunderbird, the first Indigenous play to be on the main stage at the National Arts Centre in eighteen years, to overseas where she toured northern Greece performing in Utopian Floes as part of Caravan Tall Ship Theatre's global cast and crew. In 2009, Reneltta co-founded the Rubaboo Aboriginal Arts Festival now under Alberta Aboriginal Arts. From 2010-2014, she toured much of Canada into Iceland and Greenland with Human Cargo's northern-inspired play, Night, speaking mostly Inuktitut. Reneltta crossed the border to perform in Chantal Bilodeau’s world premiere of play, Sila, at Central Square Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts produced by Underground Railway Theatre. In 2015, she was aboard the tall ship, Antigua, sailing the Arctic waters of Svalbard, Norway with the Arctic Circle Organization as part of their annual expeditionary artist residency in research for her play about Tookoolito. She recently was one of four playwrights in The Citadel Theatre’s Playwrights Lab in Edmonton, Alberta.

Reneltta is committed to the development of northern-based Indigenous language inspired stories. From working with Innu youth as an acting coach in Sheshatshiu, Labrador on a short film Kuekuatsheu Mak Muak (Wolverine and the Loon) based in Innu to performing in a rotoscoped short film The Woman Who Came Back based on a Tlicho story partly illustrated by youth from Behchoko, NWT in Tlicho language. In 2014, full-length feature film, Maina, was released into theatres. Based on a book of the same name, Maina features Reneltta in a principal role speaking Inuktitut as Aputik. She can be seen on screen speaking Inuvialuktun as Mean Auntie in Marie Clement’s Red Snow now in theatres.

Reneltta Arluk was published as a poet with BookLand Press, Thoughts and Other Human Tendencies is a poetry collection where stories of Indigenous experiences are distilled into feelings and thoughts that are universal. Thoughts and Other Human Tendencies is now available in Cree, mâmitoneyihtamowina ekwa kotakak ayisiniwak ot'swepinikewiniwâwa. Translated by Susan Sinclair. Also in French, Pensées et Autres Propensions de L'Espèce Humaine with Les Éditions de La Grenouillère Inc. Translated by Carole Beaulieu.

Reneltta’s vision of telling her own stories her own way began in 2010 with her produced her first play, TUMIT, under Akpik Theatre. In 2015, TUMIT had its French world premiered production in Montreal, Quebec. To date, Akpik Theatre has created six works including renowned Pawâkan Macbeth, a take over of Macbeth, set in the late 1800’s on Plains Cree territory inspired by the youth of Frog Lake First Nation. Reneltta has started working on a book about her grandfather, Edouard Archie Larocque. He was a well known northern Métis trapper/prospector who knew the Barrenlands like the back of his hand. He was one of the last of the RCMP Dog Patrol.