Reneltta Arluk on storytelling and ‘Pawâkan’ – The Gateway Online

“The advice that I got was never wait for the phone to ring, and I really heard that, especially as an Indigenous woman at that time,” Arluk says.

Reneltta Arluk has had her hand in a lot of different areas of the performing arts — directing, writing, acting, founding a theatre company. But more at the core of it, she is an Inuvialuk, Gwich’in, and Denesuline, Cree storyteller from the Northwest Territories.

She told The Gateway in an interview that she was born around stories, and stories were always shared with her.

Arluk got into theatre as a political act. “What I was recognizing was that our stories were being told through the lens of others, like an anthropological lens. So people would write about us, but not with us,” she said.

Read More: https://thegatewayonline.ca/2025/06/reneltta-arluk-on-storytelling-and-pawakan/